I’m going to give you a hat.  Whenever you need it, simply put it on.  This hat will help you get the best results in your life.

When triggers happen that cause you to react, add a pause, and put on your metaphorical hat of effectiveness.  When you put this hat on, you’re shifting gears.  You’re shifting from reacting to responding.

How To Put On Your Hat of Effectiveness
Here are the key steps:

1. Decide what your goal is on exploring the most effective response (your next best move or your best play for the situation.)
2. Boil the problem down to a simple one-liner statement (e.g. how to get the car at the price you want.)  This gives you clarity and makes it easier for you to state the problem if you need to ask for help.
3. Ask yourself, what do you want to accomplish? (This is both what you want and don’t want.)
4. Ask yourself, what 3 potential responses might be? (this is your chance to play out potential solutions.)
5. Ask yourself, what would Edward de Bono do? (or fill in your favorite hero for the situation.)
6. Choose the most effective response.

Measure Against Effectiveness
If you aren’t sure what your best responses are, make it a point to ask the right people for input. The most important thing is to keep clarity on what you want to accomplish, avoid, or minimize. You then measure yourself against effectiveness. If you fail, you ask, “what’s the lesson,” and you carry the lesson forward.  If you accomplish the goal, great … what did you learn?  So it’s a path of learning and growth measured against effectiveness.

A Lot of Power in a Simple Hat
It’s a powerful hat.  It will serve you well.  It’s probably the best hat that I wear for any challenging situation.
It combine the power of the pause, the ability to stay out of fight-or-flight mode (which screws up your thinking), it allows you to cycle through potential solutions, while asking solution-focused or forward moving questions, it keeps you unstuck, and it keeps you learning.

Changing Questions Changes Focus
I think the real power of this hat is that it combines several effective thinking techniques, plus NLP …

• Changing state (without having to use real anchors/triggers.)
• Changing questions changes focus changes results.
• Changing state helps keeps you out of primal mind / fight-or-flight … so more prefrontal for your best thinking.

When You Don’t Know, Ask
The hat can’t help you pattern match, if you don’t have the right patterns to begin with.  If you’re up against a problem that you don’t have the right experience for, then ask your network for help.  You can also supplement  with the Six Thinking Hats technique and by asking experts for their input.  That’s why asking THE right question is so key.  If you’re not getting the right answers, you might not be asking the right questions.  You might also be asking the wrong people.  At work, I have to constantly check myself, “am I asking the right person?”

Take care of this hat.  It’s the hat that truly does make the difference.

My Related Posts

• The Power of the Pause
• Is Will a Skill?
• Solution-Focused Questions
• Changing Focus

Photo by Bazule.

At Microsoft, we use the term “frame” or “framing a problem” in the context of project management.  You might hear somebody ask, “what’s the frame?” or “how have you framed the problem?”  A Frame is simply a way to partition a problem.  The heart of a frame is coming up with a context to understand the dimensions that matter and figure out how to prioritize and scope.   I use frames a lot here on Sources of Insight to chunk bigger problems down, as well as to organize and share information.  It’s a lens.

What’s a Frame
My favorite definition of framing is from our EE (Engineering Excellence) team at Microsoft:

The unlimited potential of software makes program management an incredibly exciting job.  The unlimited potential of software also makes program management an incredibly important job.  At every milestone of every product cycle, feature teams face an essentially infinite set of possibilities.  They can build almost anything they dream up.  But to succeed, the team has to make smart choices about where to focus and what to build.  In the face of endless possibility, how do feature teams make these choices?
Framing is the art of identifying what is truly important and separating the “could” from the “should.”  Early in the planning stages of a project, program managers work with customers, planners, and other team members to define this frame and ensure that every member of the team understands and internalizes it.

Why Frame the Space?
According to our EE team, framing is a critical exercise:

The answers to these questions paint a landscape in which a product and its features will be built. The purpose of a frame is to narrow the focus on a clear and compelling vision that fits within this landscape.  This link between vision and landscape is critical.  A vision without this context if fragile and fails to provide teams with the basis for making the myriad of day to day decisions they inevitably face.

Creating Frames
According to our EE team, to create the frame, the program manager starts by asking some broad questions:

• What are the customers and what are their needs and priorities?
• What is happening in the marketing place? What are competitors doing and what are our options for responding and differentiating?
• How is technology changing and what possibilities does it offer our customers?
• What are the priorities for our business?

Example Frames
Here are some of the example frames I’ve created to help create, find, organize and share information:

• The Change Frame – how to know whether to change yourself or the situation.
• The Improvement Frame – how to gauge progress for yourself.
• Life Frame – how to spend your time on the right things in life.
• Hot Spots – how to organize and prioritize where you put focus.
• Hot Spots for Life – how to invest in key areas for skilled living.

