2Weeks2aBreakthrough

Focusing on the Positive

Here are two posts with a similar and interesting thread - the power of the positive.

In this post Curt on the Worthwhile Mag. Blog writes about the Happiness Project, a blog and soon to be book about a woman who is taking a year to try many, many ways to improve happiness.

I think that is one of the things that is missing from so many self-help books. Reality doesn't stop because you've finished the book. It keeps going tomorrow, and next month, and next year. Reality is a long-term commitment.

In this post, Steve Pavlina, addresses how to help negative people and warns against getting sucked being negative by their victim conversation tractor beams.

One of the most important considerations when helping someone in a negative state is that you must avoid falling into negativity yourself.  Negative people are energy vampires.  They have an almost endless capacity to dwell on what they don’t want, whining and complaining about their lives while denying responsibility for their results.  Their fear blocks the natural flow of energy from within, so they must get it from other people instead.

I was facilitating a short session on how to generate breakthroughs and the topic of self-talk came up. It is important that we are not focusing on what we DON'T want, because then we just get more of that.

Good: Let's go for a fun hike this morning, this will help me feel great all day.
Bad: I have not exercised in three day - uugh!

Good: I am going do one small thing today - right now.
Bad: I feel like my goals are on hold.

What's your self-talk saying to you? Are you focusing on what you want and what you can and will do today in support of your goal? Or are you focusing on what you don't want?

I recently got another motorcycle and started riding again after two years off two wheels. There was a bit of a retraining that needed to occur. I had to remember how to ride. Several years ago I took a riding course to learn to ride correctly and I could hear the instructor's voice reminding me of the most important principles (like that you push the handle bar to steer, not pull).

Another important principle is to make sure you look in the direction you want to go and you DO NOT look in a direction you don't want to go. For example, let's say you are riding along and you come upon  curly Q onramp. No problem on dry days, but on wet days, it can be a bit gnarly, especially if the road has slippery metal joiners. Here's the point: It is natural to look at the outside section of the road to ensure that you don't migrate over there. You want to clear the curly Q and stay in the good part of the road. As hard as it is sometimes, I have to focus on the path that I want my wheels to take, not where I want to avoid.

Our body (and therefore bike, it's an extension of the body) goes where our eyes focus. Our actions follow what our mind it thinking about.

Questions for Creativity and Growth

Dick Richards (Come Gather Round blog) has a regular feature where he offers provocative and/or evocative questions (provo-evo). Here is a link to the posts he has done in this category so far. Good stuff. Here's one of his great questions:

We are all well aware that we do our work, but often less aware that our work does us. Which raises the question,

What kind of me is my work creating?

Invite a Challenge

Under the heading of Invite a Challenge, I like this post from Rob at Business pundit called, Don't Fear the Devil's Advocate. Here's a snippet:

Employing a "devil's advocate" is one way to fight the Abilene Paradox. If you're lucky enough, one is already on your team. If not, you may have to designate one. Whether or not you employ their talents, or coach them through the process of making a counterargument is totally up to you as a leader.

I am a big fan of welcoming naysayers and devil's advocates into the conversation. Not only is it a great way to unearth diverse ideas, it helps enroll people into the process and be a productive part of the team. Naysayers make great evangelists!

Here's a wee bit from Focus Like a Laser Beam, chapter 6, Invite a Challenge:

Inviting a challenge can save your leadership hide. If you establish an environment where people feel comfortable sharing their concerns and questioning actions and decisions, you are more likely to catch mistakes and head off problems before something truly bad happens. If you come across as defensive in meetings or demonstrate that you do not want to be made look wrong, you will not benefit from helpful information that others could share. Your peers, managers, and team members are in a position to see problems as they emerge. You want to know what’s happening as soon as possible; otherwise your options for dealing with issues will quickly diminish.

Inviting a challenge can be a wonderful and enjoyable experience when leaders keep their egos from getting in the way. It is human to feel embarrassed when someone finds and communicates a mistake or potential misstep. You may feel inadequate or attacked when challenged in front of a group during a meeting. If it is important for you to appear in control or look good in front of others, you might find that inviting a challenge is the greatest challenge of all. Regardless of how easy or difficult you find it to invite challenges, you cannot obtain laser focus if you are not engaged in tuned dialogue about important work priorities. If your information is filtered or incomplete, you cannot possibly make the best judgments and your results will suffer. To combat this, redefine success as in a way that makes those around you comfortable with and committed to sharing their feedback, concerns, and ideas.  When you invite a challenge, you have greater control of your business and your results make you look good.

