What have you stopped noticing?

Geoff Roberts change, perception

I waschinese on mobile phone sitting minding my own business on Manchester Picadilly Station a few days ago (oh, the exciting places I get to for coaching assignments!) when an obviously ‘Chinese’ looking young guy came and sat alongside me. Well, as Manchester has one of the biggest Chinese communities in the UK, that was no real surprise. What DID however surprise me was when he pulled out his mobile phone to ring someone and this perfect Manchester accent emerged from his mouth.

Now what really surprises me about that is that I was surprised. I live in Bradford and am perfectly at home with young people with obviously Asian heritage speaking in a broad West Yorkshire accent – I don’t even notice what some might hear as a vocal incongruity, indeed the potential for noticing would be in an Asian under 30 years old speaking in an Asian accent!

Our brains are designed to notice difference, so the incongruity of the Chinese Mancunian is perhaps not surprising. But what is the process, and what are the consequences, of the incongruous becoming the norm?

Whatever the process, this is a challenge faced by anyone brought into an organisation to stimulate change. While we are outsiders we notice all sorts of things about the organisation, and the behaviours of its’ players, that the insiders miss because they have become habituated. In time, we risk ‘going native’ and ourselves becoming habituated to all those ‘weird’ behaviours we have been employed to point out and change. A change agent has a limited life in any organisation.

So, what have you stopped noticing about your world? And what are the consequences?

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?

Trying harder is not the answer

Geoff Roberts change, choice, opportunity, strategy

snake painted on eggI am walking along holding an egg in my hand when suddenly I manage to drop it and break it. Do I tell myself “Hold onto the egg more tightly” or do I find a better way of carrying the egg?

Does a stressful event start a cascade that ends up making even you more stressed?
When someone in authority challenges you or corrects your behavior, do you to push back and make the behaviour worse?
Does a failure set you on a path to more failure?

These questions seem philosophical or even paradoxical, but in fact I think they get to the heart of why some people succeed and others don’t. We can choose to create (virtuous) cycles that move us up or endure (vicious) cycles that drag us down.
A policemen hassles a teenager who is acting up. The teenager escalates. The cop escalates. Someone gets arrested – and you can bet it isn’t the cop!.
A sales call is going poorly because the prospect doesn’t perceive the salesperson is confident. She responds by becoming even less confident. No sale.
A mistake is made. The stakes go up. Rattled, another mistake is made, and then again, until failure occurs…

James Bond is a hero because the tougher the world got, the cooler he got. Symphony conductors don’t endure the pressure of a performance, they thrive on it.

If being a little behind creates self-pressure that leads to stress and then errors, is it really suprising that you frequently end up a lot behind.
Customer service falls apart when mutual escalation or non-understanding sets in. Management falls apart when power struggles or miscommunication escalate. Education falls apart when students respond to poor exam results by giving up.

Someone who gets better whenever he fails will always outperform someone who responds to failure by getting worse. This isn’t something in your DNA, it’s something you can learn or unlearn.
The useful response to ‘failure’ is not to try harder, to buckle down and grind it out. The response that works is to understand the nature of the cycle and to change it from the start. You must not fight the cycle, you must transform it into a different cycle altogether. It’s a lot of work, but less work than failing.
When the snake pushes you to recoil in fear, that’s your cue to embrace the trembling fear and do precisely the opposite of what it demands. This won’t work the first time or even the tenth, but it’s the path to an upcycle, one where each negative input leads to more productivity, not less.
Carry that egg in a bowl.

Metaprograms – Sameness or Difference

Geoff Roberts Uncategorized

brain, metaprograms

The last in this short series of blogs about metaprograms explores ways of thinking that notice the sameness or difference in the world.

Until a few years ago I had lived in the same house for 26 years and most of those years my next-door neighbour had gone to the same Mediterranean island for the holidays. Not only had they gone to the same island, they had gone to the same hotel during the same two weeks of the year and it also turns out that many of the same people were in that hotel when they got there. I just couldn’t understand this, I had rarely been to the same country on holiday twice and when I did go to the same country it was to very different parts to that I had visited previously. I have no objection to going on holiday with people I know, and what I find really interesting is meeting new people and doing new things is trying new phone.

That same neighbour had the same job from almost all of those 26 years, whereas I had a new job every two or three years, including one major career change.

When you think about your team, what types of thinking do you need? Is the team charged with developing and implementing a radical new future with no reference to the past or are they opening the 475th Starbucks, with exactly the same layout and stock as the previous 474?
When you are selling change, some of your audience will want to know the ways in which the future is going to be the same as the past and others will want to know how the future is going to be different to the past. Effective communication is addressing both of these audiences.

Hidden Resources have deep expertise in metaprograms, why not ring Suzanne and see how we can help?