If you’re overwhelmed by information overload or trying to learn a new area, consider creating frames to make it easier to deal with.

Photo by Victor Bezrukov.

Do you choose your response or act on impulse?  Impulse says, “eat the M&M” or “pull the lever”, or “hit the snooze button.”  It feels good in the moment.  It’s bad for you in the long run.

Why Do We Do It?
If it’s bad for us, why do we do it?   Because it feels good.  We’re wired for survival.  It’s basic instinct.  Me want food.  Me want sex.  Me want sleep.  It’s a simple, decision making process.  Your emotions drive you.  That is, unless you …

Choose Your Best Response
You can choose a more effective response.  Here’s how.  Inject a pause.  Before you react, get your options.  Then choose.  To get your options, ask yourself the following questions:

• What do you want to do? (you already know this, but put it out there)
• What does your gut say?
• What would be in your best interest?
• What’s the most effective thing to do?

Putting your options on the table helps invoke your best thinking.  It breaks the automatic response of just doing what you want.  At the same time, your getting input from your emotions, your gut and your mind.  Now you can make a thoughtful response.  Simply put, it’s being mindful.  The fact you make it a choice, empowers you.  Ultimately, you have to find what works best for you.  For me, “what’s the most effective thing to do” helps a lot.

Practicing the Pause
You can use the Power of the Pause for a variety of scenarios.  Here’s some examples:

• Breaking a habit.
• Starting a new routine.
• Changing from emotional reactions to thoughtful responses.

I use the Power of the Pause when I reach for something I shouldn’t eat.  I use it each time I hesitate to hit my treadmill.  I think of it as willful improvement.

Improving Your Effectiveness
Here’s some more information to help improve your ability to choose your best response:

• Your thoughts create your feelings.  What you think about, changes how you feel.  Think about it.  How do you feel when you remember the best part of your day?  What about your worst?
• Changing the question, changes your focus.  You can change your focus, by changing the questions you ask yourself.  Asking what’s the best thing for you to do is very different than asking yourself what you want to do, or not asking at all.
• Prefrontal cortex over fight-or-flight.  Our prefrontal cortex is our mental simulator.  It helps us think better.  It’s an advantage over animals how simply react.  But only if we use it.
• Don’t let people push your buttons.  Whether you’re reacting to insults or trigger words, remind yourself that you can use the Power of the Pause to choose your best response.

As simple as it sounds, injecting a pause can make a huge difference in the quality of your life.  As one of my mentors puts it, “you’re the sum of your decisions.”

What are some simple ways you can use the Power of the Pause to improve your life?

My Related Posts

• Is Will a Skill?
• When It’s Cold Shiver, When It’s Hot Sweat
• Why People Resist Change

Photo by Pink Sherbert Photography.

This is a follow up to my previous post, Influencer Training Day 1. These are my notes from day 2 of Influencer training.  It turned out to be way tougher to write up than I expected.   I had a lot of notes and we covered a lot of material and I wanted to boil it down as simply as possible. This is actually my third variation and I think it’s the cleanest so far. Why would I spend so much time trying to get this right?  Because I think it’s some of the most powerful information for changing you, your environment, your team, your work, or the world. It’s effectively advanced training for dealing with resistant and persistent problems. It works by clarifying meaningful results, identifying vital behaviors, and focusing on six sources of influence.  The six sources of influence is simply a matrix of motivation and behavior, organized by personal, social, and motivational forces.  It’s based on the fantastic book, Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, by the amazing team (Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler.)  What a bunch of super heroes — really.  I was lucky enough to have Amy Daly-Donovan for my instructor.  Nothing beats having a skilled instructor who has a wealth of experience and insight to share.

Our day 2 of training was mostly spent walking the sources of influence, so I organized my notes using that frame.  I think it helps make it easier to follow.  I also stuck to the key points and chose effective over complete where I needed to make a call.
Top 10 Key Lessons
Before digging into the sources of influence, this is a quick survey of 10 of my favorite lessons from day 2:

