Change is Coming. Are You Ready?

Change is difficult for most of us. How convenient it had been to simply pick up the receiver and tell the operator who we wanted to "ring up." We remember fondly watching the reruns of Andy picking up the receiver and saying, "Sara, would you ring over at Floyd's Barber Shop?" I can only imagine the resistance when the new rotary phone replaced what had been so comfortable and so familiar.

Looking back allows us to look forward. What practices do we cling to because they are familiar, yet years from now, people can hardly believe how we resisted the change?

In a wonderful book entitled Drumming to the Beat of Different Marchers, author Debbie Silver included the following quote that so eloquently goes to the heart of why change is so difficult:

It's not so much that we're afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it's that place in between that we fear . . . . It's like being between trapezes. It's Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There's nothing to hold on to.

—Marilyn Ferguson in The Aquarian Conspiracy
 
It's a reminder of one of my favorite quotes:

When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and you are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things will happen: There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly.
-Patrick Overton

As we roll in a new year, change is a given. There will be those times when you feel you are between trapezes. There will be those times when you feel you about to step off into the darkness. In no time, you have learned to fly!

What worries you about the year ahead? What excites you?

Le Book: New Technology Was a Challenge Then Too

It seems people have always had problems with learning "new" technology!

Change is the Challenge

Change is difficult for most of us. How convenient it had been to simply pick up the receiver and tell the operator who we wanted to "ring up." We remember fondly watching the reruns of Andy picking up the receiver and saying, "Sara, would you ring over at Floyd's Barber Shop?" I can only imagine the resistance when the new rotary phone replaced what had been so comfortable and so familiar.

Looking back allows us to look forward. What practices do we cling to because they are familiar, yet years from now, people can hardly believe how we resisted the change?

In a wonderful book entitled Drumming to the Beat of Different Marchers, author Debbie Silver included the following quote that so eloquently goes to the heart of why change is so difficult:

It's not so much that we're afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it's that place in between that we fear . . . . It's like being between trapezes. It's Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There's nothing to hold on to.

—Marilyn Ferguson in The Aquarian Conspiracy
 
It's a reminder of one of my favorite quotes:

When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and you are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things will happen: There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly.
-Patrick Overton

As a new year approaches for us all, change is a given. There will be those times when you feel you are between trapezes. There will be those times when you feel you about to step off into the darkness. In no time, you have learned to fly!

What worries you about the year ahead? What excites you?

Sometimes You Move Your Own Cheese

Newsletters subscribers started this month by reading how Google Moved My Cheese. August will be about how I moved my own cheese. Finding a balance between sticking with things which work and being open to something potentially better is always tricky. There will be lot of content, so hang on...

The 5 Suggestions of a Surgeon/Author

I first became acquainted with Atul Gawande through his book entitled The Checklist Manifesto. You can read my post about it here. Gawande, an author and surgeon, writes about his profession in a way that speaks to each of us in our own professions. My latest read, Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance is no exception.

Dr. Gawande writes candidly about the challenges doctors face and the conflicting priorities with which they wrestle. My favorite part of the book is the "Afterwards." Here, the author presents his five-point call to action for the reader. While he writes from the perspective of a surgeon, his words reach far beyond the operating room.


Ask the Unscripted Question 
Dr. Gawande challenges doctors to go beyond the normal questions of ailments, where it hurts, and how long it has hurt. He asks them to reach for questions which allow them to know the people who sit before them. He extends this concept to asking the questions which allow doctors to get the know staff members beyond the role in which they see them each day.

If we replace "doctor/patient" with "teacher/student" or "principal/teachers," his suggestion is right on target. The same advice could extend to the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Anybody can follow the script. When we go beyond the expected questions, we just may get the unexpected answer that winds up making all the difference. The author writes, "If you ask a question, the machine begins to feel less like a machine."

Don't Complain
Dr. Gawande writes, "Whenever doctors gather— in meeting rooms, in conference halls, in hospital cafeterias—the natural pull of conversational gravity is toward the litany of woes all around us." Amazing how this scenario sounds like the stereotype of the "teacher's lounge"! In fact, the universal advice given new teachers is, "Stay out of the teacher's lounge." The master teacher learns that while avoiding the negativity of the teacher's lounge is good, being the force which changes the conversation is better.

Every profession has its problems, and when competing priorities exist, there is often no single right answer. The negativity can fester, and before you know it, the ox is in the ditch. When the negative conversation begins, we can feed the beast—and if this is our choice, we become the beast. We also have the capacity to make a better choice, to turn the conversation from "how bad things are" to how good things can be, and the next steps we can undertake right now to make the situation better.

