April 2010 – Debby Hallett

Fail to Plan = Plan to Fail

If you fail to plan then you plan to fail.

My friend Alex mentors a group of people starting up their own businesses. This week he told them, “You either Plan or you Gamble”.

This is an important message. I meet people all the time who have Big Dreams, and no plan, so nothing ever happens.

What is it that you’ve talked about doing? You’ve talked about it a lot, maybe even for years. (I’m sure your friends and family still listen raptly to you when you do. Yes indeed.)

For me, it’s been writing. For awhile I knew I could write a bestselling novel. I started one or two of them. Then I told everyone about how I was going to write important non-fiction books that took incomprehensible material and ‘translated’ it into language that everyone could understand. It would change people’s lives; I was committed to a life of service. I took writing courses, read writing books, joined groups where we supported each other to write better, even became a lifetime member of an online writing university. Years of talking about it and making halfhearted attempts. In recent years (maybe 3) I’ve been talking about blogging. I bought every book, tried it 2 or three times and each time it lapsed.

NO plan = NO success.

Someone challenged me to fish or cut bait; he said that I needed to either DO it, or shut up about it.

So, here I am blogging 5 days of of the week, working from a plan, and DOING it! I feel good about it, AND optimistic that the next thing I decide I want, I can have.

All I need is a plan. (And then of course, to follow the plan.)

Let me know how your plans are going….

Oxford Integral Circle – election fever

Last night the Oxford Integral Circle met up, and the topic for the night was the UK national election.

What factors influence your decision on how to vote?
How does Integral play a part in it?

A fascinating, and lively (!) discussion ensued, and the evening’s facilitator, Alex Goodall is going to write up our results for publication. But I wanted to write about my own personal insight.

Mostly frustrated by campaign rhetoric, I have tried to look deeper and beyond, in order to see if I can find out what they really stand for. But it’s hard. Candidates govern themselves strictly, and I doubt we get the chance to hear what they really think, or to explore how they arrive at their stances and policies.

I notice that I try to look for some clue as to their development level. Are they Tier 1 thinkers, or Tier 2? Of course, all I have to judge by is what they say and how they say it.

During the second debate, an audience member asked the candidates how they were going to tackle crime in the communities. The question reminded me of one of the sentence stems in Harthill’s Leadership Development Framework (LDF – a sentence completion test that is a pointer to your complexity of meaning making, or action logic). One of the LDF stems is: Crime and delinquency could be halted if… I thought that was pretty similar to what was being asked of the candidates.

I remember my surprise when David Cameron said something to the effect of, ‘We’ll make sure they know they’ll be punished, and fast, that they know they’ll go to prison.’ Something like that. That sort of answer is a rather low-rated response on the LDF. Then Nick Clegg said something to the effect that ‘we want families and communitites to work together, to improve the social systems to deal with the causes.’ Something like that. He spoke about how while young people are imprisoned, sometimes for quite minor offenses, they learn more ways to re-offend once they’re out. He thought the system was set up to teach delinquents how to be lifelong criminals. (I’m paraphrasing.) That’s a quite late stage action logic was of looking at what’s a pretty complex problem. I don’t remember what Gordon Brown said.

But here’s MY problem. How can I tell if what they say accurately reflects their level of development? Or, is the level of their message geared toward the level they think their constituents will want to hear or that they can understand? I don’t know how to tell. I’m going to watch the third debate tonight through this lens.

I wonder how it would work if I wrote a letter to my local MP (who answers letters) asking him a question in a way that’s intended to reveal his level of development? Or, convince government that senior members must take the LDF and have their results published. Hah!

Mind Map your ideas until “aha!”

I have more ideas than I can follow, and sometimes I get jumbled up and everything slows to a crawl until I can get my ideas sorted out.

Mind mapping is amazing! Either with software such as Mind Manager or Free Mind, or just on a big piece of paper with a pencil and eraser, you can plot out your ideas, draw and re-draw connections until you reach that magical point of “Aha!” when things fall into place and you have a new insight.

I like the electronic versions because they are so easy to re-arrange. Just drag and drop and your ideas are clustered in new ways.

The next big thing for me to get my head around is the plethora of ideas and topics for this blog. I’ve been posting for three weeks now, and the shotgun approach is starting to get to me. (And if you’ve been reading my posts, it may very well be starting to get to you, too). Since this coming weekend is a bank holiday, I’m going to devote some of my free time to mind mapping my blog topics. I think that it will help me to focus on main topics, and also to spend a few days on one bigger topic, blogging on interesting related things. That will make my days more stress free. And I bet I’ll get more done too.

Consistency is underrated

I’m beginning to think that the main way to success is consistency — consistently taking another step forward, today, into the future you want.

Think about people who you know who don’t follow through with what they say they will do. Some would say, ‘You can’t trust them.’ But it’s not that, exactly. It’s that you can trust them to behave consistently. If they consistently fail to keep their word, then that’s what you can rely on.

