Thinking about this brought back a memory of a little plaque that used to hang on the wall of my grandmother’s house which read “today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday”. It was very common at the time and I have to admit that I thought it was exceptionally corny.

But I have come to realise that generally speaking it is a truism. How often do we worry about what might be only for our fears never to materialise? It is easy to justify the worry as planning for something so that we will know how to behave when the bad thing happens – even if usually it doesn’t. Or perhaps we subconsciously think that if we worry enough we can stop bad things from happening to us.

Mark Twain is quoted as having said something like:

I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.

or

I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.

According to Freakenomics, the Yale Book of Quotations has a similar thought, long before Mark Twain came up with it.

“There are indeed (who might say Nay) gloomy & hypochondriac minds, inhabitants of diseased bodies, disgusted with the present, & despairing of the future; always counting that the worst will happen, because it may happen.  To these I say How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened!”
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, Apr. 8, 1816

Whoever said matters less than that the point is well made. Of course I am not advocating an irresponsible attitude to being prepared for the future. But I am suggesting that worrying about what might happen can paralyse us in the present and prevent us from attempting something or from enjoying the moment. Either way it is likely to rob us of the sense of wonder that we will have experienced as small children before we learned how to worry. Even worse, excessive worrying can lead to feelings of high anxiety and even cause physical illness.

It seems to me that in many situations worry is a choice, rather like the half empty or half full cup. We might not be able to control what happens to us but we can control how we react to it.

I will leave the last words to the wise King Solomon:

Worry weighs us down; a cheerful word picks us up!

The Message: © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

Barrie Wyatt is the owner of  nVision Consulting and a licensed PQASSO mentor whose goal is to use the skills he developed over a long career in the public sector primarily for the benefit of the Voluntary and Community Sector.

The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.

In this poem, a cunning fox wants to eat a hedgehog. He fully understands his surroundings, and spends hours plotting the perfect attack. In contrast, the simplistic hedgehog is unaware of the imminent attack but when it happens just rolls himself into a spiny, impenetrable ball. The fox keeps coming up with new strategies but, not surprisingly, the result never changes – the hedgehog wins (cf The Tortoise and the Hare by Aesop).

In 1953 British philosopher and social theorist Isaiah Berlin expanded on this conclusion in an essay where he divided the world’s thinkers and philosophers into two groups, hedgehogs and foxes.

And most recently (2001) the ‘hedgehog concept’ has been developed as a corporate leadership strategy by Jim Collins in his book ‘Good to Great’. Collins speculated that if organisations were more like the hedgehog – focusing on one thing and doing it well – they would become great organisations and out-perform their competitors.

‘Good to Great’ outlines three separate questions that leaders in an organisation need to ask., and argues that the organisation will find its successful strategy (its “Hedgehog Concept”), at the intersection where all three of these questions are satisfied. The organisation can then focus like the hedgehog and successfully execute their strategy again and again. However, Jim Collins notes that this approach is not a quick fix formula but a set of useful questions that may take several years to work through and refine.

The three questions, which are represented as three overlapping circles, are:

• What are you deeply passionate about?
• What can you be the best in the world at?
• What drives your economic engine?

These questions assume that:

• If the people in the organisation are not passionate about the strategy, they will not execute it consistently.
• If the organisation is not the best in the world at something, competitors will eventually overtake them.
• If there is no economic engine, the company will not satisfy its customers and shareholders.

Collins notes that

A Hedgehog Concept is not a goal to be the best, a strategy to be the best, an intention to be the best, or a plan to be the best. It is an understanding of what you can be the best at. Focusing solely on what you can potentially do better than any other organisation is the only path to greatness.

Personal application

This powerful diagnostic framework can also be used as a personal development self assessment tool. Answer the following three questions (slightly rephrased to be more personal) honestly:

• What are you passionate about?
• What are you really good at?
• What do you need (in terms of pay and reward)?

These three questions are incredibly important to answer. Collins puts it

If you could drive toward the intersection of these three circles and translate that intersection into a simple, crystalline concept that guided your life choices, then you’d have a Hedgehog Concept for yourself.

Where are you now in your life’s journey? Whether you are currently employed or unemployed, starting your career or starting retirement, or just unsure what to do next, you would benefit from asking these three questions.