Count Something
"It doesn't really matter what you count...The only requirement is that what you count should be interesting to you." Gawande talks about counting how often instruments or sponges were left inside patients during surgery. Counting the incidents led to determining the situations in which they seems to occur, and hence the problem causing the mistakes. Finding the real problem was the first step towards finding a solution.

When we count something, we are focused on it. When we focus, we find the relationships which have always existed, yet nobody seemed to notice. "If you count something you find interesting, you will learn something interesting." Great advice for researchers in any fields—and we are all researchers.


Write Something
"An audience is a community. The published word is a declaration of membership in that community and also a willingness to contribute something meaningful to it."

I will always be indebted to Dr. Terry Gates, one of my professors during my Masters degree in the early 1980s. I had taken my comprehensive exam and was awaiting to hear the results. What arrived was an envelope larger than I had expected. Inside was a letter stated I had passed the exam. Furthermore, a letter from Dr. Gates stated he had his secretary type my answer to one of the questions. He said he wanted me to submit that answer as a journal article to a state magazine.

That day marked the first clue that I just might have something to say that would be of interest to a larger body. What had started as the answer to a question on a test did indeed become the first time I was see a publication containing something I had written.

We all have strengths. We all have something from which others can benefit. Never before in history has it been easier to publish our writing. The blog you read now is an example. In many ways, writing is a responsibility, a way of giving back to the body of knowledge from which we have benefited. It's like holding up our end of the conversation.

Best of all, when we clarify our thoughts to the point others can comprehend them, we also clarify those thoughts for ourselves. The clarify leads to better performance, which leads to writing about that improved performance, which leads to even better performance. The cycle continues as long as we are willing to participate.

Change
"Look for opportunities to change...be willing to recognize the inadequacies in what you do and seek out the solutions." Countless lives are owed to advances in medicine. Practices considered to be correct give weigh to better practices. As a result, people are living longer and enjoying a significantly better quality of life than previous generations.

The ideas that have made your life and my life significantly better were once ideas on a drawing board. Modern-day pioneers were not afraid to share those ideas. Early adopters were not afraid to give those ideas a chance. They spread until reaching the proverbial "tipping point," where they became a common part of our days.

What's the next great idea out there just waiting to push us a higher level in some aspect of our lives? Will we be part of the early adopters, seeing its value when others have yet to discover it is even there? Will we lead in its implementation? Will we become the voice to which others listen as they begin to see the value in what we do? It's a choice we make.

Which one of Atul Gawande's suggestions speaks loudest to you?

Change...and Learning to Dial Your Rotary Phone

Wouldn't you love to have heard the comment when this "modern technology" was about to replace the comfortable routine. And how impersonal it is! No longer would Andy pick up the receiver and say, "Sara, would you ring over at Floyd's Barber Shop?"

Looking back allows us to look forward. What practices do we cling to because they are familiar, yet years from now, people can hardly believe how we resisted the change?

In a wonderful book entitled Drumming to the Beat of Different Marchers, author Debbie Silver included the following quote that so eloquently goes to the heart of why change is so difficult:

It's not so much that we're afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it's that place in between that we fear . . . . It's like being between trapezes. It's Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There's nothing to hold on to.

—Marilyn Ferguson in The Aquarian Conspiracy
 
It's a reminder of one of my favorite quotes:

When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and you are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things will happen: There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly.
-Richard Bach in Jonathan Livingston Seagull

As a new year approaches for us all, change is a given. There will be those times when you feel you are between trapezes. There will be those times when you feel you about to step off into the darkness. In no time, you have learned to fly!

What worries you about the year ahead? What excites you?

Change and "Crystal Clear Task Lists"

I recently read Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, written by Chip and Dan Heath. They are also the authors of the bestseller Made to Stick.

In the book, the Heath brothers say we must do three things for change to occur:

1. Direct the rider
2. Motivate the elephant
3. Shape the path

Directing the rider and motivating the elephant are metaphors for appealing to the intellect and appealing to emotions, respectively.

What strikes me is the wording used to describe what one must do in terms of directing the rider. The authors state on page 17, "What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity. So provide crystal-clear direction."  We read on page 72, "Clarity dissolves resistance."

