Newsletter #2
So when are you going to change?
Motivating organisational change
The secrets of champions: Muhammad Ali
Running productive meetings
Upcoming seminars
We are pleased to announce dates for upcoming seminars in Geneva, Nyon and Paris …>>
New service: on-line consultation!
WARNING!
MindStore can seriously improve your performance
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So when are you going to change?
Personal change is hard, and for at least two fundamental reasons related to how the brain works. Knowing this allows us to create a strategy that dramatically increases our chances of success.
Firstly, any behaviour that has become habitual is essentially managed automatically. Changing the habit requires a lot of conscious effort, which is tiring.
Secondly, our brains have a very strong capacity to detect and reject “errors”, meaning situations where we consciously try to act in a different way from normal. Such “errors” can create a strong emotional reaction akin to fear.
Change therefore naturally creates stress and discomfort, and it requires a great deal of willpower to push past these barriers to create lasting change.
Think of the effort you had to make to learn a new skill such as riding a bicycle, skiing or driving a car, under circumstances when you were presumably highly motivated.
Contrast that with the effort you would now have to make to learn to ride a unicycle, to snowboard or even to drive a car on the “wrong” side of the road… Combine this high level of effort with weak reasons to do so, and you have the situation many of us face with respect to personal change. In sum: it would be nice, even fantastic to change, but it looks too hard…
We can’t reduce the effort you will have to make, but we can dramatically increase your probability of success.
The secret is to build desire, belief and finally expectation that you will succeed. Here’s how:
1. Desire
The easiest way to build desire is to identify the benefits to come and therefore why you want to succeed. Do this by analysing the negative consequences of doing nothing and the positive consequences of succeeding. Focus on what you stand to gain and your goal will become irresistibly attractive (If it doesn’t, you might as well abandon it now).
2. Belief
If you don’t believe you will be successful, you won’t be. Building self-belief includes challenging negative thoughts, keeping your strengths in mind and keeping your focus on what is going well. Look at others that have succeeded and ask, ‘why not me?’
3. Expectation
Your mental preparation is complete when you truly expect to be successful. Build expectation by repetitively visualising yourself achieving your goal. The more you visualise, indeed the more you dream about success, the more likely you are to achieve the goal in reality.
When applied with self-discipline, these three steps work. In fact the fundamental difference between highly successful people such as Muhammad Ali and average people is their level of self-discipline, as more than 150,000 participants on MindStore for Business programmes can attest. During the two-day course, we provide the tools and techniques that can truly change your life. Afterwards, it’s up to you…
Feel free to contact us if you’d like to know more!
How do we apply these steps to an organisation? Click here to learn more.
Motivating organisational change
Organisations are made up of people, and as such there is no such thing as organisational change. What is commonly called organisational change is the overall effect over time of each and every individual making their own decisions to change (or not!)
One of the basic errors managers make while attempting to introduce organisational change is to forget this simple fact, which bears repeating: organisations don’t change, people do.
There are three fundamental obstacles to overcome:
1. Getting enough people to see the need for change
2. Getting enough people to try the new approach
3. Getting enough people through ‘trying it out’ to high performance
The probability of individual change is increased by building desire, belief and expectation in a successful outcome. When we want to create organisational change, therefore, we must first help a critical mass of people in the organisation to desire, believe in and ultimately expect the changes to be successful.
How do we do this?
A whole library of books have been written on the subject, many of them making change management appear so complicated it is a wonder anyone ever embarks on it. In the words of Albert Einstein, ‘Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler’.
We call our approach MindStore Future Perfect. It works as follows:
Phase 1: See the need for change; build desire for the outcomes
The first step is to help people experience a sharp contrast between the current situation and a more desirable future. We will often use large group processes to bring people to acknowledge together the desirability of change, thus creating the momentum needed to get started.
Phase 2: Try out the new approach; believe we can do it
Our goal in this second phase is to make it ‘safe’ and even fun to try out the new approach. By reducing the fear of failure and providing lots of support people will move up the learning curve to the point where they ‘know’ they can be successful.
Phase 3: Move through ‘trying it out’ to high performance: expect success
The third phase is about accelerating change. This phase involves measurement, feedback and sustaining activities. It is especially important to recognise the new top performers and to provide support to others to come up to their level.
Throughout this whole process our focus remains firmly on valuing what works, in order to “grow” it. We talk about what we want to see and amplify any evidence of success, no matter how small at first. The more people talk about what is good in the "new” way and the less they talk about the old way, the quicker the transformation will take place.
The secrets of champions: Muhammad Ali
‘Champions are made from something they have deep inside them: a desire, a dream, a vision. They have to have the skill and the will. But the will must be stronger than the skill.’ – Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali had of course an incredible physique, great strength and speed and was considered a “natural” boxer. But so were Sonny Liston, George Foreman, Joe Frazier and many others that he beat. It’s hard to remember now, but in most of his greatest fights, Ali was the underdog. Nobody believed he would beat Foreman in Zaire, not even his own entourage, who genuinely feared for him. So where did Ali get his huge self-belief? Why did he expect to win, against all the odds?
