Finding that creative spark

Geoff Roberts choice, flexibility, focus, metaphor, opportunity

creative spark between fingersI spent yesterday morning with a group of colleagues who are members of a Net2 group. The me, this group acts partly as networking but more significantly as an informal personal development network where I can share my expertise, have it challenged and add to it on the basis of the work and presentations that we do in the sessions. After yesterday’s meeting I commented to several people how pleasant it had been to share some time with like-minded individuals who operated in similar spheres and had a degree of intellectual and practical capability that offered me a challenge.

I really enjoy these meetings and found myself reflecting on the paradoxical nature of my attendance. On the one hand I have no doubt whatsoever that there is value in this group of like-minded people. The other hand suggests the value of diversity and the importance of exposing myself to new ideas and new people. So perhaps you to need to pay attention to both aspects of your learning. Perhaps you need to be challenged and challenge yourself within your domain of expertise as well as stimulating your creativity by exposing yourself to ideas and experiences that do not seem to be immediately relevant.

For those of us that operating in an essentially data rational world, it is the second aspect that might be particularly challenging. How might spending an afternoon in an art gallery or reading about the history of the Roman Empire or simply going for a walk along a beach help me design a better road, build a better sewage works or facilitate a meeting more effectively? The whole point is that we do not know. It is a simple fact that I often find interesting ideas popping into my head whilst I am doing these off-topic activities and it is received wisdom in creativity circles that both incubation and diversity of experience are important in generating creative ideas.

I guess another paradoxical aspect of the whole experience was that it boosted both my ego and my humility by helping me realise that not only am I rather capable but I also still have quite a lot to learn.

So, my challenge to you is, and this is perhaps especially relevant if you are in one of those are driven jobs or lifestyles where everything is planned and there is no time for anything new. Find creative ways to meet your peers (professional associations, networking groups etc) and also make time to do something that is out of the ordinary. Do both of these knowing that in some way, perhaps not known beforehand, both of them will add value to your life and help you do a better job.

Do let me know what you do and how it goes.

Assumptions and not-seeing

Geoff Roberts choice, flexibility, focus, perception

assumptionsIt’s 9:15 in the morning and my gorgeous little granddaughter comes running through all ready for nursery. “Would you like me to take you?” I ask and hear from the kitchen (her father) “You can’t because we don’t have the child seat”. Well I knew we did and I knew that it was in the kitchen and I know that he had put her coat on it when she came in the previous evening; so we put it in the car and off we went.

And then I ended up wandering around the centre of Bradford (yes, it is quite a sad life!) reflecting on this. How come a perfectly functioning adult fails to see a substantial child seat even though he has several times been within inches of it? And I thought of the many times I too have lost something only to have a colleague find it in the same place that I have been unsuccessfully looking … and of course the times that I pointed out to someone else that what they are looking for is right under their nose. So this is a fairly common pattern it seems – we can fail to see something that is physically right under our noses. So what’s going on?

Well, there are lots of things that could be going on and the one that I want to talk about today is assumptions. Where is the child seat? The working assumption, which is is correct 99% of the time, is that it is in my wife’s car. She was away and so a reasonable assumption would be that the car seat was not with us. If I am subconsciously assuming that something is not present, it seems quite likely that my consciousness is not going to be looking for it and hence will not see it even when it is there. I assume that tickets that gig I wanted to go to have sold out, so I do not even enquire – only to find out after the event that the hall was half full; I assume that that beautiful young woman/man would not consider going out with me and so I do not even ask.

Assumptions get in our way and part of my daily challenge is to identify some of the assumptions that I am running at any particular moment. Remember, we all run a series of assumptions all the time. Assumptions, call them beliefs, influence our thoughts and actions in ways that are sometimes incomprehensible to both ourselves and others.

Even my four-year-old granddaughter is running them. She (implicitly) assumes that when she asks “Why?” there is an answer that can be given in terms and a timeframe that a four-year-old will understand. Maybe there is and maybe my assumption that that is not always true is wrong.

So the story has two thrown up two challenges. Firstly to notice more actively what is around you. To use your eyes and ears and smell etc actively rather than in the passive way that many of us operate most of the time. Secondly to stop occasionally and explore what assumptions you are holding about a situation. What do you believe to be true in this situation? What would have to be true for what is happening to make sense? When you surface these assumptions you will have a different perspective on what you are observing and hence more choices about how to live willfully and thoughtfully this world.