Key Point: You want to know what’s not going well and when things are working.

Bring it on! Take on this mantra for a month and see how this impacts your focus and results.

I like the notion (mentioned in Robs post) about designating a devil's advocate if there is not one on the team. Doing so will spice up the conversation and improve the outcome.

Speaking of the devil's advocate and spice, ever see the movie Devil's Advocate? Al Pacino is amazing and the film is very provocative.

To brainstorm or not, that is the question.

Innovation Science offers this interesting post looking at the upsides and downsides of brainstorming meetings. Here's a good quote:

The main point that should be taken away from both the WSJ column and Jeffrey’s post is that brainstorming requires both extensive preparation and followup. Over my career, I’ve been to many brainstorming sessions where just beforehand people stop whatever work they were doing, go to a conference room for an hour or two, and then go back to whatever their daily job is afterwards. They show up without any preparation, and the final outcome of the session is a list of ideas created during that 1–2 hour session, and that’s it. Not only is there a good chance that they are not in a creative frame of mind, but they are not likely mentally prepared to discuss ideas. The result of these meetings is often a list of ideas that are no more insightful than what a group of people might come up with over a lunchtime discussion—certainly not the outcome upper management is looking for from such situations.

I agree. We need to prepare people for conversations and then followup is essential. Otherwise the time has not been worthwhile.

Along with preparation and followup, dialogue quality is a greatest determining factor of brainstorming meeting success. If you can't get a good conversation going, don't bother. I think I have shared these before, but here are the elements of great dialogue. Some of these might be more or less important when trying to facilitate creativity.

Relevance: The topic of discussion is one that people care about and that makes a difference to their lives.

Inquiry: Questions are being asked that move the topic forward. Questions are both provocative and evocative.

Freedom: Participants feel free to openly share their ideas and thoughts, even those on the fringe.

Connectedness: There is a sense of shared purpose or interest. The participants feel connected to one another.

Reception: Participants listen well, interpret the information, provide feedback, and reinforce contribution.

Empowerment: People feel as though they can have some impact on the topic being discussed. This would ideally mean they can move the problem or opportunity forward, but could also mean they can move the intellectual debate further.

Play: The conversation is fun and full of energy. The dialogue has an energy to it that flows and can be playful.

Idea for Giving Back - Facilitating Breakthroughs

Giving back enriches others at the same time it helps us. When we donate our time or money, our hearts and minds, we feel great and get a huge benefit.

I thought of a cool donation idea and want to share it.

Over on Management Craft, I wrote about Marcus Buckingham's new DVD series about using your strengths called Trombone Player Wanted. The $99 DVD series (you get 6 DVDs for the $99) is very inspiring and totally worth the money.

Why not get the DVD series and donate it to your favorite local organization? What a wonderful and provocative gift! Think Junior Achievement, Young Leadership Committee, your church youth group. I am giving a copy of the series to one of my favorite non-profits, the Seattle chapter of  Dress for Success.

It's the gift that grows tentacles and seeps into so many lives! Take the time to watch it WITH your recipients and get inspired and pumped up along with them.

ISO Breakthrough Catalysts

When I reordered business cards, I changed my title to breakthrough catalyst. I like the sound of it and think that being a catalyst for others is very rewarding work. Do you seek and use catalysts? Your quest to manifest possibilities and generate breakthrough results will be easier if you identify and use catalysts.

What is a catalyst?

Strictly speaking, a catalyst is a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction. Although they participate in reactions, catalysts are neither consumed by nor incorporated into the products of the reactions. There is just as much catalyst at the end of the reaction as there was at the beginning. Catalysts will not cause reactions to occur, but they will help reactions that would have occurred without them to proceed more quickly or at lower temperatures. In most cases only small amounts of catalysts are needed to increase reaction rates.

Catalysts work by providing easier ways for reactions to occur. In technical terms, they provide alternative reaction paths with lower activation energies.  Every chemical reaction has a certain threshold, known as its activation energy that must be exceeded in order for the reaction to occur. A catalyst does not lower the activation energy of a reaction, but instead provides an alternative that produces the same results with a lower threshold. A good analogy is a bridge over a valley. Without the bridge, it might be possible to cross the valley by driving down one twisting road and then back up another. A bridge allows the valley to be crossed more quickly and with less energy. It does not reduce the amount of energy needed to drive down one side and up the other, but instead offers an alternate way to achieve the same results while using less energy.

