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Designing Your Own Time Management System

Individual time management systems are notoriously difficult to implement.

Most professionals are never taught how to manage their time, and cobble together a home-grown system based on whatever software they find on their computers when they get their first jobs. They know little of best practices or universal principle, and get by making lists when they have to, but mostly operate without standard processes.

They do learn, however, how to complain about not having enough time, having too much to do and being stressed by how much the job is demanding of them. Everyone they know who cares about their job has the same complaint, so they find themselves in good company.

The Caribbean manager is no different in this regard. They, like others, look at what other people who accomplish much more than they do with a sense of amazement. These hyper-productive people seem to be using magical methods to get the job done.

In an attempt to close the gap, they may place themselves in a time management course, or pick up a book on time management. Unfortunately, the results are temporary.

The reason is simple: no two people are alike, yet the guru behind any time management approach is advocating a single approach for everyone.

While it is a good bet that the approach works for the guru, it is doubtful that it works for more than a handful of people.

Some of the reasons for this are obvious.

People are different, and the habits they currently use vary tremendously also. Some of the factors include:

  • the availability of the internet
  • choices of software
  • availability of PDA’s
  • whether their jobs involve travel or not
  • the degree of variability they face in an average day
  • their personal level of discipline
  • their preference for evening or morning activity
  • how close their old habits conform to the new ones being taught
  • whether they are more right or left brained, or more of an NT or SP, or their sign is a Leo or Sagittarius, or DiSC, or Black or white, or whatever system of classification they use to differentiate human beings

Certainly, a time management system designed in North America, with its virtually perfect supplies of electricity, water and relatively low crime is a different animal from the best Caribbean manager’s style of time management.

The fact is, the vast majority of professionals are unable to shoehorn themselves into “foreign” time management systems that other people have designed for very long. They fall back into their habits quickly, and are often no better for having taken the course 6 months after the fact.

The lucky few need only make some small changes to fit into the new system, and they are the success stories touted in public.

To further complicate matters, any given system that is adopted can only be relied upon to work temporarily. A time management system is a little like a diet – it must change over time, to accommodate changing goals and different goals.

A time management system for a single individual will be different depending on an individual’s

  • career phase (including retirement)
  • age
  • level of responsibility
  • kind of job
  • work environment
  • country
  • mobility
  • use of, and access to new technology

We in Framework believe that professionals do not benefit from being taught a single system for the reasons outlined above.

Instead, the program we are developing has as its cornerstone the requirement that the user of a good time management system must also be its master designer. They need to be able to make decisions as to how they change their system when, for example, a new version of Microsoft Outlook is adopted by their company, and they find out that it removes some capabilities that they used to enjoy.

In our course we plan to teach people how to design a time management system, by giving them insights into the nature of the problem they face, and a menu of choices that they must make to complete the system. They will start with their current set of habits, and by taking care not to be too ambitious about their capabilities, the system they will design will be one that suits them.

We will also help them to migrate to future systems and to look for the creation of tools that can be added into the system they have designed.

To this, they will need to understand the principles behind the need to manage the flood of demands on their time that they now face, and how it impacts them as Caribbean professionals.

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Goof Off Time and other Time Management Techniques

One of the efforts that we at Framework are undertaking this year is that of defining a method of time management that fits the Caribbean tempo and lifestyle.

The reasons why none of the popular approaches used worldwide has become popular in our region are varied and many: too much rigidity, too much technology, not enough humanity et al.

While the best approach I have found is the one described in the book Getting Things Done by David Allen, eve this approach does not provide a complete time management solution for our way of living.

I know this from personal experience, having lived in both North America, with its daily predictability, and here in the Caribbean, where for example I am “borrowing” someone else’s wireless internet access, because it is taking now 7 weeks to get my phone and therefore DSL service installed. Incidentally, the borrowed service is now down (an occurrence that befalls us every three days or so.)

In my reading this morning, I realized that my own time management tricks have evolved a great deal over the years. In particular, my calendar has evolved to the point where I discovered that I actually have three calendars in one, viz:

  1. A Same Action Calendar

    This is my weekly calendar of regularly scheduled items. It contains items that I have scheduled do to each day, each week, and each year at regularly recurring intervals.