(Oh, by the way, one of my assumptions is that if you have read this far you must be interested in the topic. So how about taking a couple of minutes out to write your comments or share with me some assumption that you found to be less than helpful.)

Time to stop?

Geoff Roberts change, choice, flexibility, time management

stopAlison Smith runs a great coaching programme (so do we – but that would be blatant self-promotion!).

I was speaking with her a few months ago when she mentioned something that awakened in me this morning – the need to stop occasionally.

We lead such busy lives, filled with all sorts of activity, that sometimes and perhaps especially when faced with a personal/life challenge the most effective thing to do is get off the roundabout altogether.

As long as we stay on the roundabout our view of the world is constantly changing – OK we may come round to the same point again, but something ‘out there’ will have changed while we were having our ride. How important it might be to take real time out – STOP completely – to look at ourselves, our situation, our connections, our aims and goals, our personal vision?

…and I do not mean ‘stop doing this task and start doing another..”, I mean STOP. Take time out, away from where you normally do your work or live your life. Take time to reflect on what really matters to you, whether how you do your work and live your life is really serving your greater vision. Take time to decide what to drop, who to drop, what to change and what action you are going to take to improve your lot. Always remember:

life is not counted by the number of breaths you take
but by the moments your breath is taken away

I don’t understand…

Geoff Roberts choice, focus, selection

George Osborne behind a pile of pound coinsYesterday morning I was reading an article by George Monbiot about possible changes to the Corporation Tax regime in the UK. The deeper I got into the article, the more I realised how complex issue was and how little I knew about the topic. Now, I run my own company so I probably know more about Corporation Tax than the average citizen and yet here I was completely baffled by changes that the government are apparently considering.

How often do you find yourself on the edge of the subject that is getting so complex that you really do not understand the implications? What do you do in these circumstances? I was left wondering whether I should

    a) simply accept that I would never understand it and move on
    b) continue to surf superficially over the topic
    c) Rams in an uninformed way or
    d) seek an expert who might be able to explain it to me.

In the end this took me back to an earlier piece about whether I could Control, choose to Influence or simply Accept what was going on. I can certainly not control government legislation, I could choose to accept whatever happens or I could choose to influence in whatever way I could. Each of these options would be likely to lead to a different selection from the four above. In the end, I decided that others are more likely to be able to influence significantly than I was and so decided that I would simply accept whatever was going on and move my attention elsewhere.

So, how often are you faced with a situation that you do not completely understand? And how do you respond? What response or action most suits your long-term goals or vision? Think about it. Take you mind off autopilot and make a conscious decision about how to deal with your ignorance.

Context and immediacy in learning

Geoff Roberts change, choice, flexibility

tree of lifeThese days I tend not to lose much sleep over some of the wackier government edicts that come our way. However, a recent one suggesting that reading tests for six-year-olds should include “non-words” set me thinking. Apparently the rationale is that including non-words allows testing of whether or not pupils can decode using the phonics system that is prevalent in our primary schools these days. The counter argument, to which I admit I subscribe, is that reading is about obtaining meaning not simply translating symbols on a page into vocal utterances.

So, why am I writing about this in a personal effectiveness blog? Well, it seems to me that the debate centres on the whole issue of the relevance of context in learning. It is widely accepted that if a learner understands how to apply a new piece of learning and, better still, has an opportunity to practice that learning within a very short timescale then the learning will be much more effective. How, I wonder, does your average six-year-old understand the concept of or use a non-word?

I think this question of context poses interesting challenges for us trainers and our trainees. As a facilitator of learning (I am really not very keen on the word’ trainer’) my challenge is to be constantly anchoring new material in the current reality of my learners. It is no good just talking about the concept of personal responsibility or networking, I must help my learner identify a specific situation in which they can try out/practice the ideas to which I am introducing them.

So what happens when we turn the tables and I think about this topic of context and immediacy as a learner? I remember, many many years ago, being sent on a short course to learn how to use spreadsheets. My boss at the time thought this was a good idea and in the long term it probably was, however what he had missed was that neither he nor I had any immediate application for this new knowledge that I was acquiring. I came back with all this wonderful stuff in my head and got on with my day job while what I had learned slowly decayed to the point at which when I finally did need to use a spreadsheet I had to start almost from scratch in my learning. From that point onwards, I only ever went on training courses when I either had or could create an immediate application for the new knowledge.