Hey. So take a look at where you are consistent. Is it the message you really want to deliver?

Rocks, gravel, sand

Think of all the things you have to do in a day, and metaphorically divide them into rocks, gravel and sand.

Rocks: the most important things, where the outcome matters to you. They might be big things, or not-so-big, but they are important and you want to be sure they are done today. There probably are only a few rocks in any given day.

Gravel: less important things, but they still matter to you. They probably require some time to get done. These need to be done, although not necessarily today. If you take care of some of the gravel bits each day, it doesn’t pile up so as to become an insurmountable mountain.

Sand: either not that important, or don’t take more than a few minutes. Possibly not important at all. There may an almost limitless amount of sand. The grains of sand are low priority; they may be fun, or interesting, or shiny and new.

Imagine that your day is a good-sized glass jar. There’s room for a lot of rocks, gravel and sand in it. But, since you can’t fit it all in, it matters the order in which you put them in.

Your unproductive day: first sand, then gravel, finally rocks. You can’t easily judge how much sand you can get away with before you fill the jar too full to hold much gravel or any rocks at all.

A pretty normal day: some gravel, some sand, some more gravel, and then if there’s any room left, maybe one rock.

Your effective day: The biggest rock, then possibly other rocks, then a scoopful of gravel to fill in some nooks and crannies, and finally, pour in some sand to fill in all the smallest spaces.

In your effective day, you got the most important things done, quite a few of the next most important things, and still had some time left over for fun and games.

If you regularly have important things that you don’t get done, try a different approach.

Rocks, gravel, sand.

You Can’t Have What You’re Not Willing to Not Have

I used to say that a lot: “You can’t have what you’re not willing to not have.”

I was going to blog about it, and I wanted to look up the original source, but I couldn’t remember where I’d read it. It was, like, more than 30 years ago. So I googled it. On the whole internet, there was only one place where that existed, so I went there to see it. Someone had included in their blog, as a quote, by “my mom”. How cool is that? I thought. One other mother in the world thinks like I do, I thought.

Two days later I was chatting with my lovely daughter, and I told her about it. “That’s me,” she said. “That’s my blog.”

And it was indeed her, on a just-barely-started blog where I couldn’t see that it was her. So it turns out that I am the cool mom who said that in such a way that her daughter quoted her cool mom.

You can see it on RazberryDesgin.Tumblr.com

How cool is that?

Another day I’ll tell you all about what it means. You can’t have what you’re not willing to not have. Think about it.

My interview with Myles Downey

I first came across Myles Downey while I was in coach training, and someone recommended his book, Effective Coaching, Lessons from the Coach’s Coach, as one of the best they had read.

Myles often refers to a coachee as a “player”, as in “you are the player in your game of life”. This reflects his roots in Tim Gallwey’s Inner Game, where the job of the coach is to essentially create the conditions under which the player can be in the best possible state for learning. I thought “Player” was the best label I’d seen. As I was nearing the end of the book, I was thinking, “This is the closest thing to an integral approach to coaching that I’ve seen – he uses the inner workings of someone to increase awareness of the external actions, all within the context of the situation or organisation”. I turned the page and saw “The Four Quadrants”. I jumped out of my chair, did one of those tennis-player-type fist pumps, and had to settle back down to see what he said about Ken Wilber.

There are two big themes in this book that I want to bring together here in order to provide a lens through which you might view an organisation. The first of these themes is the idea of Inner and Outer, and the second is the notion of the Individual and the Organisation.

I Googled Myles Downey, and found a news item about his London School of Coaching being bought by JMJ Associates, a US company. Curious about that, I looked for JMJ Associates, and found that they are also a company doing organisational work based on Wilber’s Four Quadrants. I contacted their Director of Global Development, Rick Strycker, who, it turned out, was an original member of the Integral Institute. I arranged to speak with him, and that’s how I learned about how JMJ Associates and the School of Coaching were joining their efforts.

At that point I asked for and received an introduction to Myles Downey and asked him if we could do an interview for the Integral Leadership Review (where I am the UK bureau chief). Curiously, he told me he didn’t actually think of himself as “Integral”. But I’m keenly interested in the practical applications of the theories (and not so much the debate of the theories themselves, these days), and this was perfect.

So I’ve had a wonderful conversation with Myles Downey, originally of Dublin, recently of London, and now of the world — an Integral practitioner and one of the leading coaches in the world, who does his work through the framework of the Four Quadrants.

This interview will be published in Integral Leadership Review’s June 2010 issue. Subscribe to ILR via that link: it’s free.

A Lesson in Willingness 1

I wonder if this principle is really, really true. Or if I only notice it when evidence in the real world supports the principle, and just don’t notice when it doesn’t.

Lots of things happen to us that we don’t plan, intend or want. I’ve adopted a stance that helps me cope with these things.

