Are you Browsing or Seeking?

Geoff Roberts choice, flexibility, focus, opportunity, selection, time management

browsing
I am one of those people who sometimes challenges stereotypes and this is one of those occasions. This man is happy to admit that, on occasions, he just loves shopping. I would like to talk about that phrase “on occasions”. In my head, there are two types of shopping – firstly those occasions when I am quite happy just wandering around window shopping and possibly coming across something that interests me that I might or might not buy. Secondly there is that sort of shopping when I am going out to buy something specific and that is when I become a man on a mission.

The first type of shopping I am browsing, the second I am seeking. When browsing, the pleasure is in browsing in itself and not necessarily in making a purchase. When seeking, the pleasure is finding an item that meets my needs (and there is even greater pleasure in finding something that exceeds those needs).

So, how is it for you? Do you wander through life with no particular aim in mind, perhaps picking up the odd gem on the way but generally letting whatever happens happen? Or do you set out every day with specific aims and goals in mind, with your brain primed to look for opportunities and your body ready to take action on those opportunities?

There is certainly room for both of these approaches, however my challenge to you is to be clear which you are doing when and to be certain that you are doing the right one at the right time. If I want to buy a pair of shoes, it is no good me going to a food store and if I want the pleasure of just wandering, visiting a carpet warehouse is likely to be limiting my pleasure.

Without a vision and without goals all we can ever do is browse; indeed, without that vision and those goals operating in the background we might miss major opportunities whilst we are browsing. Once we are clear what it is that we want we can actively choose whether to go and explicitly seek that or just put it in the background whilst we are browsing in case some opportunity comes up. Living a life without goals is a bit like being a tumbleweed, blown where the wind takes its, trapped in some windowless corner and slowly decaying until point at which it disintegrates and is spread to all corners of the wind.

Which is relevant to your quest for a new product or business or job or mate or project worth working on…
If you’re still looking around, making sure you understand all your options, getting your bearings or making sure you’re well informed, you’re most probably browsing. You missed the first, second and third waves of the internet; you missed a hundred great jobs and forty great husbands.; you missed the deadline for that course and who knows what else while you were just browsing..

Quit looking and go buy something.

Does what you are working on excite you?

Geoff Roberts change, choice, flexibility, focus

excited child

If someone asks what you are working on, can you give them an answer that truly excites you?

I hope so, for if you cannot then surely you are frittering away your limited time here. Why would you want to spend time other than by being excited – boredom is boring!

What is your personal Dream – for 20, 30, 40, unspecified years ahead? Do you even have one? I do – I could draw it for you but a few words will give you the gist of it. I am living in a house overlooking the ocean in one direction and the mountains in another; the weather is generally warm to hot although there is enough rain to keep the beautiful garden green most of the year; I share the house with my wonderful wife, some kids, some friends and some people who have come to study with us and use our library; we travel extensively sharing our insights into personal and self-development with others…and so on. What excites me is anything that helps me get closer to that dream.

No matter what your job is, no matter where you work, there’s a way to create a project (on your own, on weekends if necessary), where the excitement is palpable, where something that might or will make a difference is right around the corner.

Hurry, go do that. Go do it now, before it’s too late!

Competitive collaboration

Geoff Roberts change, flexibility, opportunity, paradox

Michel Roux' service 'apprentices'

One of the things that really struck me about the recent Michel Roux series was how different it was from other ‘reality TV’ shows. Unlike Ramsay’s offerings, there was no shouting, bullying or swearing; unlike Sugar’s Apprentice there were no over-confident 20-odd year old ****s biting at each other and unlike the jungle there was no Gillian Keith! More a case of a group of individuals working to become a team in the hope that some of them could win a life-changing prize.
Never once did I see or hear any evidence of an individual trying to get one up on their colleagues or to position themselves as a ‘winner’. No, it was so evident throughout that this was a team game, even though there would ultimately be winners. What a wonderful demonstration of the power of teamwork to allow individuals to show themselves at their best.

No risk, no reward

Geoff Roberts change, choice, flexibility, opportunity, Risk

risk is realityHow often have you heard the phrase no risk, no reward?

When I was at school I was quite good at chemistry, well ahead of the class. I vividly remember one practical lesson when the chemistry teacher, a wonderful man called Dave Hudson, took me aside and explained that he was going to give me a different practical to complete compared to everyone else in the class. He said that it was extremely difficult but that he believed I could do it. It turned out to be a fairly complex procedure, using some dangerous chemicals. However, I pulled it off much to my own surprise and quite possibly to the chemistry teacher’s. That practical lesson could well have been the moment that catalysed my future career. A brilliant teacher took a risk and allowed me to learn that I was capable of much more than I had so far showed. I blogged earlier about fear and anxiety in learning and this is clearly linked to the concept of taking risks. Risk creates anxiety, anxiety opens the possibility of learning.