• 10X your success.  You can improve your chance of success ten-fold by using a variety of strategies.  Influencers succeed because they “overdetermine” success by using all six sources of influence.  They use a variety of strategies to make change inevitable.  In a study by VitalSmarts, 95% attempting corporate change failed.  They tried 1-3 strategies then quit.  On the flip side, those who used 4 or more strategies were 10 times more likely to succeed.  See How To 10X Your influence.
• 3 reasons why change fails.  There are 3 common mistakes why change fails: 1) they don’t use all potential sources of influence, 2) they don’t tie their strategies to vital behaviors, and 3) they jump from behavior to behavior and lose focus.   You have to focus on vital behaviors.  You’re looking at high-leverage and ripple effects.
• Connect to values.   The most powerful motivation is personal motivation.  The most powerful personal motivation is when you connect to values.
• Leverage deliberate practice to change your game.   Deliberate practice is practicing explicitly to improve your performance.  It involves focus, high-levels of repetition, and actionable feedback on results.  The key here is that many people think they’re limited because of genes or natural ability.  They get stuck or don’t try to learn new skills.  The solution is using deliberate practice to improve your personal ability.
• Will is a skill.  Yes, you can improve your self-discipline by using techniques.  This should be good news for a lot of people.  (see my post, Is Will a Skill?)
• Overwhelm your problems by using all six sources of influence.   This is along the lines of Voltaire’s famous quote, “no problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking,”   In this case, it would be, “no persistent or resistant problem can withstand six sources of influence.”
• Accelerate change by winning over opinion leaders.   Opinion leaders are the people that others look to when forming their opinion.  They’re socially connected.  Think of it like a domino effect.  The key here is that you want to influence the opinion leaders, not necessarily the innovators.  The innovators may be easy to win over with logic and may not be socially connected.
• Your data stream sets your mental agenda.  Beware of how you’re influenced by the news you watch, the reports you read, the people you interact with.
• Propinquity.  Propinquity is the power of nearness and time.  Move things closer or move things further to change their impact.
• Know the target of your influence.  As simple as it sounds, make sure you know who or what you’re trying to influence.  Ask yourself, who’s behavior are you trying to influence?  Another way to put it is, who needs to do what when?

Source 1 – Personal Motivation
Source 1 focused on personal motivation.  It started with a memorable quote by Steven Wright:  “Hard work pays off in the future.  Laziness pays off right now.”  The problem with personal motivation is that many vital behaviors are boring, frightening, scary or uncomfortable.   The key is to make the undesirable, desirable and to consciously connect to values.

Strategy: Consciously connect to values

• Allow self-discovery.  Telling people what they should value leads to resistance.  Lead them to discover the connection themselves.
• Create personal experience.  Experience it first-hand.  Take a field trip or just try it.
• Create vicarious experiences.   When people are reluctant to try something on their own, use vicarious experiences.  For example, in one experiment, subjects gradually got over their fear of snakes by first watching other people handle them.
• Tell a story.  Telling a story can help create vicarious experience.  In this example, we watched a video that compared two presentations.  One focused on data.  The other was told by an actual patient.  The one told by the patient was more influential because of the emotion and connection to values. Watching the patient tell their story helped the healthcare organization shift from conducting patient orientation to reassuring a frightened patient and from delivering bed linens to comforting a nervous family.  Routines took on new meaning.  By telling a story, the patient helped create a vicarious experience that helped connect the listeners to their values.
• End with an invitation.  Extend an invitation to act.  People are more motivated when they feel they have choice.

Additional notes …

• Make the undesirable, desirable.  Change why you’re doing it or how you’re doing it.
• Overwhelm your problems.  Overwhelm your overwhelming problems by implementing several strategies, once source at a time.  You can work your way through all six sources.
• The key to successful change is personal motivation.  How do you help somebody who isn’t motivated?  You can’t, but you can help them find their own personal source of motivation.  When it comes to addictions, what factors make the difference … therapist’s tenure, type of therapy, or length of therapy?  None.  Dr. William Miller learned that programs fail when they try to take the place of Source 1 (personal motivation), therapists succeed more when they help others find their own personal motivation, and that the pain of changing a habit feels different when it’s anchored to personal motivation.  He founds this pattern to be true for ex-smokers, heroin and cocaine addicts, successful ex-alcoholics, and most successful dieters.  This reminds me of the saying, “where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

Source 2 – Personal Ability
Source 2 focused on personal ability.  It started with a perfect quote from Arnold Palmer: “It’s a funny thing, the more I practice the luckier I get.”  The problem is we assume our genes or character traits limit us.  The key is using deliberate practice to improve our personal ability.

Strategy: Demand Deliberate Practice

• Practice.  Put in your time and practice until it becomes second nature.
• Break the skill into small parts.  Chunk it down so you can perfect the parts.
• Get feedback from a coach.  Have a coach provide more specific feedback and improve your blind spots.
• Prepare for setbacks.  Mentally prepare for the times when you feel like you’re sliding backwards.

Additional notes …

• Is will a skill?   Here we watched a video that showed us that while some people naturally have more willpower, it’s a skill you can learn and improve.
• It’s not a bigger bag pipe; it’s how you play it.  Here we watched a video of Don Lerman, a Gastric Gladiator and competitive eater.  He used deliberate practice to improve his technique.  He said that internally stomach is the same size whether you’re 150 lbs or 500 lbs.  According to Don, it’s not about a bigger bag pipe, it’s how you play it …  techniques will win you a contest.
• Practicing deliberate practice.  To practice deliberate practice, we read a script to work our public-speaking skills.  While we spoke, we focused on pacing, articulation, energy, nonverbal, and cues (written on the page), while our coach gave us real-time feedback.