It’s this: if I really, in my heart of hearts, am completely willing for something to happen, then it usually doesn’t. If I do all the work inside myself to get to a point where I decide I can deal with this if it happens, then I won’t have to deal with it, because it won’t happen. I call this ‘My lesson in willingness.’

It doesn’t work if I try to trick myself in saying, ‘Yes, I’m willing for that to happen,’ hoping then that I fool providence (or whatever) into not making me endure it (whatever ‘it’ is). Seriously. You have to be genuinely, completely, authentically willing for it to happen.

Here’s my most recent example:

Last month I applied for a job I really wanted. I sent off my carefully crafted CV to the recruiter, who rang me the next morning to assure himself that I really was as good as I looked on paper, and he said he’d put me forward for this position. Then, silence. I heard nothing, nada, not a peep, for weeks. I assumed my CV had fallen into a black hole, as you do. But then other opportunities opened up for me. I found someone with whom I could collaborate on an exciting project. My husband got a pay rise. More consulting work came in, a few more coaching clients. I decided I really didn’t want to get a job, to be an employee. I recommitted with gusto and enthusiasm to my plans for self-employment.

Then, guess what happened?

That’s right. I had a phone call. Some problem or other had interrupted their recruitment process, they were sorry. Was I still available and was I still interested?

Hmmmm.

My lesson in willingness. I was SO willing not to have this job, that now when the door is open again and it looks like I might have it if I want it, I don’t actually want it after all.

Isn’t that interesting? It’s a little along the lines of ‘what you resist, persists’, but like the opposite. I find it totally convincing.

What do you think?

Four Territories of Experience

There are four areas where you can place your attention when you think about your experience. They differ slightly depending on whether your experience is only with yourself, or with one other, or as part of a larger group (and we’ll look more closely at those differences in another post). But in general, they cover four perspectives or arenas of experience.

First Territory: Outside events. Results, outcomes, assessments, observed consequences, environmental effects, market performance. In business, or in life, these are the external, measurable, observable, results we get.

Second Territory: One’s performance. Behaviors, skills, patterns of activity, actions. In business, and in life, these are the activities we perform, the things we do.

Third Territory: Strategies, or action-logics. Strategies, game plans, ploys. In business and life, this is the larger plan about how we plan to achieve a vision, how the overall intention is to be realized.

Fourth Territory: Intentional attention. The vision, the intention, what it is you are trying to create. In business, the long term vision and mission of the organization. In life, your purpose in living, what you want to create in life.

Awareness of each of these territories is the first skill to master in Action Inquiry, an approach to learning from your experience by comparing your results to what you intended.

By learning to identify which territory of experience has the focus of attention, you’re well on your way to being more effective, through Action Inquiry.

No judgement

When you see someone or something you disapprove of, is your opinion written all over your face? Do you mutter to yourself ‘Humph! Well, I never!’, maybe loud enough for others to hear? Whatever your response, you can transform the situation from a stressful, upsetting incident to an opportunity to learn something about yourself.

Judging others lets us feel superior; we think we know better, and they should take our advice. We might think we’re being helpful when we give ‘constructive criticism’, but it’s often just being hurtful and judgmental.

This is the paradox: when you point your finger at someone else, there are three fingers pointing back at you. Psychologists tell us that what we judge in others are often the things we don’t like in ourselves, but don’t want to think about or even acknowledge. Life provides these helpful reflections every day, often in obvious ways. Judging others raises your level of stress by winding you up and leaving issues unresolved.

Think about the last time you felt really annoyed, hurt or angry about how someone was behaving. See if you can identify exactly what it was that got such a rise out of you. Now, pretend that’s a mirror held up for your benefit. How are you like that? For example, I hurry my trolley past the frustratingly slow old dear with her Zimmer frame and get to the checkout first, to be met by a shop assistant with a cold who sneezes all over my veg. ‘Well!’ I sniff. ‘How inconsiderate!’

This idea that we fail to recognise in ourselves what we judge in others isn’t new. The New Testament asks, ‘Why do you notice the speck in your brother’s eye, but fail to notice the log in your own eye?’ You see something over there, judge it, and fail to notice that the same quality is in you.

Think about an instance in your life where you think someone is wrong. Maybe a family member? Is there someone you clash with regularly? What do you say about them? ‘That Claire, she just doesn’t care about anyone but herself!’ It might be that the universe is offering you a lesson, if you are open to taking it on board. Look to see where you appear to be (or actually are) uncaring, and thinking only about yourself. If you open your heart and really take a good look, you’ll find some part of you that feels unloved, unacceptable (to you), and shameful (to you). It can be hard to look directly at yourself, so you see this quality in others instead. And you’ll find it everywhere.

Here’s a challenge, if you’re willing. Finish this sentence: I just can’t stand people who… Now, ask yourself, ‘How am I like that?’

You may find your stress level reduced when you tackle what you can change (yourself) instead of what you can’t change (everyone and everything else).