So my challenge, whether you are thinking of personal development or the development of those with whom you work, is to think about the amount of risk you take in your daily life and to push the boundaries a little. How often have you not asked (the boss, your colleague, your partner…) because you fear the wrong response? Will surely the worst that can happen is that they say no and if you don’t even ask then there is no possibility of them saying yes.

So next time you really want to try something new, go ahead and do it – I might even suggest that you don’t even ask, just go ahead and do it because it is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission and, moreover, you are much more likely to get it.

Positivity is infectious

Geoff Roberts change, choice, flexibility, focus

I met a colleague of mine, Chris Edwards, in Leeds yesterday. Chris has overseen a fundamental transformation and improvement of education throughout Leeds over the last 10 years and is now out on his own looking for opportunities to help the world. I always find my time with Chris inspirational – he is irrepressibly positive and upbeat, his favourite word is “brilliant” and his belief in people, especially children, is awesome. We talked a lot about beliefs and how the beliefs that parents embed in their children can either help or hinder them.

I would never dream of telling my four-year-old granddaughter that the picture of a tree that she has just presented me with looks nothing like a tree and that she cannot draw. It seems almost intuitive to me that constant negative messages are likely to leave her believing that she is no good and lo and behold she will be no good. Chris tells me that there is some research that shows that the lowest performing children have parents who give them eight times as many negative messages as positive and the highest performers have parents who give them eight times as many positive messages as negative.

If this makes so much difference the children, then why not adults as well? If you work with anyone, and you don’t have to manage them you simply have to work with them, then perhaps you might like to check how often you praise them versus how often you give negative feedback. Yoou DO give feedback don’t you?

And what about yourself? What about that self talk that constantly goes on inside our heads? Is yourself talk supportive or destructive? Do you believe in yourself? Do you believe that you can take things on and do a good job or is everything too difficult? Self belief is all-important. As Henry Ford once said

whether you believe you can
or you believe you cannot
you are probably right

Believe in others, believe in yourself and be sure to give yourself and others great feedback.

Learning to Learn

Geoff Roberts change, flexibility

When I was at school, and it is not all that long ago, the careers advisers could look at our academic and other strengths as well as our preferences and make a pretty good stab at the sort of careers for which I would be most suited – chemist, bank manager, bus driver, dustbin men etc. And indeed for most of my generation that is what happened. I was a keen little amateur chemist, with a chemistry set that would probably get me into trouble with the anti-terrorist squad these days, and I went on to be an analytical chemist before extending my scientific education into sewage science and other aspects of environmental science and regulation. It was only towards the latter part of my career that I started to take a serious interest in organisational change and personal development, the fields in which I operate nowadays.

It would not have crossed my careers adviser’s mind that I might want to be a online games designer or a developer of operating systems for mobile telephones (which did not exist when I was at school) or even an engineer fitting satellite receiving dishes to individual domestic properties to allow them to receive the several hundred television channels available these days. None of these jobs even existed when I was at school. This is the dilemma that so many of today’s schoolchildren face.
It has been suggested that the pace of change in technology and society if such that most of the children starting school today need to be prepared to do jobs that do not even exist and cannot currently be envisaged. So with what skills do we equip those schoolchildren? Yes, they will need to be literate and numerate and the ability to speak Chinese or Spanish or one of the Indian dialects is likely to prove more helpful than speaking French or German. However all of this is just the fundamental basis upon which more specialist knowledge is likely to need to rest. So what specialist knowledge? How can we know if the jobs, and even industries, which will employ today’s schoolchildren have yet to be invented?

Well it seems to me that there are two core skills that will be needed. Firstly the ability to work constructively with others – fields of knowledge are getting ever smaller, we know more and more about less and less, and effective work in the future will require comprehensive collaboration amongst different people with different knowledge bases. Secondly, and arguably the most important attribute of all, if the ability to learn. The HR pundits have been talking for some years now about lifelong learning and the more forward of my colleagues have recognised that they need to keep their skill base topped up. In my lifetime, I have had three fundamentally different careers each of which necessitated learning substantial new knowledge and skills; in the lifetimes of children at school today they might expect a fundamental career change every 10 years or so. I vividly remember introducing a computer-based customer complaints and operations management system which required many of our frontline staff to operate keyboards for the first time in their lives. Today’s generation grow up with keyboards and Xbox controllers almost as appendages to their hands. But what will they need to learn to use so that they can do the job they will be fulfilling in 20 years time?

It has become increasingly clear that the one sustainable Advantage that education can give our children, and we can give ourselves as adults, is the ability to learn quickly and effectively. This does not just happen. We can no longer ‘finish our education’ after university and today’s kids can no longer simply fill their head with facts. I was never explicitly taught how to acquire knowledge or a skill, let’s make sure that today’s pupils are being equipped for the unknown world into which they will be ejected all too soon.

Skiing and a lesson in excellence

Geoff Roberts change

Downhill skierI have spent the last half-hour watching the men’s downhill skiing from Kitzbuhel. Now I used to be a passable skier before I got fat and unfit and have skied several of the mens’ downhill courses around Europe; so I have some idea of how difficult it is and remain awestruck that these guys approach 80 mph, skiing in 2 min something that used to take me 10. The whole experience set me thinking about what it is that makes us experts at something.