I have found that the first (what am I passionate about?) to be the most difficult to answer. I understand that passion refers to what you get excited about doing and that it is the energy that drives being great.  And I understand that in considering this question you are not attempting to stimulate passion but to discover what makes you passionate. We all have skills and abilities and there are several techniques for analysing past work to identify what they are, and also what gave us a real buzz – a good clue to what we are passionate about.

Do you dare invest some time to consider these three questions, and then make whatever changes required so that your life choices are guided by the answer?

Barrie Wyatt is the owner of nVision Consulting and a licensed PQASSO mentor whose goal is to use the skills he developed over a long career in the public sector primarily for the benefit of the Voluntary and Community Sector.

Dan’s talk is really about the need for social innovation. He passionately believes that the not for profit sector has a critical role to play in dealing with some of the massive social problems of our day but the organisations are small by comparison and there is a belief system that keeps them small. He says

We have two rulebooks. We have one for the nonprofit sector and one for the rest of the economic world. It’s an apartheid, and it discriminates against the [nonprofit] sector …

Dan asserts that charities are being discriminated against and illustrates his argument in five areas:

• Compensation – a survey in the USA found that where the median compensation in for-profit organisations was 400,000 dollars, for the CEO of a large medical charity it was half that but for a hunger charity it was less than one quarter of that.
• Advertising and marketing – it is OK to tell the consumer brands, “You may advertise all the benefits of your product” but we tell charities, “You cannot advertise all the good that you do.”
• Taking risk in pursuit of new ideas for generating revenue – Disney can make a new $200 million movie that flops, and nobody calls the attorney general. But do a little $1 million community fundraiser for the poor, and if it doesn’t produce a 75 percent profit to the cause in the first 12 months your character is called into question.
• Time – it was OK for Amazon to go 6 years without returning profit to investors because they knew there was a long-term objective of building market dominance. But if a nonprofit organisation ever had a dream of building scale that required that for 6 years, and no money was going to go to the needy because it was going to be invested in building this scale, there would be an outcry.
• Profit – the for-profit sector can pay people profits in order to attract their capital for their new ideas, but you can’t pay profits in a nonprofit sector, so the for-profit sector has a lock on the multi-trillion-dollar capital markets, and the nonprofit sector is starved for growth and risk and idea capital.

And in summing this up he says

You put those 5 things together — you can’t use money to lure talent away from the for-profit sector, you can’t advertise on anywhere near the scale the for-profit sector does for new customers, you can’t take the kinds of risks in pursuit of those customers that the for-profit sector takes, you don’t have the same amount of time to find them as the for-profit sector, and you don’t have a stock market with which to fund any of this, even if you could do it in the first place, and you’ve just put the nonprofit sector at an extreme disadvantage to the for-profit sector on every level. If we have any doubts about the effects of this separate rule book, this statistic is sobering: From 1970 to 2009, the number of nonprofits that really grew, that crossed the $50 million annual revenue barrier, is 144. In the same time, the number of for-profits that crossed it is 46,136. So we’re dealing with social problems that are massive in scale, and our organizations can’t generate any scale. All of the scale goes to Coca-Cola and Burger King.

We have all heard the criteria used to judge charities – ‘what percentage of my donation is wasted on overhead?’ – and we know of charities that have bad reputations based on that criteria. So we, and the charities, view overhead as intrinically ‘bad’ and therefore charities go without the overhead things they really need to grow.

Taking fundraising as an example, Dan says:

So we’ve all been taught that charities should spend as little as possible on overhead things like fundraising under the theory that, well, the less money you spend on fundraising, the more money there is available for the cause. Well, that’s true if it’s a depressing world in which this pie cannot be made any bigger. But if it’s a logical world in which investment in fundraising actually raises more funds and makes the pie bigger, then we have it precisely backwards, and we should be investing more money, not less, in fundraising, because fundraising is the one thing that has the potential to multiply the amount of money available for the cause that we care about so deeply.

On a much smaller and more parochial scale I have seen the same effect, where the limited resources are spent on delivering social benefit at the expense of overhead which is seen as bad. This means that business improvement opportunities (such as implementing a quality regime such as PQASSO) are forgone and opportunities to deliver more and better services potentially lost.

It seems to me that this is an issue for charities, funders, commissioners and the giving public as well as the media. Is it possible to change the overwhelming worldview which views overhead as bad? Of course I am NOT saying that charities should be wasteful of their resources. But social outcome is a much better way of viewing the effectiveness of charities. And, after all that is what we all want – to improve the lot of those we are serving or giving our money to.