Source 3 and 4 – Social Motivation and Ability
Source 3 and 4 focused on social motivation and ability.  The issue is that long-standing bad habits are almost always influenced by other humans who either encourage or enable the wrong behaviors or discourage or disable the right ones.  The key is to use the power of social pressure by finding strength in numbers.

3 Key Strategies

• Strategy 1: Pave the Way.  Be the first to behave a new way.
• Strategy 2: Enlist the power of those who motivate.  Ask, “who are the actors” and “what are the actions?”  Look for potential motivators in opinion leaders, formal leaders, and your neighbors and colleagues.
• Strategy 3: Seek the support of those who enable.   Ask, “who are the enablers” and ‘what are the actions?”

3 Ways Others Can Enable Us

• The wisdom of the Crowds.  According to James Surowiecki, under the right circumstances, groups are smarter than smart individuals.  Sample the market over seek expert advice.  Build “wise” groups by ensuring diversity.
• Encourage synergy.  To do so, brainstorm, maximize diversity, and seek a third option.
• Get feedback.  To do so, ask close colleagues, form sample groups, and learn from critics.

Additional notes

• Can one person who disagrees in an effective way, make it safe for others?  Here we watched an experiment based on an earlier experiment by Solomon Asch By disagreeing skillfully and respectfully, one person in a group can make it safe for others.   When one person lead by example, saying, “I see it differently, but I think …”, 95% gave their opinion.
• 5 kinds of adopters.  Dr. Everett Rogers found 5 kinds of adopters: 1) innovators, 2) early adopters, 3) early majority, 4) late majority, and 5) laggards.
• Engage opinion leaders.  To rapidly create widespread adoption of vital behaviors, find and engage opinion leaders.  You don’t need to meet with and affect everyone you’re trying to influence.  Enlist the power of opinion leaders to help you make change happen.
• Change follows an S-curve.  It starts out slowly, rapidly accelerates, and then levels off.
• Build “wise” groups.   Ensure diversity and maximize independence (by limiting the power of officials or authorities.)

Source 5 – Structural Motivation
Source 5 focused on structural motivation.  The key influence challenge is that rewards, incentives and costs can encourage the wrong behaviors or discourage the right ones.  The key is to ensure that costs and incentives support desired behaviors.

3 Key Strategies

• Strategy 1:  Link rewards third and in moderation.   It’s more important that people are doing the right things from personal motivation than external rewards.
• Strategy 2: Link rewards to vital behaviors.   Reward doing the right things, independent of the results.  Reward the right behaviors and the right results will follow.
• Strategy 3: Use rewards that reward.   Check that people actually value the reward.  Connect it to their values.

Additional notes …

• Tie rewards to the vital behaviors.  Here we watched a video of Dr. Mimi Silbert and her Delancey Street project.   Delancey Street is a self-help community with a 90% success rate for recidivism, which is unheard of.  It works by using carefully crafted promotions, supplementing strategy with rewards, and rewards are tied to vital behaviors.
• Beware of reward blunders.  A potential reward blunder is tying rewards to the results and not the vital behaviors.

Source 6 – Structural Ability
Source 6 focused on structural ability.  It started with an insightful quote: “the world is perfectly design to get the behavior you’re getting.”  The key is to change the environment – make bad behaviors harder and good behaviors easier.

3 Key Strategies

• Strategy 1: Use the power of space.  Leverage the effect of size, location, and surroundings.  For example, move things closer or further away.
• Strategy 2: Use the power of data and cues.  Leverage reminders in the environment to help you remember how to act or that change what you think and care about.  For example, change the reports you routinely view to parallel your goals and values, post visual directions, or place reminders in key spots.
• Strategy 3: Use the power of tools.  Leverage machines, layout, structure, policies, etc.  For example, mechanize difficult work, change the reporting structure, reorganize the work flow, or update instruction manuals, policies, and procedures.

Additional notes …

• Visual cues and feedback dramatically affect your behavior.   Here we watched a video of a chicken wing study by Brian Wansink.  In the study, some tables were continuously bussed (cleared away the pile of bones), while others were not.  People that sat at tables that were continuously bussed ate twice as many chicken wings.  The irony was that when they left, they reported eating half as much.  Without the feedback they thought they ate less.
• Play with propinquity.  Moving things closer or further in nearness or time changes their impact.

Additional Resources
You can find out more about the book, the training, and VitalSmarts, using the following resources:

• Influencer: The Power to Change Anything (the book)
• VitalSmarts (the company behind the book and the training)
• Crucial Skills (Newsletter from VitalSmarts)
• Influencer Videos
• Influencer Worksheet

I’m going to be testing the model for more challenges on the job.  The beauty is the model applies to personal changes as well.  I’m going to start tackling some of resistant challenges as well as helping my mentees be more effective in the changes they want to make happen.

