Tag Archives: coronavirus

Seven Habits – Day 12 – Habit 3 – First Things First

12 Sunday Jul 2020

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As Habit 2 is the habit of personal leadership, Habit 3 is the habit of personal management. The crux is that leadership is doing the right thing, management is doing things right. It is the ‘art of control’ and Habit 3 – time management – is the art of controlling events. How do you execute with leadership and vision in mind?

Time management addresses two measures – urgency (time critical) and importance (mission critical). In the 21st century, due to the immediacy of personalised communication and broadband, many of us have adopted an urgency mentality – it pops up, it must be read/assessed/done NOW! And that is all done regardless of (a) its level of importance and (b) whether it should ever actually be done at all. Habit 3 invites (demands?) that you use the ‘independent will’ in your Stimulus-Response Gap to make an assessment as to where, in a matrix, the task lies. The matrix looks like this:

I won’t insult you with a detailed explanation but as you can see, the most important things lie ‘above the line’, and this is the point at which you must decide where your task lies. If it’s below the line, it can wait. If it’s above, do it. If it’s above and to the left, do it now!

The best place to be is ‘Quadrant B’ and it’s where you do the preparation: planning, proper recreation, envisioning, etc. It’s where you ‘think’ so that ‘stuff’ like emergencies either don’t occur, (thus shooting you unprepared into Quadrant A), or are anticipated, meaning QA isn’t so uncontrolled. But you can’t prepare in QB unless you have done the work in Habit 2 to assess your mission, which requires work in Habit 1 to help you recognise you are responsible, that what you intend is in your Circle of Influence or Centre of Focus, and that you are seeing things as they should be (paradigm).

You see, now, how the Habits and basics all gel?

The way to plan is to find a tool into which you can place your TANC – tasks, appointments, notes and contacts (although the need for the latter has been electronically usurped since the book was written in 1989). You manage your time by keeping a one-stop shop for this stuff. Then, when you make an appointment, you record a note about how/why it was made, write down the appointment, and plan any preparation for that appointment in the task list so that it’s all done in QB before the QA appointment takes place.

There is a whole lot more in the book about time management but this page really boils it down.

Covey wrote a whole book in 1994 about interpersonal time management, i.e. on Habits 2 and 3, which I recommend. It’s called First Things First.

Tomorrow, delegation.

Seven Habits – Day 8 – Life’s Circles

08 Wednesday Jul 2020

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Having concluded after yesterday’s entry that we have the capacity to choose our response in any given situation by using our self-awareness, creative imagination, independent will and conscience, the first and arguably most important choice to make about effectiveness is to ask ourselves “Where do I focus my thoughts and activities?” Covey’s first suggestion is that we look at life through two circles. They are the Circle of Concern and the Circle of Influence.

The Circle of Concern is all-encompassing. It contains anything and everything that is part of our lives. It includes social, political, environmental, psychological and any other ‘concerns’ that you know about. Right now that includes BLM, Cancel Culture, Brexit, green issues, ISIS, Donald Trump and any thing that makes you pause, think, worry, bemoan, support, decry – anywhere you might spend emotional effort.

The Circle of Influence is within that broader Circle and contains the things you can do something about. Which means for most of us it excludes a lot of the aforementioned list. We can be concerned about Donald Trump but unless we are US citizens and have a vote we can pontificate and worry all we like – won’t change a thing. However, within this Circle of Influence is your ability and willingness to do all the effective things – have greater relationships, use your initiative to solve problems, do an excellent job, act with patience, plan your work and your life.

Here is where you can ask, “What can I do about (this)?” and decide upon an actionable response. This is where you ask yourself whether the problem you are addressing is even solvable.

There are three kinds of problems. Direct Control, where you are able to affect any outcome because it is well within your Circle of Influence; Indirect Control, where you probably need others to assist with the challenge, can delegate or in respect of which you can seek help. If you like, things on the outer edge of your Circle of Influence. And No Control, where you can’t do anything about something in your Circle of Concern, where your proactive response is to smile and get on with something else.