So what can you do to help change the accepted wisdom?

Let me know your ideas. And if you know of a charity that would benefit from investing a little on PQASSO in order to make a bigger gain in social benefit, please let me know and I would be delighted to help or point you in the right direction.

Barrie Wyatt is the owner of nVision Consulting and a licensed PQASSO mentor whose goal is to use the skills he developed over a long career in the public sector primarily for the benefit of the Voluntary and Community Sector.

 Step 5 – Helping to Design, Develop and Test New Capability

You have a plan, so now you need to work through it – easier said than done.

Step 5 takes a lot of effort, ability and determination to complete to time, cost and quality.

Here’s a thought. Some work will go well and you will be confident of success, but what about:

• Risky tasks
• Unforeseen issues
• Controversial issues
• Acceptance of change
• Ensuring your design is fit for purpose.

You can use walkthroughs to mitigate against these types of issues. Walkthroughs involve a project team member leading a group of peers, experts and users through a thorough explanation and demonstration of new capability.

What are the benefits of a walkthrough?

• Improving relationship between your project and the business
• Clarifying understanding by practical application
• Explaining something in detail helps to identify issues
• Time to think
• Proving that benefit will to be delivered (or not)
• Cost-savings by resolving issues sooner rather than later
• Clarifying responsibilities and gaining ownership
• Increasing the appetite, and preparing the way for change
• Encouraging innovation by involving staff
• Building expertise in the new ways of working
• A smoother rollout and better transition to business-as-usual
• Starting the learning process
• Improved outcome quality
• Quick wins.

So how does a walkthrough work?

The type of walkthrough, time taken and number of participants involved will depend on the size and complexity of the project. It can be useful to get someone who is independent of your project to facilitate the session and keep it focused. A good facilitator will use various techniques to structure the session to encourage participants to identify defects and areas for improvement.

It is important to get the correct mix of participants e.g. subject experts, technicians, software engineers, peers, users, process owners, sponsors. The strength of this technique lies in the joint wisdom and co-operation of the group.

Before the meeting ensure attendees know what they must do to prepare for the session and clarify what their role will be on the day.

Each session should have a clear aim and participants should embrace a no-blame culture. Remember, the whole point is to identify defects and areas for improvement not to criticise an individual. Finally to gain the most benefit, it is important that participants come having done their preparation for the session.

Participants should be encouraged to work together for the good of the project. They should be open, honest, and respectful of different views. They should be creative but decisive and willing to make a difference.

The key output of the session is a list of clearly documented issues. Each issue should be prioritised and have an associated action, owner and completion date. You can then follow up these actions as part of your project.

Steve Rowbotham’s goal is to use skills developed over a long career in the public sector for the benefit of other organisations.

In my previous blog, The Acts of the Apostles, I discussed the need to act as what we do is what people will remember about us. This blog takes a different approach and starts from the point of view that we are first and foremost human beings, not human doings, and it is who we are (ie our character) that matters.

Epictetus was a Roman slave born in Turkey who was exiled to Greece. He became a Stoic philosopher, whose teachings were written down in his Discourses. He taught that all external events were determined by fate and since they were beyond our control we should just accept them stoically. However, he didn’t completely believe in determinism and taught that we are responsible for our own actions. His conclusion was that suffering happens when we try to control the uncontrollable or fail to control what is within our power. Stoics generally considered their philosophy was a way of life rather than just a way of thinking, and that the best way to judge a person’s philosophy was to look at how that person behaved. In that context, Epictetus said

First say to yourself ‘what would you be’ then do what you have to do.

Doing comes out of being.

But how do we describe ourselves so often? By what we do. Our identity is so often tied up in what we do rather than who we are – which then leads to what we do. Our actions do indeed often demonstrate our character. So, for wide variety of reasons, we act and pretend to be someone we are not. But it is not sustainable and the truth will out.

But if we can apply the teaching of Epictetus our starting point can be ‘what would I be?’ This isn’t a fatalistic ‘I am what I am and can never change. I have always been bullied and always will; that is just who I am.’ Rather, by asking a simple question “what would I be?” it is setting a clear vision of who I want to be in order to fulfil my potential or dream. And then, based only on the answer to the first question, ask yourself the supplementary question ‘what do you have to do?’ It is at this point that we are in the position of implementing the third and final step. Based on answers to the first and second questions, and in the words of perhaps one of the most famous and successful advertising slogans, ‘just do it’.