    For example, I went cycling this morning at 4:00am with my cycling club, a regularly recurring Thursday morning activity that I undertake whenever I am in town. It is pre-scheduled into my calendar, and requires an intrusive alarm clock to set it into motion!

    Each month at around this time, I balance my check book.I also pay my phone bill.

    Each year at around this time, I set an appointment to look at issuing various tax documents that are due on January 31st for the prior year, and also at scheduling my company’s annual meeting – -a legal requirement.

    These recurring activities are all programmed into Microsoft Outlook, although I do use a variety of other tricks to help me to remember them, such as a programme called Rememberit.com that sends me an email reminder to complete one particular tax document that I seem to forget about each year!

    This “Same Action Calendar” keeps my life humming in the background, and I never have to remember to do any of the actions in it. I love to find new things to put in this calendar, because each time I do it, I relieve myself of the burden of having to remember, or to rely on someone else’s memory, or to rely on a piece of mail that can get lost.

    It is much easier to take that child to their swimming lesson when it is on the same night each week, and when the schedule is regularized, it can be safely put in the Same Action Calendar where I can forgot about it until it reminds me at the start of each day.

  2. A Next Step Calendar

    This is my calendar of projects, and all other activities that happen only once, broken down into the “Next Step” that I must take in the sequence of actions to complete the project.

    This includes activities such as “contact my web designer” which is the next step of a larger project called “Update Website.”Another activity is “Install Monitor” which is part of a project called “Install New Office” (I just moved offices.)

    The calendar of Next Steps is, admittedly, filled with more fun and exciting activities than the Same Action Calendar, which is filled with lots of mundane activity, some of which I normally detest. They are both critically important, however, to my functioning as a professional.

    The next calendar is one that is truly Caribbean.

  3. The Unscheduled Time Calendar

    (Also called the Interruption/Emergency/Goof-Off Calendar)

    This one is critical for mental health and sanity for those of us who work in the region. It is a calendar of time that must be devoted to fixing stuff that breaks, recovering from emergencies, cooling out from the heat, drying out from the rain, waiting for stuff to happen (like for the Fedex man to come between 8:00 and 2:00 when he comes at 2:30) and responding to interruptions of a human or inhuman nature.

    Life here is all about going with the flow, and there is a lot of stuff flowing about, that one needs to learn to go with – enough to drive a North American or European professional absolutely crazy. This time needs to be put in the calendar (just in order to reflect reality.)

    Each day differs, from what I can tell.

    Staying at the office in a meeting all day? Schedule very little Unscheduled Time.

    Going on errands to the Tax Office, Post Office and Bank, while picking up the children? Plan for a LOT of Unscheduled Time to account for the pothole that blows a tire, the long line at the post office, the bank that can’t find your account and the Tax Office that… nuff said.

    Plus, you may need to spend an extra fifteen minutes with that one child who had a tough day and is looking a bit forlorn.

    Each professional I different in terms of what their Unscheduled Time Calendar looks like, and it needs to be carefully tweaked to match the circumstances of the day, week, month or (God forbid) year.

Putting Them All Together

Of course, these three calendars are not actually three different pieces of paper, or three different electronic files. Think of them as transparent overlays that come from three very different ways of thinking.

In actual practice, they are being assembled at the same time as the Caribbean professional builds his/her calendar for the day. He/she ensures that all three mindsets are carefully balanced to produce a day that is not just productive in the traditional sense of the word, but also realistic and relatively peaceful.

After all, isn’t that the goal of trying to manage time in the first place?

P.S. Your comments are welcome, as this particular idea may be used in the programme we are currently developing. If you actually start using the idea, we would to know that also!

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RBTT’s Gambling Problem

Today, in a taxi to the airport, I heard the worst advertisement ever.

RBTT Bank’s newest promotion involves the following promise – spend over US$1000 before Dec 31st, and be automatically entered to win a chance to have the entire balance paid off in January. In short, the bank is encouraging its customers to make over a thousand dollars in new purchases, in order to qualify to win the promotion.

My problem with it?

