Gaze inside the island of your mind ...learning points are waiting there!

The world is alive with the smell of a freshly minted year and the cackle of a million people sharing resolutions and promising to do all the things they failed at last year! But what is gong to be so different for us this year? What are we really going  change?

Instead of looking forwards it can pay handsomely to look back and reflect on what got in the way of our success last year, or what we did to make things happen for us. Change is based on learning from the past and the application of good decisions …and so we can all pause the headlong rush into 2012 and ask ourselves:

•  What 3 things did I really learn from last year?

Once we have some new learning to inform our thinking, then, and only then, can we plan for the current year and decide what to drop, what to change and what to start. And if all we do is tweak a bit here and nudge a bit there, then nothing is really going to change, is it?

So, welcome to last year! What did you learn? How can you apply it for a better 2012?

For me, I learned that to get a radio show I needed to swallow my competitiveness and invite a co-host in the space. And boy, was that ever a smart move …Julie Bishop is just the best person to work with and I’m so glad we found each other.

Tags: 2012, thinking

Where do you keep your brain at work?

Last week there was a great reaction to ‘Unconditional Strokes’, which are essential to happy working lives (and happy home lives). So, this week I was going to write about Conditional Strokes, which are for doing or thinking, and then I thought: most people at work get recognised for what they do, but how many get praised for thinking?

None, is usually the answer to that question. And yet people are often hired for performing well in tests that measure how well they can think. Amazing isn’t it that we specifically test for cognitive ability during recruitment and then ignore it during daily life. Hands up if you get scored for thinking skills on your annual appraisal?

In many organisations the managers ‘think’ and the juniors ‘do’ and then when business suffers in the recession and juniors are asked to work smarter… they’re not able to respond.

So if it’s Not-Ok to think in your organisation then you’ll probably suffer more as the recession bites harder.

If you want your business to do well and you want employees to be happy then forget complex models and keep it simple.

Just give people positive encouragement and constructive feedback for all the ideas they have (even if you don’t like them, or they need refining). An organisation needs all its brains to survive and Conditional Strokes for thinking are the lifeblood of success.

Thinking is essential.

What does your boss think?

Tags: thinking

Crow says: 'Hello - I'm a bird!'

Hello, I’m Crow and sometimes I turn up at Richard’s workshops, which is fun for me and gets some interesting reactions from people. I like to help humans develop their presentation skills, or challenge some of their thinking styles and if I squawk, well that’s just me being friendly, as I’m a happy sort of bird. Richard is taking a break for three weeks and has asked me to stand in and say something interesting. He claims that he’s in the garden ‘thinking great thoughts’, but personally I think he’s just asleep. Oh well, anyway, here goes my blog…

As a clever bird I like to think that I can do thinking and there’s three thinking styles I’ve learned to think about:

1) Canyon Thinking. This happens when another crow (not me obviously) thinks about every little aspect of a problem and spends so much time on the details they lose sight of the problem! You could say that, like a narrow canyon, their thinking is one inch wide and one mile deep! Ha ha! (What’s an inch by the way? Crows never got the hand of basic measurement systems).

2) Coyote Thinking. Some crows rush about doing the first thing that comes into their heads, without thinking through the consequences. A bit like Wile E. Coyote. Honestly, if you want something doing properly, get a crow to sort it, but not one of those silly impetuous ones.

3) Broad Thinking. Ah, I’m good at this. This is when I take time to think through and round and over a problem. Sometimes I sketch out the issues with my beak, talk to other crows and generally eye up the problem from all sides. Richard says he does this too, but you know, I’m not always convinced he does. But then he is human! Not everyone is as good as crows!

How was that? Hope you liked it. More Crow stuff next week. I might do a bit about ‘why pigeons are so stupid’. I could go on for hours….but do you know how hard it is to type with a beak?

Tags: Crow, thinking

A Model T "Yes I can do 150mph" Henry

“Whether you think you can or you can’t; you’re right.”

So said Henry Ford, who in between building his River Rouge plant and selling the iconic Model T Henry, found time to trot out useful one liners, that have been preserved for posterity. No prizes though for guessing whether he thought if he could or could not.

This is one of my favourite quotes because it reminds me that to be successful we need to listen to what we’re saying in our head, as it’s likely to be self-limiting. However, as an additional dimension to this I’ve realised that sometimes saying ‘I can’t do this’ is as useful and as necessary as saying ‘I can.’

What Can’t You Do?

In the headlong rush to get on with our lives it’s easy to write off a ‘can’t do’ as a negative and a limitation, but my recent writing experience has made me realise that in fact we need to balance the cans with the can’ts in order to be successful and to stay healthy. For example, I can write fast when I need to, but I can’t write and drive at the same time, so completing the additional chapters needed to finish my book has meant making sensible decisions about what was a practical use of my working day (and evening and late night). Henry Ford’s quote forced me to think about what I could do and what the consequences would be, which meant taking an axe to my diary, chopping a swathe through my appointments and rescheduling clients until later on in February. I could write my book, but only if I created the space for myself to do so and although this meant making some tough choices, at least I was making them proactively and getting control over the situation. It also meant not blogging for a bit, but I’m back now!

I thought that ‘I can finish my manuscript’ and also that ‘I can’t do that and meet all my other commitments at the same time’. And I was right, so thank you Henry for making me think about both sides of the equation in a positive and proactive way.

It’s an interesting point to consider folks:

What can’t you do, in order to free up the space for something that you can do?

Do let me know how you get on balancing things out to keep motivated and healthy.

Tags: quote, thinking, tip

Nativity creativity

Here’s fun: A witty talk by Sir Ken Robinson about creativity and education. If you would like to listen to it please click here.

Thank you to Mel Armstrong at Cardinal Talent for sending it through to me in the first place. It did remind me that we often strive for creativity at work; in order to solve problems, design new products and run useful marketing campaigns, for example, yet society tends to really value qualifications in ‘proper’ subjects, like maths and physics. Sometimes, society can be very silly.

In my experience of work people have actively discouraged both thinking and creativity. Two comments, from my own past, will suffice for evidence:

“You’re not thinking again are you Maun? Stop that and get on with some work!”

“Richard, you have too many ideas; go and get on with something productive.”

People who say these kind of things are not great leaders and I’m glad not to be working with them any more. This brings me to my point. The next time someone has an idea at work, any idea, find a way to say thank you, even if you don’t like the idea itself, because their next idea could be the one that really makes a difference. Creativity is the future. Celebrate it and foster it.

I’m off to be creative with some Lego now. What could you do?

Tags: creativity, thinking, tip