The order of the steps is important. There is no point planning your actions if you haven’t first envisioned them. Planning is important … but it does not come first. And finally do the doing to your best ability.

Can I apply this in my life?

As I have mentioned before, Epictetus believed in fate. In that world if we wanted change we had only two choices; wait for fate to come up trumps or doing something about it ourselves. Whether we believe in fate is not the point. What matters is that we do have choices and we can sit back and hope for things to change or get better. Or we can do something about it ourselves. And this applies equally to injustices we see in the world or things in our own lives we do not like. It is not magic. We might not be ‘all-powerful’, but neither are we ‘all-impotent’.

Try following the following steps:

• What would you like to change in your life?
• Envision what that would look like in practice.
• Be explicit and describe in one or two positive statements the key aspects.
• Do you really believe any of them? Do they resonate with you?
• How will you know when you ‘have arrived’ or achieved your aspirations?
• Be as explicit as you can.
• Consider what you have to do to get there.
• Set explicit goals or targets with dates.
• Flesh out the detail of your first step.
• Do you need support or help or information etc?

• Then just do what is necessary to achieve your desired change.
• Keep repeating the process as required so that you can learn from your experience.
• But … keep focussed on your envisioned new state of being.

In context I think it is clear that Epictetus considered being to be character related. So he would have been more concerned about whether we are generous, open, kind hearted or mean spirited etc than whether we wanted to be successful. But it seems to me that the principles apply equally to whatever it is we want to be.

We cannot control everything in our lives, but if we do what we can to become what we wish to be, then we will have a head start on those who sit back to see what happens. Many of the great athletes and sportsmen of our time emphasise that one of the keys to their success is differentiating between those things they can and can’t control and focussing on what they can control – their performance.

I think that the principles discussed in both this and the previous blog are valid. First we need to envision, then we need to act. If you would like help envisioning change in your life or making the practical steps to change then please contact me.

Barrie Wyatt is the owner of nVision Consulting and a licensed PQASSO mentor whose goal is to use the skills he developed over a long career in the public sector primarily for the benefit of the Voluntary and Community Sector.

“I have never heard anything about the resolutions of the apostles, but a good deal about their acts.”

It got me thinking why that might be apart from the obvious fact that there is a book in The Bible called the Acts of the Apostles rather than The Plans or Resolutions of the Apostles. So I thought the best way to  find out was to read the book.

My conclusions, in no particular order, are that the apostles:

• had three years of training with their mentor before they started their ‘acts’, a mentor who modelled the action based lifestyle they went on to live.
• were allowed to take risks and make mistakes, but learned from them.
• followed the instructions given by their mentor … and waited for the right time to start their acts.
• took opportunities when they presented themselves.
• followed the broad strategy, but
• were flexible and were able to change their plans – eg  they expanded their market from Jews only to include non-Jews.
• found ways of overcoming obstacles and did not give up in the face of oppostion.
• were prepared to invest their time and energy in difficult situations but knew when to move on to something new.
• were accountable for their actions.

And the bottom line:

• they were successful in achieving their mission – the church still prospers globally  more than 2000 yers later!

I’m sure there is more but it seems to me that in context Og Mandino was correct; all the new year resolutions and plans or strategies are worthless if we do not take action and implement them.

But if we take the injunction to act out of context we are likely to end up like headless chickens, following every whim or half opportunity that seems to present itself. That is why the GROW model is important as a whole. Having goals and options are necessary steps to the final stage – the agreed actions that come out of the way forward. And then comes the need to review our actions to ensure they were having the desired effect. Similarly we would benefit by having some vision to act as a compass for our action decisions to be based on.

My next blog, therefore, takes a slightly different approach and looks at the famous quote by Epictetus (who lived just after the time of the acts of the apostles but would have been familiar with them) -

“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”

Yes, the Apostles are best know for their acts. They did, of course, wait for the power of God to enable them to do those acts, but I agree with Og Mandino that the same principles can be applied by all of us. After all the preparation, there comes a time to apply the Nike slogan and ‘just do it’.

Barrie Wyatt is the owner of  nVision Consulting and a licensed PQASSO mentor whose goal is to use the skills he developed over a long career in the public sector primarily for the benefit of the Voluntary and Community Sector.