It just all seems to be encouraging gambling – paying cash in order to have a random chance of winning big.

For some reason, I doubt that RBTT has imagined the full range of outcomes. Let us, on their behalf, perform a thought experiment and imagine what would happen if the promotion is wildly successful.

One person “wins” and ends up with a nice zero balance. Hundreds or perhaps thousands of customers end up with new balances over US$1000. Many of them might well have changed their buying pattern or choices in order to win the promotion. Some will have used credit instead of cash. Others will have decided to make purchases they never intended to make in order to qualify.

All will have new balances of more than US$ 1000 on their RBTT card on Dec 31, and the majority would have them because of the “success” of the new promotion.

RBTT would seem to be a winner, if the promotion succeeds. After all, new balances mean new interest income.

But does RBTT really benefit in the long-term? I cannot imagine that the kind of customer who would change their buying habits in order to take on new card debt to win a lottery is the kind that RBTT wants. After all, a gamble on that filly in the 5th is not the same as a gamble on a new US$2000 card balance. When the 5th race is over, the transaction between the track and the bettor is over.

However, on January 1st, RBTT will have a new long-term relationship with a debtor who is essentially a gambler.

I cannot imagine that this fits the profile of the ideal customer. If I were RBTT, I would immediately “assist” these new debtors to break their addictive habits. Maybe Gambler’s Anonymous? After all, surely RBTT does not want their customer to repeat the behaviour.

If the program is successful, and other banks decide to play copycat, I am sure that RBTT does not want them jumping ship in time to gamble once again.

Instead, RBTT must want the gambling card-holder to settle down, see the error of their ways, and become a faithful and trusted customer who pays the monthly bill like clockwork.

All this, rather than chasing down the next card, dice, scratch, domino or internet game of chance. Hopefully, when this unlikely “transformation” occurs, they will bear no resentment towards the bank for profiting from their weakness for the thrill of a win.

P.S. I received the following email at left in my inbox on 12/22.

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Networking Issue 2.0: Overcoming Fear

Awhile back I wrote about a willingness to have my ideas stolen and used.

I was reminded of how unreasonable a stand this is in a conversation with a friend of mine who expressed an interest in becoming a consultant. My basic advice was that it was indeed difficult to do well in the profession, but not for the reasons most outsiders think.

The difficulty is related to a question I am asked frequently — how do you market yourself?

Consultants are best known for some area of perceived expertise. When a consultant has really done good work at branding themselves, their name becomes synonymous with a field. For example, the name McKinsey & Co. immediately evokes the word strategy, and the phrase “strategy consulting” immediately evokes the name of McKinsey (among others).

However, the association is more than a function of mere advertising, marketing and promotion. These short-cuts just do not work in isolation, and hardly work when the link to be created involves ideas, concepts or thinking — such as “strategy.”

Instead, this kind of relationship takes time to create, and does not come from a billboard. What gets formed over time is an increasingly strong connection between the listening public and the intellectual heart of the firm, consultant or individual.

Intellectual Heart
When a client looks to a consultant for assistance, the implicit assumption is that they are looking to spend their dollars on expertise or knowledge that is uncommon, and specialized. Consultants that provide an average service in every respect will only be hired to do things like fill in manpower shortages. At the highest end, consultants can make themselves unique by developing expertise in the eyes of their clients. This can be done by developing a bundle of 2 things — Questions and Answers.

Marketing
Developing this bundle, and making it available to prospects is the essential marketing a consultant should do. This bundle is the consultant’s Intellectual Heart.

Picture a possible client CEO. She stays awake at nights in her home in Kingstown, St. Vincent, wondering about a new executive that she is thinking of hiring from Chicago. He comes highly recommended, but she wonders about the cultural difference between him – an African American – and the workers in her company.

Will he fit in? How can she prepare him, and her workers, for this very new relationship?

She starts to look for professional help.

The first firm she calls (a large multinational) lets her know that they can find someone in their network of 10,000 consultants world-wide who has done work in this area, and they could fly them in to assist. The person would not have direct experience of Caribbean culture, and might be quite expensive. She is not satisfied with the idea of bringing in another outsider (probably not Black) whose very presence would introduce a new dimension. She mentally puts them on hold.