You can’t really affect the size of the outer circle – it just ‘is’. But by focusing on the inner circle you can actually expand your influence – get better at your job and get promoted, become an authority on your profession, lead its development. By focusing on things outside your influence you waste valuable time and the inner circle effectively shrinks while you tweet mercilessly about a President you can’t vote in or out, or get emotionally upset about a statue that no-one cared about and that you walked past daily, and in blissful ignorance, until someone you never met pointed it out as racist.

Effective people ‘live’ in the Circle of Influence. They extend emotional and physical effort only towards the things that matter to them. They don’t get upset or even engage in debate about that which is of no consequence to them, and they don’t get caught up in the ‘if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem’ dichotomous thinking that surrounds our world of 2020.

I have a line of thought that says, “I may not be an environmental activist but I’m glad there are people out there to whom I can delegate responsibility for saving the planet.” The same goes for many other protests, campaigns, etc. As long as they are peaceful and well-argued, we should encourage debate and appropriate activism. But don’t expect everyone to feel as strongly as you do about things that aren’t as important to them as they are to you.

It’s synergistic. While you are arguing for your cause, they are serving you by arguing for theirs, for working in an industry that serves you. They are in their Circle of Influence so that you can be in yours.

Tomorrow we go even deeper into proactivity.

Seven Habits – Day 7 – Intro to Habit 1 – Be Proactive

07 Tuesday Jul 2020

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Habit 1 is ‘Be Proactive’. Most businesses look upon that as meaning ‘anticipate events and prepare accordingly’. That’s only part of it. That is a way of being Proactive, but that isn’t what Covey meant. Here’s my take based on study and attendance at many 7H courses over time.

In the book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, this Habit was sub-titled, “The Principle of Personal Vision’ and it still is. But in later course workbooks the subtitle was changed to The Principal of Choice which I think better reflects the intent.

Be Proactive reflects the fact that as humans we have the ability to pause in the gap between stimulus (what happens to us) and our response (what we do about it). Stimuli can be prevailing circumstances or something that blindsides us. The advice is the same. But I get ahead of myself.

Being proactive requires that we recognise and utilise our ability to self-analyse, to understand ourselves and to use and change that knowledge for the better. Covey opined that we all tend to default to our social mirror, in that we reflect back to others what we think they want from us. He called that the Case of Mistaken Identity and the result of determinism, where we accept and take on characteristics of those we respect. Other psychologists call this Belong – Believe – Behave, where our desire to join a group is followed by unthinking adoption of its credo and then behaviour in accordance with that credo. Discuss the Nazi Party as an illustration.

Being Proactive essentially means overcoming that auto-response to social nurturing and deciding for ourselves what we want to be, do and have. And how we wish to live, and to be seen. In order to do that we must use our four endowments, which Covey identified as self-awareness, creative imagination, independent will and conscience. He suggests that in the gap between the aforementioned stimulus and response, then instead of just reacting instinctively, ‘the way we always have’ or according to influence, we utilise those endowments to choose our response. Or to use a Covey-ism, to act as if we are Response-Able.

When we do that we subordinate moods to our values, we do the right and better thing instead of the easiest or most convenient thing. We move towards principled living and effective success instead of just clearing the problem away only for it to come back again, harder.

Covey quotes something he said he read in a university library – I suspect he came up with it himself –  and says, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and capacity to choose our response. And in that choice lies our growth and our happiness.”

How often have I wanted to snap back at something someone has said only to think, in that space, “Is this a victory worth winning at the expense of the relationship?” – and shut the hell up.

Do you have experiences where you wish you hadn’t hurriedly done something? If you’d been proactive you might not have transgressed, and what did happen, may not have. That is how powerful this Habit can be. It stops us making mistakes.

It also means we can constantly redirect our efforts away from the convenience of ‘now’ and towards the effectiveness and success of our future. Or, as Covey and others put it, sacrificing the present for a better future.

Effective people are consistently proactive. Not in terms of anticipating trends – even that is a reaction to the data that identifies that trend. No, they are proactive in that they take a moment to make better decisions.

Tomorrow, we look at where those choices should be directed.

The Magic Formula – A Cure for Today?

20 Friday Mar 2020

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There is a magic formula that the successful use, specifically and particularly when faced with a challenge that comes at them sideways and out of the blue. Of course, we are faced with such a challenge at the moment, and a lot of people, including members of my family, are feeling the effects of the measures being taken by people to avoid the dreaded lurgy. Which, according to MSWord’s spellcheck, is  a word.