It claimed that constantly and in every aspect of my life, there is a fierce battle taking place in my mind as two forces battle for control over my thoughts, actions and ultimately, my entire life. It claimed that the battle is between good and evil, light and dark, good and bad, progress and regression, and that everything I want to achieve depends on my ‘inner angel’ defeating my “inner demons”.

I did not buy the product, even though it was heavily discounted to $27. But it did get me thinking and reminded me that, so far, it has not been a good year for my mind. It has been all over the place. This was, perhaps, best illustrated during a game of badminton last week where at one point I was listening to an argument going on inside my head. Needless to say, the ‘inner demons’ won the argument and I was soundly thrashed.

I was told recently an interesting story which presents the same point but in a different way. It is a story of two wolves, and is a old Cherokee Indian story (although there appears to be some dispute over the origin). It went something like:

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about the battle that goes on inside all people.

 

He said “My son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’ inside all of us. One wolf brings sadness: it is anger, anxiety, envy, jealousy, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, lying, feeling superior to others. The other wolf brings joy: it is peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and trust in yourself and in life.”

 

The grandson thought about his words for a minute and asked his grandfather “Which wolf wins?”

 

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed”.

Psychology Matters observes that answer is deceivingly simple, and states that the results of psychological research indicate that there are at least four important concepts or ideas implied by the answer:

• “The mind is not the unitary entity it seems to us but consists of different parts.
• For example in the story there are the two wolves and the “you” that chooses between them.
• These parts of the mind/brain can interact and be in conflict with each other i.e. the two wolves fight for dominance over our mind and behavior.
• The “you” has the ability to decide which wolf it will feed.
• Having made a choice, “you” can decide specifically how to “feed” or nurture the selected wolf.”

I love a section in chapter 12 of The Hobbit, where Bilbo somewhat reluctantly goes into the mountain alone (because dwarves are not heroes) to find the dragon and the gold he is protecting. The narrator points out that going on was the bravest thing Bilbo ever did – not as one might imagine fighting Smaug. Bilbo did not win the battle when he met the dragon but at that point on his journey inside the mountain where he chose not to turn back but to go on.

Very often the real battles are won (or lost) long before they are fought.

But how do we maximise the chances of us wining the battle for our minds?

It seems to me that the first thing we need is to be aware of and acknowledge the battle and, as the psychologists point out, to recognise that we, and only we, can make the choice of which wolf to feed. But self help is often not enough and this is where coaching (or in extreme cases) counselling can be necessary.  Additionally God’s help is available (if you believe in God).

Now, to apply this when I am playing badminton! And do let me know how you get on battling your demons.

Barrie Wyatt is the owner of  nVision Consulting and a licensed PQASSO mentor whose goal is to use the skills he developed over a long career in the public sector primarily for the benefit of the Voluntary and Community Sector.

The first is the bhavacakra, an instructional figure in Buddhism. It is a symbolic representation of the cycle of existand found on the outside walls of Tibetan and Indian temples and monasteries.

The second is what cyberneticists call a  self controlling loop, the idea that all living beings and ecosystems are self-controlling systems. And in every self-controlling system you can find some variation of what cyberneticists call a self-controlling loop whereby we watch, think, feel, choose  and finally do  before starting the loop again by watching  etc.

And the third, and the subject of this blog, is tool widely used in coaching to help individuals focus on what matters to them, thereby enabling them to be better able to prioritise. It can be particularly helpful in a coaching setting at the Reality stage of GROW.

It can be used as “wheel of business” or “wheel of ‘whatever’”. Follow the simple instructions to use this intuitive tool to balance and prioritise your, or your clients, life.

The wheel consists of 3 circles and, typically, 8 segments as illustrated below.

Name each segment – what works for the client, but typically include some of the following:

• Personal Development
• Health and wellbeing
• Finances
• Spiritual
• Hobbies
• Leisure and Fun
• Relationships (Partner, family and close friends)
• Work
• Wider world
• Any other subject important to you or your client

Give each segment a score (out of 10 where 1 is low and 10 is high) as to how the client rates that area of his life now and mark that in the inner circle. Join up the scores (eg spider diagram) to make visual how well balanced the client’s current life is from a satisfaction point of view

For each segment, identify some goals that describe what 10 out of 10 would look like.