Another common example of a catalyst is the catalytic converter used to help eliminate harmful carbon monoxide, unburned gasoline, and nitrogen oxides in automobile exhaust. Carbon monoxide is poisonous. Unburned gasoline reacts with nitrogen oxides to form low-altitude ozone, which is different than the beneficial high altitude ozone that blocks UV rays. Rather than being beneficial, low-altitude ozone is a component of smog. Nitrogen oxides also contribute to acid rain and can irritate mucus membranes.  Catalytic converters contain honeycomb structures composed of ceramics coated with small amounts of the metals platinum, palladium, and rhodium. Platinum and rhodium speed the conversion of nitrogen oxides into harmless nitrogen and oxygen, while platinum and palladium speeds to conversion of carbon monoxide and unburned gas into less harmful carbon dioxide.

Why use catalysts?

Many beliefs, actions, contexts, and habits have catalytic properties, too. Breakthrough catalysts facilitate faster and/or easier progress much the same way a bridge speeds your passage over a river valley. By providing alternative ways to manifest possibilities, catalysts are jet fuel for the breakthrough explorer. The actions and situations that catalyze one person’s results may not similarly affect others. Breakthrough catalysts come in many forms and they will vary by individual. Even so, there are several catalysts that work for many people including, coaching, making unreasonable requests, meditation and relaxation, a change to an exotic context, the proverbial 2X4, relentlessness, and evangelism.

Coaching

I listed coaching first for a reason. At its core, all coaching should be catalytic. In fact, I believe that catalyzing success is the primary reason to seek or offer coaching. The coach’s questions and ideas become thought bridges.

I understand that not all coaching is catalytic. You have likely received coaching that failed to enhance your achievement or make your journey easier. A lot of what is called coaching is not and amounts to little more than advice. Advice is rarely catalytic. A coached nudge is precious and can set your mind a flutter with new and easier pathways to success. Catalytic coaching can come from a stranger on the bus or a best friend who has known you since you were both children. To experience more breakthroughs, seek and offer more coaching.

Making Unreasonable Requests

Ask and ye shall receive, right? Making unreasonable requests is not as unreasonable as it may seem. I use the term unreasonable here to mean big. Unreasonable requests are big requests that you are generally too chicken to make. Outrageous requests make great things happen. And talk about a bridge! A well formulated request, when accepted by the person you ask, can reroute your progress and enable you to zoom to success. Unreasonable requests that are turned down can also serve as important catalysts because often a compromise solution is offered that is still higher than you would have normally expected. Mahatma Gandhi said, “If you don’t ask, you don’t get,” and I believe this to be true.

Meditation and Relaxation

Meditation and relaxation practices promote clear thinking and reflection. Hectic schedules, endless meetings, and mile long to-do lists clutter thoughts and block you creativity. When you relax your mind and body, you make room for new and different ideas. Some people use mental retreats to generate new ideas, refocus, and tap into their goals. Whether away, at home, or at the office, relaxation techniques are critical to your success.

Think about the bridge that spans the river valley again. Without the bridge, you would have to take a long and winding road down one side of the river, then cross through the river and go back up the bank on the other side. You will encounter more potential hazards and burn much more fuel. Now imagine that the river valley represents your busy day. All the distractions and competing demands act like the twists and turns of the road. When we are stressed, it feels like we are fighting against the river’s current. Relaxation is the bridge.

Exotic Contexts

Something is exotic when it is out of the ordinary, striking, saturated with color or foreign. Your context is your setting, surroundings, or circumstances. A change to an exotic context can serve as a powerful breakthrough catalyst. Imagine exploring a different culture, taking a new route home, or sitting in a meeting filled with people from another industry. Exotic contexts stimulate your thoughts and challenge your assumptions. Work pace, policies, and general practices are also part of the context. Shifting your context to something new, different, and even somewhat disturbing can provide a surge of learning and ideas. To change your reality, change your context.

I enjoy Cirque du Soleil shows. They are inventive, imaginative, and stimulating. After one show, it occurred to me that this would be a perfect place to bring a senior management team the evening before an all-day strategy planning meeting. If they went to the show in a state of wonder and inquiry, their strategy meeting, and the end result, would surely be very different.

The 2X4

It feels like you have been hit between the eyes with a 2X4 (piece of wood). When you deliver the 2X4, you give direct, candid, and tough to hear feedback. For some people, the 2X4 is transformative and just what they need to get knocked onto the path of success.