Businesses are laying off people left and right, and given that a lack of custom does tend to thwart a business’ efforts to stay solvent, I can understand this. Of course, said businesses – the less scrupulous – will take the money offered by the government to keep them afloat, while not using it to keep staff in a job. And, of course, if you’ve laid off your staff carefully and before said money becomes available, you can avoid paying them at all. I hope that HMG makes sure that the money they hand out is properly accounted for.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the scale, major grocery retailers are looking at the problems created by ‘now’ and are adjusting their practices to suit.

The major movers, ladies and quintleflick (not a word), are applying the formula.

Unfortunately, as the majority of us are not educated in leadership and management, a lot of people aren’t applying it. If only they knew what it was. Of course, while all clever kids know that x= minus b times the square root of b squared minus 4ac all over 2a, they aren’t taught this formula in school. And it could save a lot of stress.

The formula is E+R=O.*

E is the Event. This is the thing that happens to us or, as one of my participants forced me to decide, the situation in which we find ourselves. (That covered people born with disabilities –  they didn’t ‘happen’, their situation just ‘was’.) The Event is something outside of your control. You didn’t plan it, plan for it, expect it and probably didn’t anticipate the possibility. Cue a pandemic caused by eating a bat, allegedly.

R is the Response. It’s what you do about what’s happened, and that includes how you decide to feel about what’s happened. Excitement, despair, challenge – all reactions that are up to you. Maybe not in the first instance, but at least after you’ve paused to think about them.

O is the Outcome. The Outcome is what you want to have happened at the end of it all.

E is unchangeable. That being the case, the only way to change the value of O is entirely within the Response provided to E. Your Outcome is wholly dependant on the quality and thinking behind your Response to E.

The question is – is your Response wholly based in fear, or is it considered, thoughtful and ecological? Is it self-serving or will it serve us all? Is it destructive and aimed solely at self-preservation, or is it a unique answer to a problem? An answer the like of which gets written about in leadership and management literature next year?

Yes, folks. You Response to what is happening to you today could be so imaginative that you find yourself being immortalised in print. It could make you proud, or ashamed. Or just content, which is just enough for your integrity to remain intact.

Or you could just be a selfish tw4t. Your choice.

Businesses – the people you’re sacking, you’ll want back in three or four months. Treat them well and they will come. Treat them badly, and see whether all your selfish efforts backfire.

Have a good weekend, folks.

 

*From an idea by Dr Robert Resnick, as publicised in The Success Principles’ by Jack Canfield, but also the result of Habit One – Be Proactive, by Stephen Covey.

Now, more than ever – Plan Your Future.

13 Friday Mar 2020

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Okay, yesterday I said I’d only do one pandemic post, but circumstances change and so does our approach. Here is take 2. It’s more important than yesterday’s.

Viktor Frankl was a Jewish psychiatrist who was sent to the concentration camps in WWII. Famously, he was academically interested in why some people survived the camps, and others didn’t. notwithstanding the misfortunes of selection and random execution, the ones who weren’t so unfortunate either died, or they did not.

To cut a long story to the chase, Frankl concluded that the ones who lived were those who had a firm vision of their future. For Frankl himself it was a vision that he would teach what he’d learned to students, with a view to it never happening again.

Norman Cousins was a man who, according to Wikipedia, used his mental faculty to overcome a debilitating condition. It is said he made laughter one of his main medicines, along with a personal determination to overcome his personal, physical challenges – and he succeeded.

We live at a time when a virus threatens the existence of those physically unable to fight it. I’ll admit it plays on my mind, as I have what may be one of those pre-existing medical conditions. But it isn’t just about me – I have two beautiful grandchildren, four lovely kids and a beloved wife. I can’t conceive of life without any of them, particularly the young. But that also means if I’m gone, I don’t get to see them grow. So it is me, but it’s them too.

So now, more than ever, I think it is time to consider positivity, laughter, and a firmly envisioned plan for the future that will provide hope for us as individuals and, in the end, for all of us.