Finally, taking into account aspects like what the client is  good at, what his / her strengths etc, write down some specific actions that will move the client towards achieving their goals.

Consider possible barriers to success, both reasons and excuses, and the consequences of not achieving the goals.

Identify the benefits of achieving the goals.

Set priorities for areas to focus on and set specific timescales for achievement.

But as noted in an earlier blog (Stretch for Life), don’t ignore areas that have scored high or you will run the risk of shrinkage and dropping back over time  in your levels of satisfaction without realising.

Barrie Wyatt is the owner of  nVision Consulting and a licensed PQASSO mentor whose goal is to use the skills he developed over a long career in the public sector primarily for the benefit of the Voluntary and Community Sector.

“If you don’t know where you are going, how can you expect to get there?”  – Basil S Walsh

• In Step 1 you recognised the need for, and defined a specification for change.
• In Step 2 you base-lined you current capability and identified your prioritised change requirements to take forward.
• In Step 3 you shared your change requirements with key staff and stakeholders to gain a common and accepted view of the change.

You should now have sufficient information to start planning your change. A good plan, well carried out is essential. It will help you to keep control of delivery and manage the day to day issues and risks that will inevitably occur during your project.

Create a work breakdown structure (WBS) to define the total scope of your change project based on your prioritised change requirements. The top level WBS defines the “what“ of the project. The underlying schedule defines the “when”, “who“and “how” of the project.

• Use nouns and adjectives to describe each top level WBS component.
• Use verbs to break these down into a schedule of manageable tasks, activities and dependences.
• Estimate resource needs, timescales, costs and consider potential risks to delivery.

This level of detail can be organised into work packages and monitored to control delivery.

Here are some ideas:

• Build on lessons learned from previous projects.
• Use a formal project management methodology such as PRINCE2.
• Remember your plan should include finance, human resources, communications, quality, risk management, project structure, project management, long-term maintenance and sustainability. It is more than just the schedule.
• Ensure roles and responsibilities are clearly defined for all your staff involved with the project.
• Involve those who will be doing the work in estimating resource needs and timescales.
• Use Gantt charts to provide clarity for complex interrelated deliverables.
• Use critical path analysis for minimising delivery time.
• Set acceptable tolerances for the project manager to meet. Base-line the plan and get senior level approval before moving forward.
• Carefully plan and manage Requests For Change or additional requirements to avoid requirement creep and unexpected extensions to costs and time scales
• Ensure you make real progress. Use stages and milestones to drive delivery.
• Ensure stakeholders are kept informed of progress.
• Use the in-depth understanding gained from your planning to back-up your management of stakeholders’ expectations.
• Watch out for the 90% complete syndrome. Things may not be as complete as you are informed.
• Use the plan to drive the project but don’t become a slave to it.

Steve Rowbotham’s goal is to use skills developed over a long career in the public sector for the benefit of other organisations.

In Part I of this mini series on ‘Moving out of your Comfort Zone‘ I introduced the concept of the three zones (Comfort, Stretch and Panic) as being three states in which we move between repeatedly during our lives, and suggested that we should be aiming to grow our Comfort Zone by spending more time in the Stretch and, where necessacry, Panic Zones. This blog is more about how to do this in practice – either ourselves or coaching others.

At its heart I think it is about managing risk. Self awareness is a key for gradually increasing the risks we are prepared to take. I say ‘gradually’ because it is generally accepted that we grow our Comfort Zone incrementally, rather than in some big bang way, although circumstances may conspire to give us and others the opportunity to move forward in a more major way.

If we accept that the three zones are not static, we can use this to our advantage, by intentionally making and taking opportunities to ‘travel’ out of our Comfort Zone, explore our Stretch Zone and move back into our (hopefully by now larger) Comfort Zone. If we have the necessary self awareness we should be able to use our feelings as a ‘travel guide’ and know when it is time to return to comfort and rest. In time we will find that what was once stretch has become comfortable and we can either focus on a different area of our lives or start stretching still further.

We may, of course not be so self aware and find ourselves moving into our Panic Zones. One option here is to ease back into the Stretch Zone until we are ready to push the boundary forward such that that what once was panic becomes stretch and, in time, comfort. An obvious danger of staying in the Panic Zone too long is that our learning experience is such that we decide to never allow this situation to happen again as we beleive it will always be associated with panic and distress.

Once we ‘get it’ we could be in a position to help or coach others. Imagine a scenario I experienced last year.

