Originally posted January 20, 2015
Getting out of your current situation into one that affords you more power to do good is as you know an uphill battle. Where you are is where you are. You start with changing things there. Make it better there. Then it can roll out as a sphere of integration, all the 3D iron filings working together in harmony around a magnetic intention, a plan, a feedback loop, through moment-to-moment Flow State actions. Get that to work in your company — or even your team — this is where you begin.
image by Martyn Fletcher
Last week you began the process by jotting down thoughts and notes about problem/challenge conditions you’re out to fix. Then you created a table with the smallest cluster of problems organized to the left and large spaces to the right to fill in approach directions toward the solutions of each challenge cluster.
Now we are ready to move on to the next steps toward creating the changes you want to see come to life.
- When the time is right, contemplate the filled-in table. Be alone and uninterruptible. Critique the solution approaches and note their weaknesses and strengths because this is a springboard to fresh ideation. Add more ideas as they come. Start a new clean table and fill it in with the high points of the new ideas that come to you at this step in the process. Let the old ideas fall away — you can add them back later if merited.
- While on the private front you are undergoing this process with notes and ideas, in your public self, you will become unpredictable.
What does being unpredictable mean? And why be unpredictable?
Within your organization you have found a certain footing, a certain platform. It is your basis for leverage and it limits your leverage, which is held in place, i.e. limited, by the perceptions others have of you.
If they can predict what you are going to say next, it has limited throw weight. If you’re going to change the world you have to become unpredictable. You have to look past the answer you always give. Include those ideas in what you finally do say, but go to the next level. What other factors are relevant that you could include in your response to a situation?
As you become unpredictable, your perceived biases will stop being your driver, and so people will notice that and think more carefully about what you said. Right now they apply Kentucky Windage to what you say based on what they think your bias is in the situation. Remove the Kentucky Windage factor and you can move people and the world further each day.
Becoming unpredictable is only one principle, which has to be balanced with all the other principles on a situation-by-situation basis. There are no black-and-white rules. Every principle has situations that are exceptions to the rule. You can’t let your company make a wrong move, for example, just because you’re changing your image.
Then, follow your plan, and evolve it with changing circumstances and new information. Don’t get stuck in the first plan. Let it be the plan du jour until there is such solidity to the success trend that you know it’s the right plan.
If the success trend is not there, you have to keep varying the inputs — try new stuff, start the ideation process described above, all over again from scratch.
Begin here now, apply the plan du jour until you know it’s the right plan.
Work the process. Start here. More next week…
Best to all,
Bill
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