Next, she calls a solo consultant who assures her that he can do this kind of work. While he sounds quite willing, it sounds to her as if this is the first time he is considering the issue seriously. He can sense the opportunity, but she thinks that he will say anything he can to get the business. When she presses him on the issue, he gives no evidence that he has done any more thinking than she has. His website is vague, and does not mention the topic, even in passing.

On her third attempt she strikes gold. The third company, was referred to her by a friend who happened to hear the CEO mention the topic in passing in a speech to a local Rotary Club. She calls and finds him honest in telling her that they have completed no actual projects in this area.

In fact, all they have been doing for 2 years is thinking about the issue, and what they think companies should do to overcome it. They freely admit that the field is not very well developed.

However, when she listens to them talk about the challenge she is facing, she can hear a distance between where she is and they are in thinking. It almost seems as if they are 2 years ahead. She visits their company website and downloads a white paper on the subject. A short search of their blogs shows some how their thinking has evolved in the past few months. An entertaining recording of an interview of an African American and his Jamaican subordinate tells her that she is right to be concerned.

It is not too hard to see why the CEO would chose the third company in this fictitious example. She was easily able find a place for herself in the Intellectual Heart of the company.

When people ask me how I market my own firm, I find it quite difficult to explain that I want to be like the third firm above. In fact, when I recommend that they consider doing some things along the same lines, what I get back is derision – “You must be mad!” This was the response of my friend who originally shared the interest in becoming a consultant.

Following the retort, often I hear a story from them along the following lines… “I once put my ideas in a proposal, and the client turned around and stole them, implementing them without paying me a cent!”

This reasoning, although widely shared and often repeated, is deeply flawed. Beyond the fact that it is based in a paradigm of fear and scarcity, the ultimate results are the most damning.

Essentially, a consultant who seeks to be successful must become known for their ideas. However, if the fear expressed above is to be believed, the effect is to limit the consultant from ever being seen as a source of ideas. The consultant who tries to save or even worse, protect their ideas will never write a white paper, author a blog, become a columnist, publish a book or give a decent speech. The fear that this thinking generates is enough to stop any bright consultant from becoming recognized, and ever discovering its Intellectual Heart. The same is true for for knowledge professionals in any field, at the individual level.

Over time, I have come to believe that ideas are not mine to own. Instead, they come from the Universe/God, and I am like a television set, transmitting these ideas into the world. If someone uses them, good for them. If not, I don’t care.

I prefer for them to be picked up and used by others, rather than ignored. I prefer to put them out in the world rather than to die with them bouncing around in my private thought-box (i.e. brain.)

After all, my experience has been that the more I write, the more I receive to write. The more ideas I express in writing or speaking, the more I receive.

When I slow down my writing, they come more slowly.

I am therefore quite willing to have my ideas “stolen,” and I see it as the only path to becoming a firm known for having an Intellectual Heart.

The same applies to professionals — there are those who are invisible in their profession, and do not stand out in any way from the sea of mediocrity around them. Then there are those who have the courage to share their ideas, along with the criticism, “stealing” and risks that are involved.

The difficulty in becoming an effective consultant has to do with courage — developing the guts to not just share ideas and thinking, but to invest time in developing them in a serious way, in the face of the existential risk that it might all amount to nothing.

That, I think, is a heck of a surprise to a would-be consultant.

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Unspoken Trinidadian Realities

Earlier today, I was doing some research into the CARICOM Skills Certificate, and came across some disturbing news reports.

The first was from the Trinidad Express :

The release continued: “Mrs Persad Bissessar -also claimed that the CSME would be used for voter padding – according to the Representation of the People’s Act, any Commonwealth citizen living in any Commonwealth state is eligible to vote after a period of 12 months. […]

[…] The head of the Unit considers the statements made by the Hon Member of Parliament (MP) for Siparia as most unfortunate and views them as a deliberate attempt to politicise the CSME.

“The head of the Unit therefore calls upon the Hon MP for Siparia to withdraw these statements and to use the opportunity to bring correct information to her constituents.”