This is too cool not to share.  During my Influencer training, we watched a video on delaying gratification.  Apparently, people that can delay gratification can do better in school, get more promotions, have better relationships and lead a more successful life.  Rather than do what they want in the moment, they choose what’s right for the long run.  That’s the will part.

In the study, kids are given a marshmallow and told that if they don’t eat it for 15 minutes, they’ll get another marshmallow.  Of course, most kids ate the marshmallow before the 15 minutes was up.  Those that didn’t became easy to spot.  They had self-discipline.

O.K. great.  So some people are born with willpower.  What about the rest of us?  Well, the good news is, will’s a skill. They repeated the experiment, but this time they told the kids they could use a technique.  Whenever they wanted the marshmallow, they could just think of their favorite moment or imagine their Mom or Dad watching.  Almost every kid got to his second marshmallow.

Here’s the lesson.  Before you act or react, take a pause.  You already know what you want to do, now ask a different question — “what’s in your best interest?”  Now choose your most effective response.  It’s the power of the pause.

Photo by Rob with Twobs.

In my previous post, I wrote about the power of Hot Spots.  In this post, I’ll show you how I apply Hot Spots to life.  These are the categories I use for skilled living.  This is the big picture.  It’s how I chunk up my overall time and energy.  There are certain areas in life that if I invest in, I get rewarded.  On the other hand, if I ignore these categories, I get penalized.

Hot Spots for Life
Here’s the starter set of categories I use for thinking about the areas in my life that need focus and energy:

Setting Boundaries
I set minimums and maximums for my hot spots in terms of time and energy.  This keeps me from getting over-invested.  I use my hot spots to set boundaries.  For example, I set a max on career and a min on relationships, body, and fun.

So step one was deciding to spend no more than 50 hours each week on my career hot spot.  That forced me to bite off only what I could chew.  That’s how I started improving plate management and pushing back effectively.  I can only spread my life force over so much.  The categories help support each other.  They can also work against each other.

Life Hot Spots
Here are some simple prompts to help you think of hot spots in your life.   The list is not complete or exhaustive and it’s not meant to be.  You may want to add some other hot spots for your life, such as spiritual or social.  The key is to have a simple heat map of what’s important for you.  It’s a high level way to remind you to spread your life force across your meaningful buckets.  It’s a way to more thoughtfully invest in yourself.

If you’re not getting the results you want, explore how you’re investing in Hot Spots.  Maybe with a few tweaks of where you spend your time and energy is just the trick you need.

Photo by Mike PD.

Hot Spots are a simple approach I use to organize and prioritize where I put my focus.  They help me put the spotlight on what’s important.  Hot spots are a heat map for my opportunities as well as for my pain or friction.  By focusing on the hot spots, I can unleash the best results.  The sum is more than the parts.  I can use hot spots to identify, clarify, and simplify where to spend my time and energy, before I maximize and optimize.  It’s first stepping back far enough so I can see the forest from the trees, but then getting close enough to know the differences that will make the difference.   It’s figuring out where my levers are in the system. 
Why Hot Spots
There are several reasons for using Hot Spots for mapping out a particular focus:

• Rapid learning.  There’s too much to do, too little time.  Mapping out the hot spots helps me quickly identify what’s important.  It helps me frame out a problem space before drilling deep.  It’s an iterative process of learning.  Before going too deeply down a dead end, the Hot Spots help me see where I’ll get the most ROI.  I can then explore the finer points in more detail, but at least I have a map of where the gold is.  This has been my single best way for learning domains quickly and effectively.  It’s exponential too.  Once I know where to look, I have an effective filter to find relevant information faster, as well as ask experts in those areas.
• It’s where the action is or should be.  It’s where my attention, energy, and focus should be.   By thinking in terms of hot spots, I can imagine a heat map.  On this heat map are the most important things.  The heat map can show either opportunities or pain points.  On the opportunity side, I can imagine new interests, business ideas, or potential game changers.  On the pain side, I can imagine areas that I’ve neglected and are now causing pain. I can also imagine areas that have a lot of friction.  Maybe they are just a little tougher than they should be.  Maybe a bit of focus would help me debottleneck these hot spots.
• Forest from the trees.  When I’m in the thick of things, it can be tough to see the bigger picture.  This is especially true if I don’t know what to look for.  When I’m right up against a tree, it’s tough to know my next move.   Hot Spots can help you see the forest from the trees in a few ways.  For example, at the macro level, I can think of hot spots in terms of work, personal, and life.  I can think of my life hot spots in terms of mind, body, emotions, career, financial, relationships, and fun.  Within each of those hot spots, I can then identify the main things for me that are important.  I can do the same for work and personal.  For example, if I’m not sure where to start, I can at least think of work in terms of my projects, activities and roles.  On the personal side, I can also think of my roles as well as any personal projects.
• Hot Spots as a heat map.  What’s on the radar?  I don’t need to know all the details and my map doesn’t need to be complete.  In fact, that would get in the way.  I’d spend all my time updating the map to be complete and what’s important would get buried among the details.  Instead, I need to know the threats and opportunities.  When I know where to look, I gain insight.  I can start to see patterns.  I get a better lens for what’s working and what’s not working.  When I know what to look for, I can figure out which levers matter most.  I want to find the right levers to either get unstuck or maximize my results.    I should be able to know at a glance where the pain or opportunity is.  My hot spots are my heat map.
• Hot Spots as your portfolio.  The hot spots are a portfolio.  They help me more thoughtfully spread my life force across the portfolio.   I already spend my time and energy on a variety of things.  Hot spots help me answer the question, where should I invest my time for maximum results?  When I think of my results as a portfolio, it helps me manage risk.  I might be over-investing in some areas, while ignoring or over-investing in others.  For example, am I investing in my relationships?  Am I investing in fun?  My portfolio will have its ups and downs, but now I can focus on monitoring my hot spots.  They can help me find key indicators for my personal performance.  The portfolio metaphor helps me carve out time for what’s important.
• Balancing across hot spots.  Hot Spots give me a bit of scaffolding to help structure my life.  When I have a set of hot spots, I can better balance my life.   This works in conjunction with the portfolio metaphor.  For example, am I investing the same time and energy in my wok as in my personal life?  Am I making time for fun?   With the hot spots I have a frame for balancing my results.
• Satisficing for results.  Satisficing is a decision strategy.  It’s how experts can quickly and effectively make decisions under time pressure.  Rather than optimizing, or trying to find the ideal solution, satisficing is about finding the first option that works.  When I have a heat map of hot spots, I can more effectively satisfice across them.  It helps prevent me from robbing Peter to pay Paul, or from spending too much in one area at the expense of the others.

How to Find Hot Spots
Here are some of the ways I use to find hot spots:

• Ask experts.
• Know the buzz.
• Find the centers of gravity.
• Think in tag clouds.

Testing Your Hot Spots
Here are some simple questions I use to test whether I have found a good hot spot:

• Is it actionable?
• Is it relevant?
• Is it a lever?  (i.e. If I spend time and energy there, does it produce significant results?)

I’ll be providing examples of Hot Spots I use in future posts.

My Related Posts

• Life Frame
• Change Frame
• Improvement Frame

Photo by dirkmvp41.

If you’ve ever struggled to get ideas adopted or change the system you’re in, read this.  I had the privilege of taking some extreme training on influence. It’s a pilot class based on the book, Influencer: The Power to Change Anything. Influence is about changing hearts, minds, and behavior to produce meaningful, sustainable results.  The beauty of the model is that it scales up and down from personal life style changes, such as losing weight, to global changes, such as eliminating diseases. I like it because it’s a simple lens to look at those persistent problems where change seems impossible.  Rather than bump your head against a glass ceiling or spin your wheels without traction, it’s a systematic approach to diagnose and implement change.

The key is clarifying measurable results, finding vital behaviors, and analyzing six sources of influence. Most change efforts fail because they look at only one source of influence or they don’t focus on the vital behaviors.  Vital behaviors get specific on what actions to take that produce exponential results.  Change efforts also fail because they don’t identify crucial moments which are when the right choices matter.  When you know these things, and you have a model, you can dramatically improve your effectiveness.  It’s skilled change.   I’m sharing my notes as a forcing function to help me boil down and distill the insights.  While the model is simple, the challenge is putting it into practice so my first step is summarizing the lessons in a way I can turn into action.  It’s the beginning of the journey.  I see it as a life long quest.  I’m on the path now, with the right instructor and the right techniques to pursue a black belt in change management.

Key Take Aways

Here are my key take aways:

• Know what influence is. Influence is the ability to change our own behavior or the behavior of others.
• Know the difference between influence and persuasion. When short-term isn’t enough, you need influence. Persuasion is short term, while influence is about long term impact. Persuasion often involves getting verbal agreement or support, while influence requires changing minds, hearts, and actions.
• Know why most change efforts fail. Most change efforts fail because we have unrealistic expectations and we look to one simple solution.
• Know that unrealistic expectations get in the way. It’s not realistic to expect that people will change even when the consequences for not changing are enormous, everyone knows the consequence, and the change required is simple.
• Know the Fundamental attribution error. The mistake is assuming people do things for only one reason.
• It’s not one simple solution. Profound, persistent, and resistant problems last because we look for one simple solution. There’s rarely one cause. Analyze six sources of influence to diagnose the problems. You can influence persistent and resistant behaviors when you know the forces driving it.
• Use multiple strategies. Overwhelm the problem with resources. If you want to improve your success 10x, then rather than use 1-2 strategies, use 4 or more high-leverage behaviors.
• Identify effective results.   Effective results are specific and measurable, they matter, and they’re time-bound.
• Know the 3 strategies for finding vital behaviors.  The 3 strategies for finding vital behaviors are: 1) insist on vital behaviors, 2) identify crucial moments, and 3) study positive deviance.
• Insist on vital behaviors.  Vital behaviors are specific actions that dramatically influence the results.  This is about focusing on the vital few behaviors that have cascading impact.  For example, in our group, we ship projects on time because we “fix time, flex scope.”  When we ran scope driven projects, we would slip schedules.  That’s an example of a vital behavior.  You don’t always have the benefit of hind-sight so the key is to find good candidates, experiment, and test your results.
• Identify crucial moments.   Crucial moments tell you when it’s time to act.  For example, when your alarm goes off, you can decide to work out or roll over and go back to sleep.
• Study positive deviance. Study those who succeed where most others fail.   Find the exceptions.  For example, there might be people right around you that stand out.  You can also research examples on the Web.  For example, you can follow projects, such as the Positive Deviance Initiative.  You can ask your network, “who succeeds despite the odds?” and “what do they do differently?”
• Share vicarious experiences.  Rather than lecture or coerce, you can share vicarious experience to influence others.  One simple way is to tell a story.  This works if the audience identifies with the story and there is emotion involved.  Another way is to have the people you want to influence see people in action.  They can watch others perform the vital behaviors and learn simply by watching the successes and failures.
• Motivation and ability. People do things because of motivation and ability. Another way to put it is, “is it worth it?” and “Can I?”
• Personal, social, and structural forces. When you analyze motivation and ability, you can think in terms of personal forces, social forces, or structural forces.  Personal forces would be what an individual wants and can do.  Social forces would be what the group wants and can do.  Structural forces would be the systems, processes, tools, and environment.  It’s these 3 perspectives that give you a more complete view of the problem.
• Think in six sources of influence. Know the six reasons why we do what we do: 1) personal motivation, 2) personal ability, 3) social motivation, 4) social ability, 5) structural motivation, and 6) structural ability.
• Diagnose why change seems impossible. Your world is perfectly organized to create the behavior you’re currently experiencing.  When change seems impossible, use the six sources of influence to find the conspiracy of causes.
• Know the influencer of influencers. Albert Bandura is considered the influencer of influencers. Some of Bandura’s books include: Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control, Social Learning Theory , and Social Learning Theory.

Change is Tough
To kick things off, we started the class with some highlights of failure to influence:

• Eighty-five percent of corporate change efforts fail – Arthur D. Little
• 2 out of 3 criminals are rearrested within 3 years – U.S. Dept. of Justice
• Two years after receiving coronary bypass surgery to save their lives, 90 percent of patients are back to old behaviors – Dr. Edward Miller, John Hopkins University.

Change is tough.  You can dramatically improve your chances of success, when you have a model.

Influencer Model

Here is a mock up of the influencer model we walked through during class:

The main flow of steps is:

• Step 1. Clarify measurable results.
• Step 2. Find vital behaviors.
• Step 3. Use six sources of influence.

Step 1. Clarify Measurable Results
Don’t waste time on how to create change until you’ve clarified what you want, why you want it, and when you want it.  An effective result is:

1. Specific and measurable. It is quantitative not qualitative.

2. What you really want. It’s the outcome that matters.

3. Time bound. It comes with a completion date.

Checks

• So what? Now what? Right level?
• Are the results specific and measurable?
• Is it what you really want?
• Is it time bound?

Step 2. Find Vital Behaviors
Vital behaviors exponentially improve your results. If crucial moments tell you when it’s time to act, vital behaviors tell you exactly what to do and how to do it. Vital behaviors tend to stop self-defeating and escalating behaviors. They often start a reaction that leads to good results.  Here are the keys:

• Behaviors are actions.
• Behaviors are not results or qualities.
• Not all behaviors are equal.
• Only a few are genuinely vital.
• Some is not a number.
• Soon is not a time.

Examples of vital behavior and results …

3 Strategies for finding high-leverage behaviors:

• Strategy 1. Insist on vital behaviors. Tells you exactly what to do and how to do it.
• Strategy 2. Identify crucial moments. Tell you when it’s time to act. It’s the point in time where the right behavior, if enacted, leads to the results you want.
• Strategy 3. Study positive deviance. Find and study those who succeed where most others fail.

Finding vital behaviors ….

• With larger projects: check with local experts, scan the best and most-cited articles and research, search the Internet for most-cited experts, perform a culture assessment.
• With smaller projects: determine your crucial moments, find the behaviors in those moments that will affect your results, conduct a mini-experiment (test the vital behaviors.)