In the September 2010 issue of Fast Company, the Heath brothers further explore this concept in their article "Tase the Haze." One of their examples sounds exactly like a line out of the Get Organized! workshop:

Imagine that you have two items on your to-do list. One is "pick up AAA batteries". The other is "deal with tax issues." Guess which one is still unchecked four weeks later?

Replace "AAA batteries" and "deal with taxes" with the examples "buy shoestrings" and 'improve the math curriculum" and you could be sitting right there listening to me!

In both Get Organized! and Organization Made Easy!, we talk about the elements which go into making an "organized task list," a list that stands a chance of having the items on it accomplished. The first rule of an organized task list? Make the next step crystal clear.

Eye on Education featured this idea on their blog in November of 2009. You can read that post here.

The fact that the same idea shows up again worded in virtually the same way is simply evidence of its truth. Before we can make progress, we have to define what progress looks like. We must know exactly what is being asked of us. When worded in a crystal-clear manner, tasks become easier to do. Mountains become easier to move. Wasted motion goes away. Stress goes down. Productivity goes up. Take a look at your own to-do list with the filter of clarity in mind. How could you re-write so that items which have been sitting there suddenly start to get done?

 

Have you ever had an item that sat in your to-do list for what seems like forever? What did you finally do to get it moving?

On Change

Our society talks about change. Business books love to talk about change. Our new President even ran on a platform of "change we need."

In a wonderful book I recently read entitled Drumming to the Beat of Different Marchers, the author included the following quote that goes so eloquently to the heart of why change is so difficult:

It's not so much that we're afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it's that place in between that we fear . . . . It's like being between trapezes. It's Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There's nothing to hold on to.

—Marilyn Ferguson in The Aquarian Conspiracy

One of my favorite quotes addresses that "in between," that space between trapezes, and that brief moment when we are without our security blanket:

When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and you are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things will happen: There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly.

—Barbara J. Winter

Comforting words in uncertain times.

On Change

Our society talks about change. Business books love to talk about change. Our new President even ran on a platform of "change we need."

In a wonderful book I recently read entitled Drumming to the Beat of Different Marchers, the author included the following quote that goes so eloquently to the heart of why change is so difficult:

It's not so much that we're afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it's that place in between that we fear . . . . It's like being between trapezes. It's Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There's nothing to hold on to.

—Marilyn Ferguson in The Aquarian Conspiracy

One of my favorite quotes addresses that "in between," that space between trapezes, and that brief moment when we are without our security blanket:

When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and you are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things will happen: There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly.

—Barbara J. Winter

Comforting words in uncertain times.

New Circumstances--New Procedures

Once upon a time a mother and daughter who were working together preparing the Easter dinner. At one point, the mother took from the refrigerator fridge the ham that had been defrosting. Before putting it in the oven, she cut about an inch off of either end of the ham.

"Mom why did you cut the ends off the ham?", the daughter asked.

The mother thought for a moment, and then replied, "That’s the way my mother always did it."

Overcome with curiosity, as often children are, the little girl asked if she could call Grandma and ask her.

“Grandma, Mommy cuts the end off the ham before she cooks it and says that’s what you always did. Is that true?”

“Yes, dear, that true. I always did it that way.”

“But why Grandma?”

Grandmother thought for a moment and replied, “Because that is the way my mother always did it.”

At this point, nothing would do other than to call Great Grandma.

“Great Grandma, Mommy cuts the ends off the ham before she cooks it. She says she does it becomes Grandma did it. Grandma says she did it because you did. Is it true that you cut the ends off the ham?”

“Yes, indeed, my dear. I always did it that way.”

“But why, Great Grandma?”

Holding her hands about 10 inches apart, the great grandmother replied, “Because my pan was only that long.”

The point is this:

When we are faced with certain circumstances, we come up with procedures to handle those circumstances. So often, the circumstances change, but our procedures stay the same.

Up until now, our organizational tools were pencil and paper and we came up with procedures that made the best use of those tools. Our procedure was to make a daily to-do list. That insured that we would start the day with a list that was neat and legible and had some kind of order to it. The price we pay for it is the time it takes to rewrite that list every day and recopy all of the things we didn’t get done yesterday. Plus the truth of the matter was that the most of what is on the list does not have to be done today, it just needs to be done as soon as we can get it done.

Our circumstances are the different. We have a digital tool. When we check something off the list, it disappears. The list sorts itself. Undone tasks simply remain on the list for the next day. There is no recopying lists ever.

I organize my to-do list primarily by context. Show me a list of what I can do where I am whether I am whether that is I am at home, on the phone, running errands, walking through my school, or in my office.