My Colleague and her System:
A couple of years ago, a colleague of mine used an excel template that was passed on to her from her manager to capture some employee records and to create reports. The sheet had many fields that needed to be filled and included so much information. I used to hear her nag about how much work she had to do and how much time this process took her, but she kept on using the sheet anyway. When I asked her of the main purpose of the sheet, her answer was focused on two main outputs only. My comment was,
All this information for these two things only! Well, wouldn’t it be better to just keep the stuff that relate to these outputs and delete the rest?!
When I said that, I did not really know how the different information was related or how the sheet was structured. It was totally random from my end. A few days later, I see a thank you note on my desk which read
Thank you for the insight!
My colleague was consistently doing her job by filling the sheet with the required information but her openness to my randomness gave her a fresh perspective. She embraced it, experimented with it, proposed some changes to the template, got her manager’s approval, and ultimately, made her task more manageable.
Creativity and Structure: A friend of mine is a freelance graphic designer and he loves taking every task or project as a new challenge. But he usually has a tough time getting things done and managing his progress. You would see him trying to figure out what to do, creating designs, deleting them, feeling happy for a new design then hating it for not serving the client and so on. I saw this happening many times until one day, I proposed to help. I asked him to share with me the process of how he gets a certain job and what he usually does. Towards the end of our discussion, we created a question-based process outline that he can use as his guideline of how to go about every new request.
In this situation, my friend was consistently random and needed a structured approach to best meet the random requirements of his creative job. Consistency here served him in managing his progress and in maintaining his focus.
Coaching Application:
This tool can be used in many situations whether personal or professional:
- Many of us (and many of our organizations and bosses) are just so used to doing things in a specific order or to thinking in a certain manner to the extent that we seem to create our own barriers and blockages.
- There are some that just do things differently all the time that it is usually uncomfortable, difficult, or slow for them to start new things because they think that they have to re-create the wheel every time.
- There are others that are fine with the way things are going but feel that there is something there that needs to be tackled to make things better yet they just do not seem to know what exactly.
- There are still others that follow the “one size fits all” manner in dealing with different aspects of their lives and they sometimes do that unconsciously and become frustrated.
In all these situations, this power tool can come in handy to assess whether the way we are doing things is really working for us or not and to help us experiment and see how things can be done differently by embracing consistency and/or randomness, or both but at different stages.
Coaching Approach: Visualization
- Help your clients visualize reaching their goal.
- Invite them to enjoy it and live it. Ask them to describe it using their five senses.
- Invite them to take a helicopter view of their goal (their destination).
- Ask them to describe the different pathways that they chose or will choose to reach their goal. (These pathways may be consistent ways that your clients are used to taking, they can be a mix of common and random ones, or can be totally filled with surprises.)
- Help your clients unlock their creativity and tap on reframing their perspectives by encouraging them to think outside the box and by challenging their current ways of thinking and their selected pathways. Some questions that can prove helpful include:
Describe the pathways you have chosen? What other pathways can you see? What if one path is blocked? How can you deal with this barrier? Who can you call/ connect with for more help? If you had the choice of drawing your own path, how would it look like? What is missing here, that if included, will make you flow towards your goal? How can you look at this situation from a different light or angle? How would you feel if you lost your way for a while during the journey? What and who is waiting for you to uncover them/ find them? What path makes you feel more energetic?
Coaching Approach: Exercise
- Invite your clients to list or outline the current patterns, processes, or behaviors that they follow to reach a certain goal or that they exhibit in a certain situation.
- Ask them to list down how another person may go about the same goal or situation. You can keep it general or be creative and mindful in selecting who that other person may be (someone from their support group? A competitor? A total newbie? A superhero? …etc.)
- Invite them to compare their answers to those of others and to look for insights and solutions that can help them with their own goal. Explore ways that they can internalize some “lessons learnt” and help them set some progress indicators and milestones for themselves.
Coaching Approach: Powerful Questions
Understanding the current state and encouraging some sharing and discovery:
How are things currently done? Who is involved in them? What structures do you use to go through this situation/ process?
Creating clarity:
What is the goal or purpose behind this situation or process? How is the current situation/ process serving your purpose? How do you feel about it?
Creating new possibilities and opportunities:
If you had the choice to change anything about the current situation/ process, what would it be? Why? What can you do differently? How can this better serve your purpose? How can consistency help you? How would you deal with sudden changes? How can curiosity serve you? What can make this experience more fun? How can you add your own flavor? What stretches your limits? How would you feel about moving away from your comfort zone? What would happen if you just lived the moment and went with the flow? What is driving your need for control? What is driving your need for change?
Moving clients towards their goal and creating accountability:
How can you ensure having this new situation/ process working? What can you add or do to make it more motivating for you to carry on with this? Who/ what can help you realize this? What will happen/ not happen in your life if you achieve this situation/ goal?
Note: All sample questions proposed in the above approaches are random & non-sequential. Choosing what to ask depends on the client & the situation. Trust your intuition & the coaching process.
Food For Thought:
Trust is built with consistency. Lincoln Chafee, American Politician
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. Oscar Wilde, Irish Writer & Poet
There are patterns because we try to find them…a desperate attempt at order because we can’t face the terror that it might all be random. Lauren Beukes, South African Novelist & Scriptwriter
Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead. Aldous Huxley, English Novelist
Everything we care about lies somewhere in the middle, where pattern & randomness interlace. James Gleick, American Author, Journalist, & Biographer
The air is full of ideas. They are knocking you in the head all the time. You only have to know what you want, then forget it, & go about your business. Suddenly, the idea will come through. It was there all the time. Henry Ford, American Industrialist
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Scott Adams, American Cartoonist
Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying basic fundamentals. Jim Rohn, American Entrepreneur & Motivational Speaker
Reflection Questions:
- What experiences did you recall while reading this Power Tool?
- What is consistency to you? What is randomness?
- How do you typically go about tackling a certain situation?
- How would you know when consistency is better for you?
- How would you know when randomness is better for you?
- What invites more opportunities and possibilities in your life? Is it more related to consistency or to randomness (or a blend of both)?
- What values and/ or beliefs do consistency and randomness spur in you?
- Who are some people that symbolize consistency in your life? What makes you reach out to them?
- Who are some people that symbolize randomness to you? What makes you reach out to them?
- How do you usually respond to random situations?
- Think of some situations when you acted consistently. How did it feel?
- Think of some situations when you acted randomly. How did it feel?
References:
Yin and Yang. Wikipedia. Retrieved Nov 29, 2013, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yang 15 Life-Changing Inventions That Were Created By Mistake. Business Insider. Retrieved Nov 29, 2013, from http://www.businessinsider.com/these-10-inventions-were-made-by-mistake-2010-11?op=1 Consistency. Brainy Quotes. Retrieved Dec 03, 2013, from http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/consistency.html Randomness & Consistency. Good Reads. Retrieved Dec 03, 2013, from http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/randomness http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/consistency 10 Quotes to Inspire Creativity. Pick The Brain. Retrieved Dec 03, 2013, from http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/10-quotes-to-inspire-creativity/