My newsletter—Take It From Terry™ —regularly provides relevant topics about opportunities, resources, and tools in Strategic Planning. I often receive feedback from my reading audience, but thought to take this opportunity to Take It From You! In other words, I am inviting your genuine feedback on what you find most interesting, most useful, least interesting, least useful from the newsletter—and anything else you would like to share. My desire is to be strategic about what I include and why so that it is most helpful for my readership. I value your input so that the newsletter output is most beneficial. Simply send me a quick e-mail at Terry@ManagementPro.com with "Take It From You" in the Subject Line.
As my thanks to you, this month, I'm pleased to share a hot-off-the-press complementary products to help you be more strategic in your work and life. Here's an update of my classic article "Turn Strategy Into Action." It will help you to plan and achieve goals of any size and type.
View it HERE.
There are other goodies as well—but, first, have you been to one of my seminars recently? It’s a great way to keep your cutting-edge strategy skills sharp! I’m conducting public workshops in Portland and Seattle in the next few months, as listed here.
Highlights of this Issue
- Guest Article – Do you want a better marriage? Let Dr.Weisinger show how it can be yours by adding in some Emotional Intelligence.
- Project of the Month – If Noah had used The LogFrame as a planning tool, here’s what his plan might have liked like. This classic workshop handout helps to understand and share strategic principles.
- Self-Mastery – When you ask the right question—no matter what type of issue you’re handling—you increase your chances of getting the right type of info.
- Book of the Month – Who can best evaluate the quality of the concepts in a great strategic planning book other than another expert in the field? Reinventing Strategic Planning: The Systems Thinking Approach® by Stephen Haines is a classic.
- Laugh Out Loud –You’re sure to get some chuckles and guffaws from these Sixth Grade History Test responses.
Would you like your marriage to be significantly more rewarding? If you answer yes, I am not going to recommend you and your partner visit a marriage counselor or that you spend money to attend a marriage encounter weekend. I will recommend that you sweeten your relationship by adding some emotional intelligence, EI for short.
Emotional Intelligence. You've heard the term. I will define it as the ability to use your emotions, feelings, moods -- and the emotions, feelings, moods of others-as a source of information that allows you to make better choices so that you can navigate more effectively throughout life.
To develop and apply your emotional intelligence, I would instruct you to increase your self-awareness, learn to manage and harness your emotions, and develop skills such as listening that make you more effective interacting with others.
As you are probably well aware, there is considerable empirical research indicating those who apply emotional intelligence to their lives are more broadly successful than those who don't.
As a recognized expert in the EI field, it's an easy stretch to confidently say marriages that apply EI are much more successful than those that don't. A patient never told me he or she was leaving his or her marriage because their partner was too understanding, or attentive to their needs, or always supportive and encouraging.
I'll spare you the case history of the couple that couldn't resolve conflict, give positive criticism to each other, laugh together, and share their intimate thoughts and feelings; but then, as they applied EI to their marriage, it miraculously became better -- just trust the point, that if you want better returns on your marriage investment, add some EI. Two EI Actions to help you get started are to: build relationship awareness and manage marriage emotions.
Build Relationship Awareness. High self-awareness tells you what your emotional nutrients are – these are the factors that you personally need to thrive; but for a marriage to thrive, you and your partner have to be aware of each other's emotional nutrients so that you can assist each other in having your needs met. After all, you first entered the relationship because it met your emotional nutrients at the time.
What we need to grow changes all the time. So, it is EI Marriage Policy to frequently be aware of whether or not the marriage is supplying the emotional nutrients to your partner. When partners feel their relationship helps them grow, they are motivated to keep it going. Here is an EI Marriage exercise to help:
You and your partner are to independently make two lists:
List I: write down your three most important emotional nutrients.
List II: write down what you think are the three most important emotional nutrients for your partner.
Exchange the list and use the results to brainstorm how the marriage can do better in meeting both your emotional nutrients.
Managing Marriage Emotions. An important finding in emotional research is that emotions impact performance for better or for worse. Some emotions, like anger and anxiety, can either enhance or impede relationships and performance; while, on the other hand, confidence, optimism, tenacity and enthusiasm typically enhance performance and make relationships productive. Depression almost always impedes performance and has a long-term effect of souring the relationship.
The implication here is that marriages that can manage anger and anxiety advantageously, are ones that will avoid (or reduce) depression, and instead can create confidence, optimism, tenacity, and enthusiasm—which will be more rewarding than those who let anger and anxiety get out of hand or are unable to generate happy times.
