Reinventing Life At the Threshold of a New Year

Each of us, from time to time, have private conversations with ourselves. Some of these conversations touch us to our core, as if we had connected with some fundamental, even sacred truth about ourselves – about the meaning and direction of our lives. Mostly these insights are fleeting and are too easily displaced by day-to-day routines and concerns.

Periodically, usually because of some life changing circumstance, the conversations are nagging, urgent, and disturbing. Disturbing, mostly because the questions that are surfaced at these times seem to be unanswerable: where is my life going? What do I do next that will give me a sense of meaning and some joy? What's the point of my life? What do I want? What will make me happy and give me a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment? How am I supposed to express my leadership and have people follow me when I am unclear where I am going and what I am up to?

These are not easy questions with ready answers. Google, Wikipedia and all our usual sources of ready responses to questions are not going to help with these questions. Because the answers to these fundamental meaning and purpose questions are so illusive we often abandon them – leave them unaddressed – and just get on with what's in front of us each day. But the questions inevitably return – and the start of a new year is just one of those times when we re-look at meaning, mission and direction – as we wrestle with answering the perennial year end question, "what am I committed to for 2012, what am I going to accomplish?".

Brain science tells us that we know things – unconsciously know, intuitively know, see sense and feel know – before our rational minds knows that we know. We have all had experiences that validate what science is now beginning to explain for us. So, informed by no more than that, how do we access our unconscious knowing about these important questions?

For a start run some experiments. But first, put the rational mind, that internal editor, that judger and evaluator that always want to chip in with a critique – put it on hold. We don't want to get any input or feedback from that source for some time!

First experiment: get yourself a God Jar a really beautiful and inspiring one like this one. Take a leaf out out Julia Cameron's book, The Vein of Gold and write brief notes – one note for each thought – about: what you want, what you love, what you want to do with your life, the difference you want to make, what you are passionate about, who you want in your life ... Cover every aspect of your life – and no editing.

Write the notes as if you were sending prayers aloft. And notice the themes that particularly excite you or capture your imagination.

Don't worry yet about action plans, or goals and objectives – they will be cold water for the spirit of imagination and creativity.

In parallel, the second experiment is also designed to capture the subconscious sacred yearnings and bring them to consciousness. This one, in parallel with the God Jar, uses a Moleskine notebook like this one.

In this iteration of surfacing the subconscious yearnings we write them in the notebook – writing from front to back – just short phrases or a word to two to capture what it is. Again, no editing. Just to be sure the internal editor is off duty add something you know is a bit – out there.

To keep the part of our mind that wants to look at issues and obstacles occupied and satisfied, capture these thoughts too – this time writing in the book from back to front. 

Again, just short phrases or a word or two to capture what it is. Again, no editing.

From time to time look at what you have put in the God Jar and what you have written in the Moleskine notebook and discard those items that you clearly do not intend to do anything about, or are clearly pipe-dreams. For me, replace my car with a Bentley Flying Spur Speed is one in my pipe-dream category – not the wildest one, but one.  

Paradoxically, without doing any action planning or goal setting, you will begin to notice that actions are being changed, new interests are being engaged with, historical complaints do get resolved or just disappear. 

Just the regular practice of connecting with our sacred yearnings and putting notes about them in the God Jar and writing notes in the Moleskine notebook, makes it possible for us to access our subconscious knowing about what we are passionate about and the mission of our lives.

Another Year Winds Down. We're Older! And Wiser?

Wouldn’t it be great if we actually did get wiser as we got older? However, I don’t experience that learning, or new insights or wisdom even, is an automatic function of life being lived and time passing. As far as I can tell from my own experience, learning and new insights need to be sifted out of day-to-day experiences much as early gold prospectors sifted grit and dirt for the bits of gold they craved.

I have often reflected about how extraordinary our lives, our organizations and our society would be if we had, as a natural human way of being, a craving to learn, to grow, to be a better version of ourselves, our organizations and our society as each year passes.

Yet some people seem to do just that – they grow in stature, in competencies and in wisdom as each year passes. I know people, not headliners mostly, just ordinary people who are clearly sifting life for its gold.  I meet them mostly through my work as an executive coach and consultant. I get to see them first as business people, people focused on making the part of the organization they are accountable for be more closely aligned with their vision and intentions.  But I also get to know them through the larger dimensions of their lives – as musicians, athletes, parents, hobbyists of all stripes, and members of their communities. In each aspect of their lives what I see are committed people striving – striving to make today a better version of all their yesterdays.

What do we know from observing these lifelong learners? What are they doing that works? Who are the being that works? Here are a few places to start the inquiry:

1. Reflection works – stopping every now and then to pause and take stock – where we are going, what are we up to, what are we striving for, what are we trying to make happen, who are we striving to be... That works! Lifelong learners are up to something much bigger than themselves and the pursuit of that something gives them who they need to be, and what they need to be acting on, and what they need to be producing
2. Observation works – being conscious about what is happening. It is so easy to operate out of habit, to be on automatic pilot. In that mode a lot goes by and we don't see it, for example.  
3. Lifelong learners are awake, aware, conscious and observant. That does that mean they don't have blind spots and miss things like the rest of us. The difference is they know they do and are constantly on the look out to discover what their blind spots are, and what they are not seeing. They use buddies, trusted friends, coaches, mentors, anyone who can help them be more awake and aware
4. Being non-judgmental works – stuff happens! However, labeling it good/bad, right/wrong, should be/shouldn't be and so on, or being upset with what happens doesn't work as a learning step. Invalidating ourselves does not work either. Further, it shifts our whole being from the excitement of creativity and self expression in the pursuit of the gold, even when stuff happens 
5. Discernment works – being able to sort out the gold from the grit really works. Scientist run experiments. In the process they have lots of failed experiments. The point of experimenting in the first place is to discover what works. By discerning what works we can now consciously and deliberately replicate it, we can show others what works – we have expanded our conscious competence [a nod to Maslow's stages of learning]. With hindsight we will also discover what did not work, what was missing that had it been in place we would have has a different outcome, or what was present and in the way we need to remove so as to have the outcomes we want 
6. Practices work – establishing practices makes becoming wiser as time passes much easier – for example, doing a regular after action review as part of a discipline to learn from experience.

It often puzzles me when I see great ideas, practices, and behaviors, working beautifully in one part of an organization and they are being ignored by another part of an organization. How come? Or when I see people afraid to try anything new in one part of an organization and in another part people are experimenting and innovating like crazy. How come?

The principle reason I speculate is that life long learners have developed a very empowering relationship with questioning, with not-knowing, with ignorance, with experimenting and failing – they are excited by exploring, experimenting and the discoveries they stumble on along the way. 

RFK distinguished those who settle for the status quo from those who are constantly in pursuit of new insights and wisdom this way, "There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?"

I Am Not a Fan of the Language of Goals and Goal Setting

I am not a fan of using the language of "goals" and "goal Setting", mostly because of the experience most people have of the baggage that comes with them – success/failure, good/bad, reward/punishment (even if neither are explicitly in the mix, implicitly they are for most people). If people have, even the slightest fear of the negative consequences that come from failing to meet their goals, they will under-promise, or worse, not promise outcomes at all – not what is wanted and needed in most organization in our fragile economy.

So I have a different approach: 

• Get people in action first – get them to make dents, make an impact –  have them use their best intelligence to make something useful happen
• If they are in action already, then up the anti, do more stuff, more quickly - more dents, make a bigger impact, make more useful stuff happen
• Eliminate good bad or right/wrong or should/shouldn't, good/bad, ... from your lexicon – they kill spontaneity, creativity and initiative 
• If people have the concern they will be judged and evaluated based on whether they meet goals or not, are doing the right thing or not, they will subconsciously operate out of CYA and underperform.

And don't worry that the seemingly unfocused – just be in action and make something happen – instruction will lead to chaos, it won't. There is enough intelligence in the organization and in individual contributors for them to know what will and won't work, what will contribute and what won't – if we trust people to unleash their genius at work, they will.

To raise everyone's game and start focusing activities so that they have an intention to produce specific outcomes in time – outcomes someone wants, here are some recommendations:

1. Start with getting people to list the activities/actions they intend to engage in for the week, or even for a day – just what are you going to be doing - a big to do list. Best done before the week starts, say Sunday evening, or the evening before if it is being done daily [Column 1 of document attached]
2. Then the next step is to have people say what result/outcome they are intent on producing as a result of their doing/activities, item by item – each outcome to be specific and measurable [Column 2]
3. Then say by when they want to have that outcome produced – a specific date/time [Column 3]
4. Finally, say who the outcome is for, who is expecting it, waiting for it, and do they expect it by a particular time/date? – name a specific person and specific time if there is one [Column 4].

Then follow up: this part is designed to support people discover what has them deliver on their intended outcomes, and how come them fail to deliver. The context for the follow up is curiosity and learning – the intent is to discover, with the benefit of hindsight, what worked, what did not work and what was missing from most recent actions, to make subsequent actions more effective in producing desired outcomes. The follow up steps are:

1. When the activity is complete, check – did it produce the desired outcome: Yes or No? Encourage people to answer that for themselves – with no reasons, explanations, justifications, ... The coaching is, it is not good if the answer is Yes and bad if it is No – it is just what's so
2. If Yes, did the outcome get produced in the timeframe you said… Yes or No? Again, encourage people to answer that for themselves. Again with the coaching it is not good if the answer is Yes and bad if it is No – it is just what's so
3. Was the person who was expecting the outcome (#4) satisfied – did you meet expectations (M), exceed expectations (E) or fail (F) to meet expectations?
4. When the activity is complete, or time has run out, do an after action review so they can learn how to improve performance for subsequent iterations
5. I recommend that after action reviews be conducted often; after a meeting, a day of work, at the end of a project... this is a very effective practice to continually improve performance.

I find it useful too to encourage people to start noticing – again without judgement of evaluation – where they notice they are acting inconsistently with their intentions or commitments. In the beginning just notice, without trying to fix or correct anything, and notice too the reasons and explanations they give themselves. I wont say more about this for now.

In a collaborative and supporting relationship a manager, or colleague, can encourage people in their network of dependencies to experiment with taking on more audacious outcomes, or outcomes with shorter execution times. In a context where failure is not something to be avoided, but rather a learning opportunity, it is a low risk game and one with very high rewards in enhanced capability to reliably deliver on ones intentions.

Tom Watson Sr of IBM, used to say, "if you want to double your results, double your failure rate". I concur, what's more, I agree with him.