By Linda Feinholz, “Your Success Catalyst”
The theme of indecisive decisions and unsolved situations hit a strong cord with subscribers. The idea that solutions might be lurking just around the corner from our attention has had several readers perking up and looking at additional ways of expanding their attention. As promised, here’s another powerful technique that is quick and simple. Grab a piece of paper and write down your most current top 10 issues that still are unresolved, undecided, unmoving. (Go ahead. Hit the ‘pause’ button and do it now – I’ll wait for you.)I’ve mentioned before that I often find for myself and my clients that the root of our becoming ‘stalled’ lies in our fixation on how we’re approaching the situation.
As individuals we become certain that we know the question and all the factors we’re supposed to take into consideration. Often we’ve written off the alternative ideas without actually considering them.
As groups, we often decide to not question or challenge an idea or a solution being proposed for reasons of personality or politics. The end result is the same:
We often give the available options no attention at all.
And so no real progress is made. No truly effective decision is made. No productive plan of action is designed or implemented.
In particular when I work with teams it’s important to get playful and deliberately use one of the simplest and most powerful exercises that expand your attention and expand your options.
REFRAME – Change Your Frame of Reference
Version 2 – Add a new ‘setting’ to the conversation.
Write down the situation in all its detail. Put in all the adjectives you can come up with. This will allow you to capture all the underlying details you’ve been cementing in place. And as you do this exercise be sure to ‘reframe’ every single item on that list!
Next, change the references you are using. Here are examples of ones that have worked wonders with recent clients who have been stalled.
For one client, a professional services firm, the challenge was improving product delivery. Asking “How could you deliver it if it was for an aquarium or skate board manufacturer?” got everyone at the table to shift perspectives with ease.
For another client the breakdown was around customer service in a health care office. Great ideas surfaced when the team was asked “How would you do it if it were reception at a ski resort?” and “at a paint ball range?”
To really change people’s frame of reference, there’s nothing like giving ourselves the opportunity to return to the mind of a child. As adults we take everything so seriously that we shut off the imaginative part of our own brains. To access that part of ourselves I use the question “How would you do this if it had to work for children ages 4 through 8?”
The less similar the circumstances, the quicker you’ll see the assumptions you’ve been making that have been preventing you from seeing the alternatives you could pursue.
When you let yourself and your team expand your attention, highly productive ideas can surface in as little as 15 minutes. Now that’s boosting your effectiveness!
So grab the Reframe technique and apply it to something on that list you wrote out and let’s get it moving again so you can boost your productivity this week.