What makes it difficult to manage marriage emotions? The emotional landscape that occurs when you are with your partner is a process called emotional contagion. The term refers to the well-documented fact that emotions can be likened to a social virus in that they spread from one person to another. Put another way, you can literally catch your partner's anger, anxiety, and depression, or similarly, you can "mood infect" your partner with confidence and enthusiasm.
Using emotional contagion to your advantage is the key to managing the emotions that impact your marriage. There are many skills you will need to learn.
The first step is to make sure you can "relax on cue." Doing so reflects using your EI ability of being able to regulate your emotional arousal. Being able to regulate your emotional arousal allows you to immunize yourself from catching your partner's emotions, thus allowing you to keep proper emotional perspective—something that is typically lost when both partners are experiencing anger, anxiety, frustration and fear.
These emotions typically increase emotional arousal and cause a mental rigidity that prevents one from making accurate interpretations of the situation and generates counter-productive behaviors, like a shouting match or storming out of the house. Furthermore, when both partners simultaneously experience these emotions, the tendency is for each to feed the other, causing an upward spiral that fuels emotional turmoil. This is the danger of emotional contagion.
When both partners can regulate their emotional arousal, each is able to make accurate interpretations of the situation; and in so doing, frees themselves from being negatively influenced by the other's emotions; you don't yell back at your partner because she yelled at you, or you don't become anxious when your partner's anxiety about household expenses gets out of hand.
Staying relaxed in the face of these emotions allows—at least one person in the marriage—to keep proper emotional perspective and thus guide the marriage to better grounds.
Here's another EI Marriage Tip: On a daily basis for the next two months, practice a relaxation exercise with your partner.
The result will be that you will find that your marriage is better able to manage emotions that typically send partners to opposite sides of the house.
For those of you in a rush to add EI to your relationship, go to www.drhankw.com and check out the new CD, Ten Tips for Applying Your EI.
If you've ever attended one of my Strategic Project Management workshops, chances are you've met Noah. In fact, you probably helped him build a Logical Framework to save the world! His project has been a great example of how to form an If-Then Strategic Hypothesis to increase project success.
Recently, I updated the solution to Noah's project in the article "Strategic Project Management Plan for Noah’s Ark." This four-page article is ideal for sharing the LogFrame approach with others. Check out how this tool played a central role in the long-term survival of humanity; and use it for your own larger-than-life projects.
Get Better Answers with Better Questions
by Terry Schmidt
The right questions lead to greatful answers. The right questions direct our focus and invite open-ended thinking that leads to innovative answers. Some short but impactful questions include:
- "Why?"
- "Why not?"
- "What if?"
Let’s examine these questions in greater detail.
The Why Question
"Why?" is a question that digs below the surface level of what and how. A series of Why-type address the issue from multiple perspectives. For example, a series of Why Questions could be: (1) Why do we want to improve this? (2) Why do we do it this way? (3) Why did we start it like this? (4) Why do we think this (process) needs improving?
A powerful variation is the "Five Levels of Why" tool—sometimes called HoShin Planning gets at root causes five times, so that you have five levels of insight in your decision-making process. For instance:
Q: Why should we get a newer computer?
A: So we can work more efficiently as consultants.
Q: Why do we want to work more efficiently?
A: So we can get more done in less time to serve clients well.
Q: Why do we want to serve clients well?
A: So they will want to continue to us our services and refer us to other clients.
Q: Why do we want to maintain our client relationships and gain new clients?
A: So we stay in business to help others using the skills to do what we do best.
Q: Why do we want to help others with our best skills?
A: So we get to do what we enjoy best and help them be their best, too.
The Why Not Question
"Why Not?" is a counterpoint question that naturally directs you to consider both the Why and the Why Not aspects of the question and the answers. Again, it gets below the surface level of what and how—while asking the Not version of those questions What Not to do and How Not to do it...and Why.
Questions that start with "Why Not" fall into this category. The extension of the Why Not-type questions focus the question further on what is being addressed with the Why Not—and can itself be part of the answer. For example, additional Why Not questions include: (1) Why not? It can only open your mind to new possibilities. (2) Why not? New possibilities can improve your profitability.
The What If Question
"What If?" is so strong and thought-provoking that Hewlett-Packard (HP) used it in their ad campaign for years. What If questions are your stretchers, your recombinants and your tangents—and often occur in scenarios. Some examples of these types of questions are: (1) "What if we combine A and B instead of doing them separately?" (2) "What if we eliminate this all together?" (3) "What if we plan it for the evening time instead of the day time?" (4) "What if we use something soft instead of something sharp?" (5) "What if we combine these together instead of use them alone?"
