K.E.E.N. skills | The Fourth Revolution Blog

When to Decide That a Goal is Not Meant to be Reached

“A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at” is a famous Bruce Lee quote.

We need to be able to let go when we don’t reach our goals but progress towards them has been sufficient.

Some people don’t have goals. They err aimlessly in the world and will never get anywhere.
Some other people have goals and will be relentless until they reach them. Sometimes these people are visionaries that suffer from never reaching their goals. Or, they suffer when they reach their goal and figure out they are not satisfied. They might be producing great things but remain frustrated.
Some other people have goals, and know when to decide that progress has been sufficient and that they now need to update their goals, without reaching their original aim. How can they decide this change without feeling regrets of changing path without having accomplished their quest? One simple criteria applies: when the new goal is more exciting and appears more fulfilling than the previous goal.

Don’t change goal every other day, but recognize that only excitement and passion will drive you to do new stuff. If you find a new goal that is more compelling to the point that the previous goal looks dull and unattractive, switch. And, above all, don’t feel regrets and let go of any that might remain.

It’s not about Work-Life Balance, it’s about Work-Life Integration

This is a quote of Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO, as related by Hugh McLeod. Hugh continues: “Work and personal life seems to meld together in a way that can be either enhancing or debilitating – and it is up to each person to structure what works in their life and in ways that allow them to be their best in work and at home. What is interesting is that this is a new phenomenon, borne out of technology.”

Work-Life balance is a typical concept stemming from a time where work and life were happening in different environments, separated by the barrier of commuting. This geographical border has now been abolished by technology. Work has already heavily invaded our private home, and life increasingly (but with more difficulties due to old habits) invades a bit our work.

Visionaries try to develop new spaces where life and work could co-exist harmoniously (this seems to be one of the objectives of Tony Hsieh’s Las Vegas downtown project that allies urban and social experiment).

We need to stop these obsolete and pervading considerations about work-life balance and concentrate on how we can integrate these two activities. In fact, they are not antagonistic but in synergy and we need to recognize that better. Once we look at it that way, a world of possibilities opens.

What about you? What do you see when you consider that work and life are in fact integrated and will become ever more integrated?

What’s Your Presentation’s Single Message?

That’s a question I often ask to people who ask me to advise or coach them and I am often met with blank stares. Even after a long winding presentation that lasted a few hours. It is the most important question: if you don’t what’s your message, how can you expect to have communicated it properly?!?

What's the message? Bad ppt example — So, what’s the message?

Yes, you need to have one message. One SINGLE message that pervades your entire presentation from start to finish.

Remember that law of presentations by Jon Steel in Perfect Pitch: “The more separate points you attempt to make, the less your audience will take in“.

It might be tough to restrict yourself to one single message that you’ll wave in and out of your presentation, in particular if you feel like it is the single opportunity you will have to express yourself in front of a particular audience.

Yet, what do you prefer: one single message that is noticed and remembered, or a presentation that will soon be forgotten?

Make your choice. One single well-crafted message for the next presentation will take the day. Ready to try?

The Job of a Leader is to Grow More Leaders

It is the first point of Robin Sharma’s ‘the top 10 things amazing leader do‘ post.

Seeing the mighty oak in the acorn — As a leader, do you recognize the mighty oaks in the acorns around you?

Actually this is so true that I deem leaders who fail to groom successors and can’t pass on their steering wheel utter failures at leaders. Even if their organization had been successful under their helm.

What serves to deliver great results if they can’t be sustained after you are gone? When you have an unfortunate accident? It is just so true that one of the prime roles of leaders is to develop more leaders. And it is something you can see and touch readily in organizations. It is never a secret to know if the leader is coaching and mentoring others to grow and become successful as leaders. This practice, when it exists, pervades an entire organization.

It remains even more so in the Fourth Revolution, within the smaller core of organizations. At its core, movement leadership only does its job if it grooms future leaders. If the leader knows to step aside to leave younger generations take over in time.

Be a leader. Grow leaders!

Why You Should not Seek to Adapt too much to your Circumstances

“The Better Adapted You Are, the Less Adaptable You Tend to Be“. Systems and living beings tend to adapt as much as possible to their environment. With a dramatic effect: if they become too adapted, too specialized, they become vulnerable.

lab mice — It can be dangerous to be too specialized!

Human success in nature is mainly due to our adaptability across different climates, seasons and living conditions.

Yet we tend to forget too often that adaptability has been our key for success for generations, like for example when the Industrial Age taught us that specialization was best for our social success (see the post ‘Stop to be Excessively Specialized – Become a Generalist to be Successful in the Collaborative Age‘).

Gerald Weinberg, whom this quote is from (in ‘The Secrets of Consulting‘), continues: “This law provides one reason why people need consultants. Consultants are less adapted to the present situation, and therefore are potentially more adaptable. Their perception of now/then tradeoffs is different from those close to the problem, which makes them a valuable source of ideas (as well as people not to be trusted)“. That’s why you need to have candids in your meetings and make sure you always bring people that have not been too associated with your ideas.

Remain adaptable. Seek outside advice. And you’ll be successful.

How to Overcome the Experts’ Confidence Conundrum?

“If someone’s confidence is high, we believe they are probably right; if they are less certain, we feel they are less reliable“, research suggests, as reported by Dan Gardner in ‘Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail – and Why We Believe Them Anyway‘.

“Obviously, this means we deem those who are dead certain the best forecasters, while those who make ‘probabilistic calls’ – like “it is probable this will happen but not certain” – must be less accurate, and anyone who dares to say the odds of something are 50-50 will be met with scorn“. The author goes on to add that it is not a conscious decision path.