About 100 individuals were asked how they would feel about giving a talk to an audience of more than  50 people they have not met before, and then asked them to move to a location in the room which represented the three zones. For me this was in my Comfort Zone but for many it was in their Panic Zone. The coach then asked one lady (let’s call her Lucy) who had positioned herself in the Panic Zone how she was feeling. ‘Very uncomfortable and very scared’ was her reply. The coach asked Lucy how she would feel if she could get over being scared. ‘A little better’ she replied and the coach asked her whether she could move forward a couple of steps towards the Stretch Zone. Lucy was then asked how she would go about preparing for the talk if she was going to give it. ‘Put some slides together’ was her response. Asked how she felt once she had produced the slides, Lucy responded that she didn’t know whether ‘they were any good or not’. This type of questioning and answer went on for some time until Lucy imagined she had run through and perfected the slides and practiced the presentation with some trusted work colleagues. When asked she now felt ‘OK’ about giving the presentation to strangers. By now she had moved forward clearly into the Stretch Zone and had, of course, been talking to over 50 people she had not met before.

The technique is simple enough:

• establish which zone the person is in (the Panic Zone in the above example);
• ask questions to help the person think what might move him into the Stretch Zone;
• this might take some time but with the right questions and insight it will be possible in most (but not all) cases;
• establish what the person feels like / what zone he is in if those conditions existed;
• ask questions to keep moving the person forward until they feel able to do the task / challenge.

But does it matter if we stay in our Comfort Zones? What happens if we don’t ever stretch? It is generally accepted that if we don’t stretch we will shrink. Consider the following areas of our lives to illustrate this point.

• Activities: It is common for parents to look at their children and consider some of their ativities as too risky, even though they may have done those same things when they were younger. Call it adult responsibility but the bottom line is that their Comfort Zone has shrunk. But not everyone’s Comfort Zone shrinks as they get older – consider Ranulph Fiennes as admitedly an extreme example. Why not take up some new activity?

• Physical fitness: It is well known that if we stick to the same exercise and routine the body gets used to it and we lose fitness. We need to be continually changing our fitness regime, enduring some discomfort if we wish to continue building our fitness. Otherwise we will lose it – more shrinkage.

• Relationships: It is common, but not inevitable, that people do not put as much effort into relationships once they are established as when they were developing. Do you remember the effort you made when you were courting? We can also settle down and put less effort into relationships generally; making new friends become less easy and, in short, our social skills shrink. Why not make a new friend this year?

• Ageing: Again with notable exceptions, most people start doing less as they age, and their main aim seems to be to stay in their Comfort Zone. But they tend to lose their zest for life and they exist in an ever shrinking Comfort Zone. The excellent book by Dr John Ratey and Eric Hagerman (Spark) clearly show that research increasingly is demonstrating the value that exercise has on aging, stress, anxiety, depression, as well as learning and physical fitness. It appears that exercise is one way of stretching most of our life zones. This is not surprising because, as the book reminds us, “mind, brain and body all infuence one another”.

• Work: How many people do you know who drift theough their careers waiting to retire? Or get trapped by the lure of a pension when really they want to leave work and do something completely different. Is that you, or are you seeking ways of enhancing your job, challenging yourself and learning new skills. In this area, too, we will either stretch or shrink.

Are you stretching and growing? Or are you shrinking? The two are mutually exclusive and there is no fence to sit on – you cannot stand still.

A helpful concept is the Wheel of Life (which we will consider in a future blog), but essentially it allows us to divide our lives up into areas (as illustrated above). It is usual to rate how satisfied we are in each area of our lives and then do something about it where we are most disatisfied. But I would suggest that we should not remain complacent or over-satisfied with any areas of our life or we run the risk of our Comfort Zone shrinking in that area, thereby reducing our overall satisfaction and sense of well-being.

A good motto to start the new year with might be Stretch for life. Frequently stretching yourself with new challenges, new stimuli, new discoveries won’t just prevent shrinkage it could significantly enhance the quality of your life and have a revitalising effect on perceptions and attitudes – yours and those of the people with whom you interact.

What will your first stretch of the year be?

Barrie Wyatt is the owner of  nVision Consulting and a licensed PQASSO mentor whose goal is to use the skills he developed over a long career in the public sector primarily for the benefit of the Voluntary and Community Sector.