The What If questions get you to analyze and project the other elements relevant to the scenario now and the scenario future, which are related to the question.
***
A Bonus Question
What is it that we are not doing now, that if we started doing it, would fundamentally transform our business?
This is Joel Barker’s classic question leading to paradigm shifts. After an initial brainstorming session, upbeat and positive, when you have a clearer understanding of how things work now and how they might be, then this is a great question to ask, writing down every response you get for the first half-hour. When you’ve got 20 or so responses, then sort them and sift them.
Reinventing Strategic Planning: The Systems Thinking Approach®
By Stephen Haineswith
James McKinlay
Given our rapidly changing world, Strategic Planning is more important than ever before. Unfortunately, however, 70% of all Strategic Plans fail—and that’s due to using analytic methods that do not work in a dynamic world.
Stephen Haines, founder of The Haines Centre for Strategic Management, is recognized as one of the world’s foremost Strategic Thinkers—and has literally reinvented Strategic Planning, and some of his best ideas are in Reinventing Strategic Planning: The Systems Thinking Approach© by Haines and Haines Centre Canadian Partner, Jim McKinlay.
Their comprehensive book continues the learning begun in Strategic and Systems Thinking: The Winning Formula. Unlike other strategic planning books which promise one magic solution, this book offers some fundamental concepts from systems thinking. These practical concepts that make logical/sense and can be scaled.
Recently, Haines spearheaded a National Task Force for The Association for Strategic Planning, which launched a certification program for the Field of Strategic Planning. Due to his leadership within the field and unwavering commitment to the Task Force, Haines was granted the first certification bestowed upon anyone, which was the highest honor of Strategic Management Professional (SMP). (I also served on this Task Force, and am proud to have received the fourth certification).
The three main premises of this book are: 1) The primary job of leaders is planning and change magical answer in Strategic Management; 2) People support was they help create; and 3) Use systems Thinking, focus on outcomes and serve the customer.
Premise #1 reminds us that in rapid change environments, the primary job of leaders must be to plan and manage change. If not them, then who?
Premise #2 takes Haines famous words “people support what they help create” and #3 demonstrate how other “strategic planning” models may start, yet fail to support the general systems theory and demonstrates practical methods to involve stakeholders.
Premise #3 demonstrates the differences between the Systems Thinking Approach and other strategic planning models and why although they may be a start, they fail to support the general systems theory by and omit some critical elements.
Haines and McKinley provide lots of fresh concepts such as: 1. Parallel involvement process 2. Smart start: plan to implement 3. In-depth change management 4. Annual strategic review and update
The 10 Steps supporting their approach are the following: #1 Smart start: plan-to-plan * #2 Ideal future vision * #3 Key success measures of goals * #4 Internal & External current state assessment * #5 Strategy development * #6 Business unit planning * #7 Annual plans * and strategic budgeting #8 * Successfully implementing your strategic plan * #9 Implementing your strategic plan * #10 Continue Implementing your strategic plan.
In times like these, we all need to get strategic and find strategies to succeed. Haines and McKinlay’s book provides the keys. It is available at SystemsThinkingPress.com or at Amazon.com.
This LOL segment of the newsletter features sixth grade history tests. Imagine the wisdom you had in the sixth grade as you failed some of the most challenging questions of all times. Feel free to laugh out loud as you read, or if you prefer, to just smile.
Actual Answers to Sixth Grade History Tests:
1. Ancient Egypt was inhabited by mummies and they all wrote in hydraulics. They lived in the Sarah Dessert. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere.
2. The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, asked "Am I my brother's son?"
3. Moses led the Hebrew slaves to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. He died before he ever reached Canada.
4. Solomon had 300 wives and 700 porcupines.
5. The Greeks were highly sculptured people, and without them we wouldn't have any history. The Greeks also had myths. A myth is a female moth.
6. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name.
7. Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock. After his death, his career suffered a dramatic decline.
8. In the Olympic games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled biscuits, and threw java.
9. Eventually , the Romans conquered the Greeks. History calls people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long.
10. Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March murdered him because they thought he was going to be made king. Dying, he gasped out: "Tee Hee, Brutus."
11. Nero was a cruel tyranny who would torture his subjects by playing the fiddle to them.
12. Joan of Arc was burnt to a steak and was cannonized by Bernard Shaw.
13. Finally Magna Carta provided that no man should be hanged twice for the same offense.
14. In mid-evil times most people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the futile ages was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verses and also wrote literature.
15. Another story was William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son's head. Let me know if you want more of these...