So let’s summarize: we tend to believe those confident experts – who are probably wrong. And we tend to discredit those experts that don’t look too confident and who qualify their statements or speak about probabilities – who are probably closer to the truth or what can be said about it at the present moment. That’s quite an annoying situation, isn’t it?

I have personally drawn a personal conclusion: when too many experts agree with high confidence, I conclude that is groupthink and that it is worthwhile to take a contrarian position. At least you establish a noticeable difference with the bulk of the experts!

Be careful of experts that look too confident – they are probably wrong when it comes to predictions.

People Don’t Care How Much You Know, Unless They Know How Much You Care

This classical quote is mentioned the excellent book “the Perfect Pitch – The Art of Selling Ideas and Winning New Business” by Jon Steel about public speaking and presenting.

Yet it obviously also does apply to many other instances in our daily lives.

It is amazing how turned-off people can turn on if you show a little bit of caring.

What is caring but the expression of an attempt an emotional connection?

Show that you care in negotiations, and in any situation where you interact with people. And be certain that in all cases, nobody cares about how much or what you know!

If you Want to Become Unstoppable… Don’t Stop!

I found this beautiful sentence in an excellent post by Manal Ghosain, ‘the Persistence‘.

Becoming unstoppable is often not an issue of unbearable external forces but much more frequentlyan internal issue.

It’s all about personal persistence.

As Manal highlights, it’s often all about letting go of expectations, judgment and comparisons.

Become unstoppable. Just don’t stop!

How to shift worldviews by shifting words

Words are are more meaningful than we would think. And they are also much more powerful than we would be ready to admit. Actually it is possible to shift worldviews dramatically by shifting the meaning of words. There are several ways to achieve this effect:

Refer back to the etymology of the word and its Greek or Latin meaning will shift the modern use of it. Example: ‘career’ means a ‘race‘, hence in a world of scarcity! Is that really what we mean?
Use a metaphor encompassing this word but bringing it on a different level than its common usage, thus shifting the image. For example, ‘fishing‘ can be used in the context of recruitment with a specific meaning.
Create a new word (or promote a word from an other language, or revive an old word) to describe a concept. For example ‘captious‘ is a qualification applicable to people tending to find fault or raise petty objections (for example in meetings). Now you have a word you can use to describe a behavior you could not qualify before! Suddenly lots of meeting participants seem to be captious!

“The limits of your language are the limits of your world” (Ludwig Wittgenstein). Overcome that limit! Hat tip to Prof. Neil Bearden for ‘Captious’ and insights on the power of words in coaching

How we underestimate how meaningful our words can be

Who doubts the power of words? Still we probably underestimate how meaningful the words we are using can be.

In his excellent book ‘the Secrets of Consulting‘, Gerald Weinberg describes how helpful it is to a consultant ‘.”It’s gotten so I can actually identify many of my client’s problems by the gilded language used to describe the problems. Clients who use euphemisms are hiding something – event from themselves. For example, most of the time, cost-benefit analysis means cost analysis, and no attention is paid to benefits. In plain language, this means “we’re going to list every expense we can possibly associate with this plan, to make sure it’s smothered””.

With my experience as a consultant I agree fully with that statement. In particular when I start an intervention at a new client, the words that are being used are so strikingly describing the culture that it gives instantly a flavor of the issue.

Of course, it is less obvious if you are immersed in it. What about taking some time to think about the real meaning of the words you are using on a daily basis?

When to change your approach to a problem

“Nearly every man who develops an idea works it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then he gets discouraged. That’s not the place to become discouraged“. – Thomas A. Edison.

Mr Edison, How persistent do you need to be? — Don’t look at me like this! How persistent do you need to be?

I like this inspirational quote, and at the same time I am still struggling to understand how to apply it. Until when is persistence bordering on the fringe of stupidity? What is the patience we need to have when our project really seems impossible?

Edison’s persistence and his 10,000 trials to get a functional light-bulb are legendary. But it is not always possible to have the means of persistence. Sometimes persistence will lead to disaster. Or to outright insanity.

Thanks to this blog,we now know what to do not to become insane: stop doing things the same way expecting different results. So, I’d like to hack this quote to make it more applicable:

“Nearly every man who develops an idea works it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then he gets discouraged. That’’s the place to change how he approaches it“. – Fourth Revolution

Why are we susceptible to the “Good Old Days” fallacy?

Everybody at one time or the other will mention the “Good Ol’ Days”. It seems that our past is such a great place to have been… compared to the present or the future

This psychological effect is due to hindsight. “It is the future that frighten us, not the past. Even if it has not been easy, it always seems sweet because certain.” explains Dan Gardner in ‘Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail – and Why We Believe Them Anyway‘. He continues, “The profound perceptual distortion created by hindsight bias can make almost anyone nostalgic for the good old days“.

Even people who had to live through rough times in their youths, for example during the Great Recession of the 1930’s and the following World War, will tend to remember the past with affection.

“This illusion is pervasive and yet it is seldom recognized. In books, articles, blogs and broadcasts, we call our time the ‘age of uncertainty‘, believing that there is something uniquely uncertain about this moment. But the phrase ‘age of uncertainty‘ which has appeared in the New York Times 5,720 times, made its debut in 1924!”

Uncertainty is scary. We tend to fall in the trap of the security of hindsight. Let us not do that, and let’s lean decidedly into the Fourth Revolution.

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