Those with a knowledge of Trinidadian racial politics would understand (or at least infer) what she was referring to — a possible influx of voters for the PNM (she is with the UNC)

An influx of voters for the PNM would, in the language of Trinidadian racial politics, mean an influx of Black people, who by and large tend to vote for the PNM (although not exclusively.) Was she referring to the possibility of the delicate balance of Black and Indian (in which Indians have a slight numerical advantage) being upset by CARICOM immigration?

Given that the UNC signed the original CSME agreement, is it possible that a UNC administration would bring in more Guyanese, and therefore more Indians? Also, is the PNM government likely to bring in more Jamaicans, Bajans and other islanders, and therefore more Blacks?

At the very least, she seems to have been speculating along these lines.

While Guyanese might be quite comfortable thinking about race and its connection to political parties, Bajans, Jamaicans and other islanders have every right to be concerned. With the advent of CSME and the CARICOM Skills Certificate, in Trinidad (and perhaps Guyana) will there be a renewed emphasis on race as a determinant of immigration? How about nationality?

Trinidad is fast earning a reputation as being the hardest country in the region to gain legal permission to work in, as the reports grow that they do not accept CARICOM Skill Certificates issued in other territories. One has to re-apply for a certificate while in Trinidad, without which working in Trinidad is illegal.

However, how is a Caribbean professional to find this out? A Trinidadian HR manager who puts an advertisement in the newspaper might have no idea that the current practice deviates significantly from those being advertised. Here in the blogosphere, the issue is not being mentioned.

It might be a good idea to wait to get the facts straight before moving to Port of Spain with a certificate in hand.

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Doing The Work

This past weekend I attended a personal development seminar based on The Work of Byron Katie.

Byron Katie is actually a woman who, at the depths of a suicidal depression, developed a body of thinking that fits nicely into 4 questions and a turnaround statement, that is basically the opposite of the original stressful thought.

There is a great deal of information on her website: www.thework.org and I have been using these questions and the line of thinking she has invented for about two years now, with great effect in my personal life, and also in my business. I guess you might say that I used as much of it as I could on my own, before actually investing in a two day trip to DC to do it in person.

Through doing the work, I have been able to develop a stronger capacity to question the thoughts that come into my head. While I conceptually knew that “I am not my thoughts, but instead I am the thinker,” which is a fairly common statement in most personal development courses and books, her steps give ana easy way of quickly dealing with stressful thoughts at the moment they arise.

While we all know at some level that stress is not caused by life itself, but instead by our thoughts about life, this is a difficult idea to put into practice.

In short, her four questions are a way to meet the stressful thought with four quick questions, and over time I have noticed that the lag time between the stressful thought and the questions has only gotten shorter — which has lead to a more peaceful inner life.

Given that I know it works from experience, I believe that I’ll be developing some offerings for my clients based on The Work. I would say that it passes the first test for new ideas that I have, which is “Do they work for me?”

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CAP: A Search for Expertise

The in-depth conversations that made up the bulk of the interviews conducted in the study were probably the richest part of the experience.

One of the strongest and most disturbing points was the need by executives to have particular distinct competencies at their disposal. Given that the study focused on distinguishing best practices in the implementation of acquisitions, the focus of these competencies are most likely to be found in the HR function.

One response stands out in connection with the following question:
What is the importance to accomplish M&A’’s….. in the area of:
Expertise with people/organization/culture integration? On a scale of 0 to 100, with 0 indicating disagreement, and 0 indicating full agreement, the score given was 94%.

When asked what the current level of capability was to accomplish M&A’s with their organization in the same area, the response fell to 62%.

Our research showed that while executives were looking for this particular expertise in “people/organization/culture integration”, they were steadfast in not looking to their current HR executives and managers for that support.

This dichotomy showed up all throughout the study: a refreshing sensitivity to cultural differences and the need to account for difference in corporate and national culture, coupled with a lack of faith in the HR expertise on staff to provide what they said was needed. We connected that with a variety of roots causes, all of which were mentioned in the interviews:

  • A historical bias to view HR as little more than “Personnel.” In this case the HR executive would have to take the lead in changing the popular perception.
  • An uneasiness with their HR department’s ability and competence to play a strategic role
  • The inability of the HR department to effectively get itself into the fast-moving waters of an acquisition process
  • A failure of the HR leader to clearly establish their knowledge and expertise in the area of M&A’s before the opportunity came up

A deeper investigation of the exact cause would be the subject of a different study.