I have no doubt that despair does not serve the physical body, and I firmly believe that some people who died did so because they lacked hope, or a sense of purpose. They thought, “I’m done here.” Which in the case of the elderly may, for them, have a been some kind of satisfaction. It’s not cruel or judgemental to say that. If it was, then the person who thought of the term for the dying of ‘Blessed release’ is equally evil. It is just a belief, no more.

Anyway, like Hemingway, I want to die only when I am all used up, and that isn’t yet.

Today is the day I carry out my planning for the week, and part of that plan will be to consider my long term future. What do I want to create in this world, what legacy do I wish to leave for those kids? How am I going to achieve that? Not just in terms of tasks but in terms of the way I conduct myself – hopefully with integrity, with the fullest congruence between my values and my behaviours.

I’ll ask you all to do the same. Design your future as if all will pass as well as it can, for you.

At the same time, I will tie up my camel by ensuring that my immediate family is cared for, provided for, supplied and kept as healthy as they can so that if it does strike, they can be part of the 80% who just get a sniffle. But not, I hope, at the expense of anyone else. I will get enough for our needs, and no more. those who are stockpiling a year’s worth of soap for the 14 days they may have to stay at home are selfish. No question.

Plan a spectacular future. See it in your mind’s eye and start working towards achieving your dream and towards leaving your legacy. Review and recommit to your Mission. Frankl and Cousins need your support. And your health and welfare may depend on it.

And if fate should decide otherwise, let me face it with integrity and set a good example.

My one and only COVID-19 blog.

11 Wednesday Mar 2020

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As we delve ever deeper into the Coronavirus challenge, the call for character increases. This may not be as obvious a statement as ‘following the science’ and other twee clichés designed to assuage the panic of the populace, but it is nevertheless true.

It is true because some of us, those with ‘underlying health concerns’ are obliged to listen to the daily news reports that obsess with telling us that our personal Armageddon is closing in on us either geographically (I’m 6 miles away from the nearest) or numerically (“here’s today’s news on deaths and new cases”). The unconscious message is ‘You’ll be next!” Oh, great.

Character is required because we are being challenged, and because we are being challenged to deal with unknowns which for the majority lie firmly within their Circle of Concern, and equally firmly outside, or at least on the very outer edge of their Circle of Influence. The answer to this challenge lies within the competence of the NHS and the Doctors and Nurses who have to (a) deal with it and (b) be exposed to it so that the rest of us aren’t. For them, most of all, character shines out because they could all, justifiably, think selfishly and stay at home. We are very reliant upon the competence and character of the health workers. We need them to focus in their Circle of Influence so that our Circle of Concern can shrink a little.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of the politicians, who equally possess COVID-19 in their Circle of Concern..

At a time where the country needs to pull together, to fight off this challenge and defeat it, all I see on the news is point-scoring. The Opposition cannot wait, when asked about the virus, to start banging on about cuts in services and austerity measures (which they caused) and blaming the government for everything.

That’s really helpful. Thanks.

Of course, what makes it worse in 21st Century thinking is the immediacy and the accessibility of the media. I don’t recall wide-spread and overt criticism of the government at the outset of WW2: there seemed to be, if reports are to be believed, a sense of common purpose and community about that particular threat.

But here we are, needing character and what do we have?

Whining opposition politicians, and people stockpiling toilet paper and taking all the sanitizer off the store shelves while happily mingling in crowds. Isn’t that a little odd?

I’ll admit that as a result of this ‘countdown’ news reportage I am disheartened. There seems to be no positivity available to us. It’s all doom and gloom, where the updates are- ‘10% have had it’ rather than ‘90% will have a runny nose’. It is demoralising.

It’s the 2020 version of ‘Let’s learn German.’

So character is called for. Some stoicism, some resignation, but above all the taking of the opportunity to become better people by demonstrating patience, consideration, common sense and all those other traits which we know serve us better than selfishness, panic and disrespect.

And in a worst case scenario, demonstrating love for those we love. Time is always running out, but occasionally something happens to make us realise that with just a little more clarity.

Love you, folks. Take care.

And if you MUST self-isolate, get a copy of The 7 Habits and the Workbook, and use the time to Get Better in more ways than one!