Ali coined the phrase “Future History” to describe his technique. Upon signing a contract for a fight, he would sit down, relax, and in his imagination run through the fight until the moment he won. He would then freeze the winning mental image and become aware of all his senses as if he were there at that very moment. This is what he called a Future History. Although a vision of the future, he experienced it in such detail that subconsciously he believed it had already happened.
He then repeated his Future History over and over again in his mind’s eye, and over and over again to anybody that would listen. His press conferences were legendary for his unshakeable self-belief (which some saw as arrogance).
Ali first made his famous statement ‘I am the Greatest’ in 1962, two years before he beat Sonny Liston and long before it was demonstrably true.
What can we learn from Ali?
It is clear that technical and physical preparation are absolutely critical: “positive thinking” is pure delusion if not based on the foundation of strong technical skills. The few fights that Ali lost were those where he was physically poorly prepared.
Mental preparation is the real difference which separates the best from the merely great.
It is thanks to mental preparation that one keeps going past all reasonable limits and continues to fight when all others have long given up. It is thanks to mental preparation that one never lets go, even during the darkest moments when all seems lost.
Mental preparation is the secret of champions.
The MindStore system is designed for exactly this purpose.
Running productive meetings
Remember the “meeting from hell”? The one that started late in total confusion and finished hours later with nothing being decided… or maybe the one that was dominated by Mr Know-it-all where all the decisions had to be revisited weeks later… or the one that ended in a huge argument between Mrs Sales and Mr R&D?
We have all been there and experienced our own variations on these “meetings from hell”. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be like that. At MindStore a large part of our job involves running productive meetings: over time we have put together a handy check-list of things that work.
This check-list covers planning and setting up. In our next newsletter we’ll give you tips on facilitating the actual meeting itself.
1. Aim and desired outcomes
It is absolutely essential to clarify these before beginning detailed planning. The meeting Aim is the answer to the question “why are we getting together?” It is generally a high-level, descriptive statement, e.g. 'the aim of this meeting is to agree our strategy for next year'.
The Desired Outcomes are more concrete and spell out in precise terms what should happen before the end of the meeting. An example would be: 'By the end of this meeting, we will have chosen between Options A and B and agreed the immediate actions to be taken'.
2. Participants
This may seem obvious, but if you don’t have the right participants you won’t be able to reach your desired outcomes. Ask yourself, who has control and who has influence over the issues we are going to discuss? Who will be affected by the decisions? Should they be represented?
Once the participant list is determined, they all need to be contacted in good time with a copy of the Aim and Desired Outcomes of the meting and any pre-meeting instructions. Is it enough for them to show up, or should they prepare in some way? Make sure you set their expectations correctly.
3. Process
Getting the process right is arguably the most neglected part of meeting planning, and the most common cause of unstructured, inefficient meetings.. At MindStore, we spend as much time planning how we are going to deal with a particular topic as we spend deciding what the topics should be. We use dozens of different process tools, each with its specific purpose. As an example, a one hour meeting may have as many as 5 different activities, each designed to progress the group towards the overall desired outcomes.
Questions to ask yourself include: how will you share information? How will you make sure everybody gets the opportunity to speak, without wasteful repetition? How will you encourage opposing points of view? In short, how will you step through the process to reaching the best possible outcome: the one that everyone will support?
4. Logistics
Logisitics appear so obvious and simple that they are often neglected. Many meetings have been spoiled by poor logistics! Don’t forget to book the meeting room and any required materials and equipment. Think carefully about the room set-up: different layouts work best for different types of meeting. Plan for breaks and meals.
More subtle logistical issues include making sure that everyone can actually find the meeting room; that the equipment works; that lighting and ventilation are good; that special dietary needs are catered for; and that key people will not leave early…
Please contact us if you have a particularly challenging meeting coming up and would like some advice or facilitation.
Upcoming seminars
We are please to announce the dates for the following seminars in France and in Switzerland:
Paris, May 23
Evening conference: “Accelerating Change: how to create a virtuous circle”
Jointly presented by Marvin Faure and Yvon Pesqueux (Professor of Organisational Systems, Conservatoire Nationale des Arts et Métiers)
Registration and more details here.
Nyon, September 26
One day seminar: “Accelerating Change”
Led by Marvin Faure (in French)
Registration and more details here.
Geneva, October 11-12
Two-day seminar MindStore for Business
Led by Marvin Faure (in French)
Registration and more details here.
Paris, November 22-23
Two-day seminar MindStore for Business
Led by Marvin Faure (in French)
Registration and more details here.
All these courses are open for registration, within the limits of available places. Please don’t hesitate to contact us with any special requests.
For courses in the UK please visit www.mindstore.com and for courses in Germany please visit www.mindstore.de
WARNING!
MindStore can seriously improve your performance