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Abundance

What does it mean to recognize the abundance that is right around us?

This question is one that I continue to wrestle with, given that recently I’ve heard some very different opinions that I’m feeling the need to sort out. Here are some of the ideas I’ve read recently, put into my own words.

God Didn’t Make No Mistakes
One point of view that I find easy to accept is that the Creator of the Universe didn’t make any mistakes, and that in the world there is a perfect amount of everything. This includes the easy to accept things, such as the number of animals, clouds, atoms, energy, etc.

However, it also includes the harder to accept things, including the things that his creations have made such as crime, murder, rape, etc. Whatever amount there is of these things, are exactly the right amount, and clearly man’s Creator, by extension, made these things also, and allows them to exist.

Individually, also, each person was perfectly made with the exact amount of ability to do some things well, and some other things not so well. For each of us, there is an abundance of Life for each of us to work with, and an abundance of humanity to deal with also.

It may well seem to us that we are not given an unlimited amount of time, but the truth is that time is experienced in the way that space is, which is relative to the person having the experience. Have you ever noticed that when you visit a place that you have not visited since you were small, how much it seems that the space has shrunk? The road I grew up on as a small child seemed like a tremendous highway, until I went back as an adult and saw that it could barely contain two cars side by side.

Time occurs in a similar way — as I grow older, it seems that is flying by from year to year, and I am still in my 30’s!

Some small insects live only a matter of hours or days at best, and somehow I think that they have an experience of having lived a life that is just as full as ours. While I’ve never been a small insect to my knowledge, I imagine that they are quite content with the time they live, and at some cosmic level, it is the perfect amount of time.

Trusting that each component of our lives (tangible or not) exists in exactly the perfect amount has begun to allow me to relax into what some authors call the “suchness” of what is in our lives. This certainly helps in dealing with the challenges of daily life in Kingston!


In Scarcity There is Abundance
The word “lack” is one that is troublesome, and the way we use it seems to create its own mischief.

Is there a lack of fresh water in the ocean? It depends on who is asking the question, and the concern depends on how the word is being used. To a human seeking to find drinking water on a desert island, there would certainly seem to be a lack. To an animal that needs salt water to survive, it would not (I suppose.)

Is there a lack of fresh water in the desert? It also depends on who (or what) is doing the asking.

The fact is that the concept of “lack” occurs inside of a context of “wanting more.” This is quite different from accepting the current amount as perfect and complete, exactly the way they are.

How about scarcity?

The word scarcity can be taken to mean the same as “lack.” At other times, scarcity can be used to denote some reality, or near-reality, such as “there is a scarcity of one kind of fish in the sea, relative to the total number of fish.”

But, scarcity is mostly a relative concept.

When I lived in New Jersey, for each and every cold month of the year, I experienced a scarcity of warm weather. For many, however, the summer heat was oppressive (when it came) and they experienced a scarcity of cold weather for each of the months when the temperature rose above 65 degrees. It was all a matter of perspective. I personally don’t complain about an abundance of warm weather… I blame living in Ithaca, NY for 4.5 years for that.

While I lived in the US, most Americans who heard that I lived in Jamaica would share some positive impression they had of the island and expressed a desire to visit and to stay as long as possible. Conversely, most Jamaicans living in Jamaica have said clearly in opinion polls that 80% of them would migrate to the US if given the chance. The fact that this is the same island does not mean that there are similar experiences of the abundance that exists.

Most people, however, regardless of nationality would agree that there is a scarcity of money in their lives.

However, just because there is wide agreement, does not mean that there is not a different experience that is available. Perhaps, a sound place to start would be with the following: “I have the perfect amount of money right now, down to the penny. The Universe (or God) has not made a mistake in giving me more or less than I have at the moment.”

“Furthermore, the Universe will be sending the perfect amount to me within the next 6 months, 6 years or 66 years, or more.”