I was given a 2X4 about ten years ago. What a gift! At the time, it felt lousy and my first inclination was to attack back. Fortunately, I thought about what she said and had to agree she her feedback was spot on. My demeanor changed immediately and new possibilities emerged. Today’s reality would look much different had I not received the benevolent whack between the eyes.

If someone takes the time and demonstrates the courage to offer direct feedback, be sure to show your gratitude. It might not be easy to hear, but the 2X4 can jolt you on the right track if you take the information and use it to improve your results. Offered with good intent and care, the 2X4 can catalyze a breakthrough and help you launch forward. You can either be wrong and lost or insightfully wrong and found. Sometimes a breakthrough begins with alienation.

Relentlessness

Getting into action is a great way to create momentum and put your goals and intentions into the world. Being relentless about activity has an additive affect that can catalyze major breakthroughs. Often thought of as a negative, relentlessness is the juice behind a “this shall be” attitude. When you resolve to make your goals happen and follow that determination up will an unwavering dedication to taking focused action every day, you will succeed faster and better than you can imagine.

What if, for the next several days, you were relentless about taking on and conquering an important goal or project? Think about a goal that is so dear to you that it deserves an unrelenting focus and implementation. Picture yourself as you cruise through the day. Now imagine what would need to change to jack up your focus and action. How does the relentlessness in your life look? Pick a goal and say, “This shall be.”

Evangelism

Evangelists are passionate, loyal, and dedicated. They are different than the garden-variety fan. Someone who likes a product or company might tell a couple people about their positive experience. Evangelists do that as the appetizer to a seven-course meal. An evangelist gets up on a rainy Saturday morning to hold picket signs for their favorite political candidate.

Evangelists are fans jacked up on caffeine and they imbue the environment with love and fraternity. Evangelism is an excellent breakthrough catalyst because magical things happen when someone believes enough in you and your goal that they willingly advocate on your behalf. These inspired beings will enthuse you and others with their energy, loyalty and passion.

Set breakthrough catalysts in motion and let them do their work for you. Look out, the world is shifting on its axis!

Big Power of Small Actions - Butterfly Effect

As a trainer and executive coach, I have seen thousands of tiny acts make big differences. It’s very cool to observe. The question that turns the meeting on its end. The sudden inspiration to visit a museum that leads to a career change. The phone calls you make day after day and that finally pay off big. The new method that becomes your signature. Sometimes the impact is immediate, like when a blogger posts about his favorite new gadget and sales go through the roof in under and hour. Sometimes the big affects are delayed, like when you rediscover your youthful ambitions by strolling though an old photo album.

Often, our small actions start a chain reaction of other actions that build and develop until – POW – something happens.

1. A job opening is posted at your company. It’s not exactly a match to your past experience, but you find this job highly appealing.
2. You decide not to apply.
3. You mention the job to your wife at dinner. She picks up in the tone of your voice that you want to apply and encourages you.
4. You don’t apply.
5. The next day, you go for a walk during lunch and see street performers. You decide to apply for the promotion.
6. You don’t get the job. The news is tough to take because you had already mentally moved out of your current job. It’s no longer interesting or challenging.
7. Over the next few months, you go to more association functions and talk to people in a different way than you used to.
8. Prior to the job posting, you went to these functions and acted like a smug jerk (you weren’t looking for a job). But now you want to learn about what’s going on and whether the grass might actually be greener somewhere else.
9. You click with a couple people. You exchange cards and a few emails. You have coffee with a like-minded colleague who works right around the corner from your office.
10. She just heard ABC is launching a new division. She can tell that your interest is piqued and suggests you call ABC and ask for information.
11. You put off making the call.
12. You mention the ABC project to your wife and she can see in your eyes you want to call. She encourages you to call.
13. You don’t call.
14. You read an article about Richard Branson’s new Spaceport venture in New Mexico.
15. Your boss does something stupid at work.
16. You make a call and talk to the expansion leader at ABC. As it turns out, you met him at an association function a couple months ago and sat at the same table for dinner. Luckily for you, this occurred after you stopped being a smug jerk at these meetings.
17. You have coffee with him the next day and – POW – your career takes a new and exciting direction.

Tiny snowflakes that together create an avalanche of change. If any one action did not occur, the outcome would have been very different.

