He thought–while his hand moved rapidly–what a power there was in words; later, to those who heard them, but first for the one that found them; a healing power, a solution, like the breaking of a barrier. He thought, perhaps the basic secret the scientists have never discovered, the first fount of life, is that which happens when a thought first takes shape into words.
–Gail Wynand in The Fountainhead
by Ayn Rand, 1943
In 2008, I spoke with two groups of business leaders that I coach on the topic, “What should we be doing now to weather the down economy?” Seven ideas received broad support:
Why plan? So much changes, so many things are unforeseen. The world is unpredictable and out of our control. The people we depend upon are fallible and have free will. There is no telling what they will do, how they will react to us.
Any airliner spends most of each trip off course and pointed in the wrong direction. Wind, weather, and traffic are constantly diverting the vessel from the perfect path. Rather than being discouraged by the impossibility of staying on course, the pilot and the instruments are continually working to compensate for these random and unforeseeable influences. After a trip of “unplanned” but expected diversions, airliners almost always arrive at their intended destinations. What would be the result if the pilot did not declare where and when he would land? How would he react to the distractions and diversions? Would you buy a ticket on that plane? Rather, could that pilot enroll you in his project?
You have many choices each day–even if they don’t seem like choices–and a consistent target will give you a ready reference for making those choices. Your plan is useful not because it is a description of what will happen, but because it provides a reference point to evaluate and respond to the inevitable circumstances that differ from the plan.
Planning is not Predicting.
The value of a plan is not as a guarantee that things will happen exactly as you expected, but that when the unexpected does -inevitably- occur, you can notice and respond to the deviation.
STARTUP
A Silicon Valley Adventure
by Jerry Kaplan
The following is an excerpt from: STARTUP by Jerry Kaplan
…I first learned the truth about scientific progress from my Ph.D. dissertation advisor at the University of Pennsylvania.
A shy Indian man with a shiny, balding head and an occasional stutter, Dr. Joshi was widely known for his brilliant work in artificial intelligence. Our weekly meetings to help me find a thesis topic were more like therapy sessions than academic discussions. Most of the time he would (more…)
Most of my CEO executive coaching clients have detailed, measurable goals. We use them as navigational aids, comparing interim results with plans and expectations, to help the client make adjustments to their attitudes and activity. I was in the midst of one such review when the client took the conversation in a novel and fruitful direction.
I asked, “Have you looked into that club for sharing exotic sports cars we discussed?”
“I’ve been thinking about that, ” he responded. “Why (more…)
I found more evidence of just how much we lost when Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch died. Today, while revising my executive coaching materials on goal setting and time management, a colleague mentioned that Randy Pausch was most proud of his talk on time management.
We are in the midst of a famine,
a prolonged, widespread deficit of a resource
essential to life: productive time.
Pausch’s talk is a thorough and entertaining presentation of the essentials and I highly recommend it for my executive coaching clients (though I can not agree with every suggestion). You may have heard much of it before, but Professor Pausch’s celebrity, good humor, and excellent example give it tremendous impact. You will do something different and better as a result of watching.
Highlights
• Record and priority rank your tasks to reduce stress
• Batch your tasks, questions, and communications by person
• Schedule blocks of time adequate for the task
• Avoid interruptions and distractions
The video and the PowerPoint slides, along with lots of other Pausch material, are available here.
Watching this talk may leave you with a big question, especially if the advice is familiar. “Why am I not doing these things despite the knowing that they work?” That gap, the mystery between what we know and what we practice, is my domain: executive coaching.
I have been repeatedly surprised to hear from many of my CEO executive coaching clients that, of all the many skills needed for the top job, one area where they often readily admit weakness is in financial insight. They rely on their accountants or a “numbers geek” to watch and even interpret company results. A fundamental reason for this blind spot is, I believe, that so many CEOs are highly visual, intuitive thinkers. Rows of precise digits are not their preferred form of communication. It is essential, therefore, to display financial and quantitative data visually to have it used and absorbed by these executives.
A second flaw in most (more…)
The Last Word on Power:
Re-Invention for Leaders and Anyone
Who Must Make the Impossible Happen
by Tracy Goss (Betty Sue Flowers, Editor)
Capsule Review
Tracy Goss has long been closely associated with Werner Erhard, the originator of EST and Landmark Education Corporation’s Forum. I expect happy graduates of those programs to be very happy with this book (I am and I am). The book presents the central concepts of those programs very clearly and in a format designed to help business people put the “distinctions” to work immediately. I doubt, however, that a person not trained in ontological coaching could get much sense from these pages. It can seem to be merely jargon and wild promises unless you have actually put the techniques to work for yourself with the assistance of a coach (as I have and I do).
For people experienced with the methods, this book is an effective refresher and spur to action. A friend and I (more…)
I frequently coach individuals and groups on long-term goal setting. I have found a subtle trap that you can easily avoid if you take a moment to notice that not everything progresses at the same rate.
A great benefit of specific plans is the opportunity to track progress. After my clients set a ten year goal, I invite them to imagine themselves in the future, ten years hence, with the goal achieved. I then ask, “Look back five years. Tell me how much progress you had made at the halfway point.”
This where most people make a crucial error. Luckily, it is easy to avoid.
Let’s say you have set a goal for (more…)
“For human beings the really important evolutionary advantage is our ability to create new worlds.”
…
“In fact, I think now that the two abilities – finding the truth about the world and creating new worlds-are two sides of the same coins. Theories, in science or childhood, don’t just tell us what’s true – they tell us what’s possible, and they tell us how to get to those possibilities from where we are now. When children learn and when they pretend they use their knowledge of the world to create new possibilities. So do we whether we are doing science or writing novels. I don’t think anymore that Science and Fiction are just both Good Things that complement each other. I think they are, quite literally, the same thing.”The World Question Center at Edge.org
Alison Gopnik
Psychologist, UC-BerkeleyCoauthor, The Scientist In the Crib
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