Is it possible to see that in the acceptance of the perfect amount available to us, that we can see the abundance of everything in front of us?

For example, a child can easily see the abundance of the days left to live life.
An elderly adult can see the abundance of love that is available to her for the rest of her life.

An Eskimo can see an abundance of plants growing in a tropical backyard.
A gardener can see an abundance of weeds in that same yard.

A Jamaican can see an abundance of ganja growing in his country.
The US’ Drug Enforcement Association (DEA) can see an abundance of illegal drugs in the same country.

A resident can see an abundance of crime in the neighborhood, and an abundance of opportunities to make a difference.
A thief can see an abundance of possible criminal acts.

A mystic can see an abundance of Moments of Now.

It seems that an experience of scarcity only exists when there is an inability to accept completely what exists now. When what is, is accepted fully, then abundance is always present.

In Jamaica at the moment, the country has a per capita murder rate that is in the top three in the world (for countries that are not at war.) There is an abundance of murders, and also an abundance of possible contribution to make, and therefore an abundance of opportunities to be continually fulfilled in life.

In Trinidad at the moment, the kidnapping rate continues at the rate of 4 per week (from my memory.) There is an abundance of opportunities to transform the culture that allows that level.

In poverty, there is an abundance of opportunities to make more income. In wealth, there is an abundance of charities to which a significant contribution can be made.

In prison there is an abundance of time to meditate and discover self. In the hot deserts there is an abundance of sand and heat. In the cold deserts there is an abundance of heat and snow.

The point here is that in life, there is an abundance of chances to live life abundantly. In 2 days of life, there is an abundance of chances for an ant to life its life abundantly.

It all depends on the one doing the living, and the context that then gives rise to a particular experience.


Opportunity Needs Space
At the same time, it seems to be true by definition that scarcity can be interpreted as “space.” And, there is no possibility of growth, expansion and learning if there is no “space” within which growth can occur.

Huh? What does that mean?

A plant needs space around it to grow. A person who knows everything cannot be taught anything. A business that has 100% of the market cannot grow its market share. A room full of people cannot expand by adding more people. A country that has conquered the planet becomes the planet, and ceases to be itself. A breakthrough is impossible if everything that there is to accomplish, has been accomplished.

Opportunity, any opportunity, requires that there be space within which to grow. In other words, if scarcity is seen as nothing more than “space,” then opportunity requires scarcity for it to exist.

Without scarcity, there is no opportunity.

In business, a scarcity of poor customer service leads to an abundance of opportunities to differentiate the business on the level of service. In sports, a scarcity of top teams presents an opportunity to improve and to accomplish a high standard. In life, a scarcity of comfort presents an opportunity for spiritual growth. In the world, a scarcity of poverty gives humans an opportunity to experience growth and expansion.

“Scarcity” can therefore be seen as an opportunity, and a prerequisite for growth. To argue that there should always be more, however, is a recipe for madness, and sets up an expectation that life will never meet.

The truth that is so very difficult to remember is that while life is providing the perfect amount of everything, we are the ones driving ourselves crazy with thoughts that it should another way, other than the way it is.

Krisnamuthy, the philosopher, was once once asked what his secret to happiness is. He replied “I accept what’s happening” (paraphrased.)

Someone else also said “A Master prefers what occurs.” In our world, that could be translated as “A Master prefers what he or she has right now.”

Brilliant.









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On Winning Hearts and Minds

A while back, a client asked me what it took to win the hearts and minds of the people in his corporation. This was no theoretical conversation. As a senior manager, he had seen declining morale reflected in internal surveys. While profits were up, the company was seen as an “also ran” in its industry, and had an uncaring, unfeeling image.

Without answering, I said “find something new to be responsible for, and bring closure to it by apologizing for it.”

When I said it, it actually surprised me a bit.

While it’s something that I’ve been thinking about for many years, it struck me that until he asked me, I would not have answered that way before, even to myself. The statement makes no sense, in the normal way of thinking.

Yet, it applied perfectly.

Between the employees and its senior managers there was significant distrust. There were promises made that were broken. Outright lies told. Projects were started with great fanfare and then dropped.