Step 3. Six Sources of Influence
Rather than just look to one source for influence, explore six sources.  Here is a mock up of the six-sources of influence model we walked through during class:

Here is a summary of the six sources:

• Source 1 – Personal Motivation – Do they want to engage in the behavior?
• Source 2 – Personal Ability – Do they have the knowledge, skills, and strengths to do the right then even when it’s hardest?
• Source 3 – Social Motivation – Are other people encouraging the right behavior and discouraging the wrong behavior?
• Source 4 – Social Ability – Do others provide the help, information, and resource required at particular times?
• Source 5 – Structural Motivation – Are rewards, pay, promotions, performance reviews, perks, or costs encouraging the right behaviors or discouraging the wrong behaviors?
• Source 6 – Structural Ability – Are there enough cues to stay on course? Does the environment (tools, facilities, information, reports, proximity to others, policies) enable the right behaviors or discourage the wrong behaviors?

Recognizing sources of influence …

Influence vs. Persuasion
Here’s a quick comparison of influence and persuasion that we walked through during class:

The Guinea Worm Success Story
One of the stories that really helped show the power of vital behaviors was the story of the Guniea Worm:

• Challenge: Guinea worm disease
• Intervention: Focused on 3 vital behaviors: 1) filter drinking water 2) don’t enter the drinking water with infected limbs 3) hold other members accountable to doing the first two behaviors.
• Results: Reduced the number of Guinea worm cases from 3.5 million in 1986 to fewer than 10,000 by 2006. 11 of the 20 countries considered endemic in 1986 were certified as free of the Guinea worm disease as of 2007.

Impressive.  The key was focusing on just a few vital behaviors.

Efficacy is the Foundation of Aspiration, Motivation, and Achievement

Albert Bandura (the influencer of influencers) was cited that a belief in efficacy – the ability to influence the events in your life — is the foundation for the following:

• Aspiration
• Motivation
• Achievement

Vital Behavior Examples

During the class, we covered some vital behaviors (the difference that makes the difference):

• 3 vital behaviors for weight loss: 1) weight yourself daily 2) eat breakfast 3) work out at home.
• 3 vital behaviors for diabetes: 1) improve diet 2) exercise 3) monitor.

Nobody guessed that eating breakfast or working out at home were success patterns of those that successfully maintained their weight loss.

Influence Challenge

My learning partner and I paired up to work on an influence challenge. In our case, we focused on building a reliable resource pool.

It’s a lot of information, but like anything, it’s not knowing what to do, it’s doing what you know.  in this case, it seems like the real key is doing more vital behaviors.

Productivity is a spectrum from day dreamer to achiever.  What if we named these various flavors of productivity?   Then when you recognize you have the wrong hat on for the job, you can switch hats.  For example, maybe you’re thinking “details” when it’s really time for “big picture.”  I’m calling these personas, but they’re really just behavior or thinking patterns.  I’m highlighting some of the more common personality personas that you’ll easily recognize.

I’ll use personas as a simple way name the different types of behaviors.  Anybody can be a mix of some or all of the various personas.  No persona is good or bad.  Some are more effective than others depending on the situation.  The key is to use the personas as a lens on behavior.  You can analyze yourself, other people, and common interactions.  We all have the capacity for the various behaviors.  The trick is to know your preferences and the preferences of others.

Productivity Personas
Here’s a set of personas relevant to the results space:

• Starter
• Finisher
• Thinker
• Doer
• Simplifier
• Maximizer
• Critic
• Can do
• Opportunist
• Perfectionist
• Details
• Big Picture
• Facts and figures
• Controller
• Tinkerer
• Marketer
• Achiever
• Randomizer
• Daydreamer
• Procrastinator

Summary of Productivity Personas
The following table summarizes the Productivity Personas:

3 Ways to Use Productivity Personas
The personas give you a quick way to identify and label patterns.  More importantly, they provide a lens.  You can use this lens to help you understand yourself and other people.  Here’s three ways you can use the personas to your advantage:

• Know yourself – When are you at your best? Are you more of a starter or a finisher?  Are you more of a maximizer or a simplifier?  Are you more of a thinker or a doer?  If you’re aware of the personas, you can use them to your advantage.  For example, don’t let your inner critic or perfectionist get in the way of your doer.  
• Team up   – Who can you team up with to get results?  How can you build more effective teams?
• Improve the situation – You can imagine how some behaviors work better with others and how some can create conflict.  Swap out for more effective personas based on the scenario.  What are the best behaviors for the situation?

The next time you find yourself struggling in a situation, ask yourself if you’re using the right Productivity Persona and try switching hats.

Photo by h.koppdelaney.

Inspire … “To breathe life into” …

… That’s how one of my instructors defined it.  Now, I have a new respect for the word inspire.  I find myself asking, “how do I breath life into others?”

Photo by km33068.