Other writers have suggested that in order to become world-class at something we must practice for at least 10,000 hours, what I know is that practice gets me closer to perfection. I also know, as do even world-class skiers, that every now and again I will fall off, make a mistake that might even prove catastrophic for the particular performance in which I am engaged. What I also know from my own experience is that if I am not falling off occasionally then I am not at the edge of my ability and am therefore unlikely to be learning anything. I am reminded of one of the key beliefs of any effective learner “no failure only feedback”.

The effective learner reframes failure as an opportunity to learn something. They look on failure positively, as a demonstration that they still have more to learn. The ineffective learner says to themselves “Well that shows that I cannot do that, I don’t think I’ll try again”.

I guess one of the highlights of my skiing career was one day when I tagged along behind a group of instructors who appeared to be going home. About half a dozen of them were skiing in line down the shortest route home, which was of course one of the most difficult. I can still bring to mind the memory and feelings of almost suddenly being at the bottom of one of the most difficult slopes I have ever been on and wondering how on earth that happened. Well I think it happened because I had belief that the instructors in front of me knew what they were doing, belief in my own ability and commitment to the task in hand (rather than being diverted by “might be”s such as “I might not be able to make this turn”). I recall just skiing. Some would call this being in the zone. However you label it I do know that I simply trusted my body to do what I knew it could do and somehow or other got my brain out of the way. Timothy Gallwey would talk about conquering the Inner Game.

So, here is a challenge for you – next time you face one of those really difficult tasks, one of those that you are not sure whether you can really do it, just throw yourself into it with the belief that you have all the resources you need in order to complete the task superbly. Just let it flow.

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?

Metaprograms – Compete or Collaborate

Geoff Roberts Uncategorized

Brain, metaprogramThis week we’re looking at people’s thinking preferences-those inborn (or perhaps learned – that’s a different blog!) filters that influence how we think about and subsequently act in the world. We know that everyone is different, and an understanding of metaprograms is one way in which we can start to understand what might lie behind those differences. Today we will explore the extremes of collaborative or competitive thinking.

The construction industry is well known for its competitiveness, contractors shaving pennies of prices in order to win business. How difficult was it for them when many of the big clients decided that the most effective route to high quality and low costs was for clients, consultants and contractors to work together, not only within an individual project but across projects that may have different consultants and contractors? The move towards collaborative working in major construction projects over the last 10 to 15 years has been and continues to be seriously constrained by the fundamental competitive mindset of those involved.

Let me be clear, I have no problem with competition or collaboration in the right situation-I cannot see Olympic sprinters collaborating to produce the lowest overall time of all competitors added together although we can and do members of cycling teams collaborating for the benefit of their star rider.

What might your predisposition be? Do you seek opportunities to work with other people inside and outside your organisation? Are you an active networker always on the lookout for opportunities to help each other? Would you rather work with others in a team than on your own? Are you constantly on the lookout for how you can not only achieve your goals but help others achieve theirs as well? If so, then you exhibit collaborative thinking.

Another position in the spectrum might be that you find yourself constantly competing with yourself to do better than before, regardless of what other people are doing. Or maybe you are driven to beat others, perhaps regardless of the cost because after all’ it’s about winning not making friends’. You are likely to look towards getting your own needs met regardless of anyone else.

If you have people with these different ways of thinking working for you, you might easily see how you would need to do different things to motivate them. The collaborator will value opportunities to work in a team for the greater good, the competitor would want challenging personal goals

So, now might be the time to consider your own thinking and how that might be similar to our different from those of your colleagues and the implications of that how you are working together.

Suzanne Wade at Hidden Resources can help you to learn more about metaprograms, she can also offer you an great pyschometric exploring how you ‘rate’ on the ‘Top 15’.

Metaprograms – Conforming or Challenging

Geoff Roberts Uncategorized

Brain, metaprograms

More exploration of metaprograms today to help you understand yourself and others more thoroughly and so be able to manage better. Today we are looking at whether your basic thinking stye is one that Conforms or Challenges.

Conforming thinkers can be flexible and adaptable, they will flex and adapt to match the culture of the organisation or team where they are working; they avoid confrontation and might agree superficially but then fail to implement the agreement.

On the other hand the challenging thinker is likely to be overtly confrontational, constantly pushing the boundaries; they dislike being told what to do and can adopt high risk approaches to achieving their objectives. They can exhibit an intriguing habit of saying ‘no’ in the first instance to any suggestion (because of their initial inclination to challenge) before changing their mind and saying ‘yes’ on reflection. They can be perceived as argumentative and can be difficult to manage, however this is the sort of thinking that is fundamental to achieving change. The, former is happy with the status quo, the challenger is forever looking for something different.

If you want to learn more about metaprograms, perhpas by completing a pyschometric exploring how you ‘rate’ on the ‘Top 15’ then contact Suzanne Wade at Hidden Resources.