While this kind of things happens in companies all day long, when they happen in public they have a particularly corrosive effect on culture and morale. People refer to them over and over, as the upset that occurred lingers without being addressed or resolved.

The weakest managers try their best to “keep things positive.” They skip over bad news, and focus on the good. Their public utterances are all about how great things are, as they try to look good and make everyone around them feel better.

Unfortunately, relentless optimism only irritates the original upset and deepens mistrust.

The only effective response is to “find something new to be responsible for, and bring closure to it by apologizing for it.”

And here, I’m not talking about the fake, no-apology that politicians and CEO’s are so fond of: “We need to find better ways to get the word out about the good things that are happening in the country / company.” This involves nothing new.

The “something new” could even be a success that has been unacknowledged, but usually leaders have no problem with this kind of communication. It is the failures that are much harder to acknowledge, but these are the ones that employees are the most willing to hear, when they have been fed a steady diet of good news.

The funny thing is, winning hearts and minds involves little more than an ability to “find something new to be responsible for, and bring closure to it by apologizing for it.” It unfailingly gets the attention of even the most ardent critic. An honest good faith effort to make things right is supremely powerful, especially to those who want things to be right, and are even cynical that that will never happen.

Recently, South Africa underwent such a process on a massive scale, involving millions of people. Politicians, soldiers, policemen, “freedom fighters” — they all involved themselves in the process that brought an end to the psychic suffering of all the people of that country.

My sister, who lives in Johannesburg, reports that the mood in the country is one of deep optimism, and she recently moved back to live in South Africa after living for several years in Ghana.

This optimism is to be expected. After all, that’s what happens when anyone takes steps to regenerate a relationship, and this is what it takes to win hearts and minds.

It is ironic – winning hearts and minds has nothing to do with being tough, and everything to do with working to “find something new to be responsible for, and bring closure to it by apologizing for it.”

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On Asking Better Questions

In a couple of speeches given recently, it has struck me that I appear to be learning less and less. I long for the days when I thought I could offer some powerful answers to the questions of the day, and apply some well-thought out conclusions to my audiences.

However, I find myself only being able to come up with questions.

More questions than the average person asks, to be sure, but still more questions than answers. At the start of each of these speeches I told people that I could not promise them solutions. Instead, I promised to share with them some of the questions that my colleagues and I were asking, and some of the answers that were coming up with. Our answers were admittedly partial.

Fortunately, the experiences were interesting and stimulating. It was exciting to share “partial answers” with a large group, and to let them in on the knowledge we are developing as a part of our own discovery process.

To be honest, I did have a concern that I might appear to them to not know what the heck I was talking about, given that I was coming to them with more questions than answers. Supposedly, they wanted me to speak because I know something about the topic, not because I know a bunch of questions.

But, in each case, my fears were unfounded. I found the following.

Intimacy

Sharing the problem and our thinking about the issues allowed people to better understand the issues themselves, as they could relate to the problem. In most cases, they already had done some thinking about the issues. No-one might have gone as far as we did in our thinking. No-one might have asked as many questions as we have. No-one may have been willing to share the partial answers derived.

But I did sense that people wanted to do their own thinking, even if they did it as part of an audience in a group setting.


Partnership

By opening up the issue with our questions, I sensed that they felt included as our partners in coming up with answers. This partnership could be used to get at better answers, if we both engaged in the questions for long enough.


Credibility

Any concern that I had about my own credibility disappeared when I found out that by virtue of the thinking we have done, we were asking better questions than others. I used to think that an expert was someone who had all the answers, but I’m not convinced that a Master is someone who has better questions, taking me back to my days of reading Tony Robbins personal development books.

Expertise can be demonstrated by the kinds of questions that are asked, as they show that the expert has moved from the easy answers to the more difficult ones, and the audience in each case enjoyed the process of learning by asking, versus learning by being told.


I think the days of being respected by having “all the answers” are essentially over – there is too much knowledge available to the average professional through the internet to allow it to continue. Instead, there is a new kind of respect coming from “having all the questions” especially when the mere fact of asking the questions demonstrates courage, conviction and intelligence.