When I apply this thinking to my current field of helping others in their personal development, the challenge is all too apparent. I can sit down and draw pretty diagrams of elephants in circles of Completions Gestalts and lots of other theoretical models, but it is only when my client goes out and actually does something different every day or rewards themself for completing a task that they really understand the power of the ideas I would like to get across. To my coaching clients – please remember that your home play is extremely important! To anyone else reading this blog, just takes 30 seconds to think about the implications of what you have read for your own situation and how you are going to put into practice this context of context and immediacy in learning.

It is not the sound of words that is important, it is their meaning.

Personal Power

Geoff Roberts choice, strategy

power book cover
In an age of collaboration, does personal power still matter? Well yes, albeit perhaps it is more about how you use your power for ther greater good than for personal gratification. Power can be used for good (Mother Theresa) or evil (Hitler) – there’s nothing wrong with power per se.

This whole arena of power, how to acquire and use it effectively, is a key interest of mine, so here’s a rarity – a link to someone else’s blog!

Jeffrey Pfeffer has written such a useful piece of advice about building your organisational power base that I wanted to share it with you. So here you go to Power Rules

Challenge yourself

Geoff Roberts choice, flexibility, opportunity

man standing out from the packI was watching the new series of Masterchef last night and was seriously impressed by the enthusiasm and commitment of the participants. Some of them very clearly knew how to shake a pan, others perhaps needed a bit more practice. I was left wondering how many of them had decided to cook something safe, well within their capabilities, and how many had decided to take risks with new and challenging recipes in the hope of winning this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Sometimes we do only get one opportunity and you might find it instructive to have a think about how you react in those situations. Do you take the safe but sure approach – which unless you are world class probably puts you in a pack with many others – or do you give it your all in the hope of creating something new and unexpected?

Heston Blumenthal did not become one of the best chefs in the world by cooking conventional French cuisine better than anyone else, he needed to find his own style and even his own techniques.

People who are different, or do things differently, are the ones that get noticed, so what do you do or are you going to do to make yourself noticeable and push the boat out?

Hunter or Harvester?

Geoff Roberts change, choice, flexibility, metaphor, selection

harvester in field
I was having lunch with my great friend Andy Green recently and, after we had discussed the current state of the market for our work and our approaches to filling the larder, he observed “So, you are a harvester not a hunter?”.

I guess that I prefer to cultivate long-term relationships, look after existing customers very well and nurture new leads and ideas. The hunter is always on the lookout for new customers and then chases them hard, bending over backwards to meet their needs. They are both active but the former waits for the customer to need what they offer whereas the latter operates more like those wonderful people in The Rhubarb Triangle who force their product before having to plant it out to recover.

Harvesters need to be aware that they need to sow seeds, water and fertilise them, prune them if necessary in order to be able to take a harvest when the time is right; they need to be aware that only by saving part of this year’s crop can they reap another next year.

Hunters, on the other hand, need to move around to find new prey, to be constantly alert and energetic just in case a prey animal or a predator appears and they have to deal with it.

Time to think – what is your approach to getting what you want? Are you a hunter or a harvester? Does what you are doing serve you well? Will it continue to serve you inj the same way? Can you keep up the pace?

Attitude is all

Geoff Roberts change, choice, flexibility, perception, selection

attitude changes everythingI make no apology for using someone else’s words today – Charles Swindoll seems to say it all…

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude to me is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than success, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, gift, or skill. It will make or break a company…a church…a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past… we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent how I react to it. And so it is with you… we are in charge of our attitudes.”
Charles Swindoll

The meaning of a communication is the response you get

Geoff Roberts change

unheard voices The meaning of a communication is the response you get.

I was recently reminded about those times in life when I have felt ‘unheard’ – no matter how hard I try, others just do not seem to be able to hear what I want to say.

Of course, this is about me not them. What it is really telling me is that I have failed to communicate effectively.

When I say that I am being unheard, it transfers the responsibiity from me to you. It shifts the responsibiity from me to communicate more effectively to you to listen better.

‘I am not being heard’ suggests that one or more of my needs is not being met – and who else but me can figure out which need is unmet and what I need to handle that.

When did you last feel unheard? What need remained unmet? How can you express that need to others ans seek help, or indeed meet it yourself?