This idea that small changes can make a big difference is nothing new to those of you who follow chaos theory. The butterfly effect is a widely popularized interpretation of one of the key elements of chaos theory. Simply put, the butterfly effect says that something as seemingly insignificant as a butterfly flapping its wings in the rainforests of Brazil has the potential to trigger a tornado in Texas.  The flapping wings stir the air and the effect grows into a meteorological event of epic proportions. If the butterfly hadn’t flapped its wings, the tornado wouldn’t have occurred. If the butterfly had flown in a different direction or been in Tahiti instead of Brazil, maybe the result would have been a typhoon in the South Pacific or a hailstorm in Russia instead of a tornado in Texas.

The butterfly effect has its roots in something that mathematicians refer to as extreme sensitivity to initial conditions. That means that even small and seemingly insignificant changes at the start of a process described by certain kinds of equations can produce wildly different and practically unpredictable results. During the early 1960s, American meteorologist Edward Lorenz was developing some of the first computer simulations of weather and wanted to repeat the last steps of a previous simulation. Because computers of the time were slow and difficult to use, one day Lorenz tried to save some time by using the intermediate output from a previous simulation as input for a new simulation. Doing so would save him the trouble of repeating calculations that weren’t of interest and give him the results he needed.  Or so Lorenz thought. To his surprise, the results of his second simulation were much different than the results of his first simulation even though they should have been virtually identical. Lorenz eventually discovered the source of the difference: the first simulation used results calculated to six decimal places but he used value rounded to three decimal places as input for the second simulation. That small difference in starting values produced two completely different sets of results. Mathematicians had long known about sensitivity to initial conditions, but Lorenz’s work emphasized how important they can be in real-world applications such as weather forecasting.

Although Lorenz originally quoted a colleague who had made reference to the flapping of seagull wings, he eventually switched to butterflies and used the title “Predictability: Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” for a presentation at the 1972 meeting of the American Association of the Advancement of Science.  The practical implication is not literally that a butterfly can cause a tornado half a world away, but rather that sensitivity to initial conditions makes long-term weather forecasting a practical impossibility.

Lorenz eventually simplified his model and reduced the number of equations from twelve to three. He discovered that in addition to having sensitivity to initial conditions, for certain input values the system would change over time but repeatedly return to certain states or combinations of variables known as attractors. Scientists and mathematicians working on chaos theory have since discovered many other kinds of attractors, but the particular set discovered by Lorenz continue to bear his name and are often used as a classic example of deterministic chaos.

Chaos theory is cool. We can see a sensitivity to initial conditions in many aspects of our lives. Small changes in new employee orientation reduces turnover. Getting good running shoes reduces injuries and could impact the overall health of someone 15 years later. A new job is posted. Little things can make a big difference.

There are three beliefs that will help you put the big power of small actions to work in creating breakthroughs and generating a life you love. The first belief is that you are not in control. You need to let go of any need to know which action, or combination of actions, is going to make things happen. In chaotic systems, and your life is a chaotic system, you are not in control. Some actions will impact the system and others won’t seem to make any difference at all. They may become important at a later time or never.

Instead of trying to control what you cannot, focus on putting lots of directionally aligned actions out into the world. This is where the power of small actions repeatedly applied comes into play. You don’t want to waste time with actions that do not line up with your goals. Focus is always important. If you can take a few small and aligned actions every day, you will experience breakthroughs and produce great results.

The second belief I recommend you adopt is that you will be more successful if you take act from a position of sincerity, passion, service orientation, and gratitude. The magical and mystical powers of small actions will flourish more when people sense that you are working on something larger than yourself. If you believe that you are somehow entitled or due for a breakthrough, this will come through in your actions and dull their affect. This belief gets to the question of why you do what you do. What’s driving you to succeed? If you need to see a tangible result from every action you take, you are measuring success in a way that will hinder your success.

The third belief that will serve you is that life is about the journey not the goal. Ten years from now, you will recall and tell stories about your experiences along the way, not the end result. Goals and aspirations provide some focus for how to live today and you need focus to feel great about where you are heading. Where you end up is not nearly as important as how you got there. Pour your energy and focus into today’s journey. If you do this, your tomorrow will be much better. When you adopt this belief, you will increase the power and appeal of your little actions. Small deeds can be done today. They exist in the present.

Flap your butterfly wings. Flap, flap, flap. Each small action is another flap. You never know the impact each tiny flap might have. Today’s flap might catalyze tomorrow’s blizzard of changes. Who knows what possible!