May 21, 2013

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Changing what you know

April 27, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Woman reflecting… as opposed to what you know about.

It’s one thing to know about something, quite another to know a subject and be able to deploy it in life. Unless you can do (or be) something, you don’t know it, not really. There’s a world of a difference between knowing your purpose and knowing about purpose, for example.

This comes up with books—a great change resource if used properly…

Sometimes people ask me to post a summary of a book I’ve read for them to access, as if that’ll achieve the same effect. And sometimes, I’m offered summaries by other people.

It would be handy if you could radically cut the time invested and still get the same result, and change by just as much.

You can’t…

You can know about something from a summary, but you can’t truly know it.

The best books take you on a journey of learning. You’re changed by the process of reading from cover to cover. Your unconscious mind accepts new patterns. As a result, you live what you’ve learned, and achieve the corresponding results.

Changing what you know about isn’t the same as changing what you know.

A summary most likely won’t change what you know. Skip the reading and you skip the change.

What do you know about and what do you really know? And how do you tell the difference?

(I think a clue is one’s a head thing and the other’s a whole body experience.)

Filed Under: Change, Leadership, Personal Mastery Tagged With: , , , , ,

A customer service question – What would you do? Plus an invitation

June 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Reception bell(Please see below for an invitation to a new LinkedIn Discussion group – Change for Leaders.)

It’s lunchtime. We’re in a city hotel. A single receptionist is checking in guests. No sign of a concierge. A line has formed. One in the queue has a pre-arranged meeting with a staff member. Another wants to book a table in the restaurant.

The one with the meeting picks a moment when the receptionist is not actually speaking to a customer and asks if she can phone her colleague. The receptionist says she’ll do that when she’s finished with the people she is serving.

The line lengthens.

A delivery man arrives, places some packages on the counter and asks for a signature. Still the receptionist insists she will finish with the people she is currently serving first. She resumes watching those guests fill in the check-in forms.

Eventually the pressure builds and after 10 minutes the receptionist starts multi-tasking.

Perhaps she has been trained to focus completely on one customer at a time. Perhaps that’s appropriate. Really, perhaps it is. Or is it just what she prefers—a little bit of control?

So, there’s a management problem around staffing levels.

That aside…

What’s the right policy? Should someone serving focus totally on the customer in front of them, or should they process simple requests in parallel as and when they can? Which approach is most respectful overall?

What do you think? What would your service policy be? How would you instruct your staff?

____________________

You are invited to a new LinkedIn Discussion group: Change for leaders

Ever noticed that much written and said about change is all about doing to change to other people? And yet lasting transformation begins within ourselves and flows to others through our leadership. I’ve created a new group called Change for Leaders specifically to share learning about this key to successful change, on a large scale or a small scale.

If you’d like to be part of the new group—and I hope you would—please go to the join page here…

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Change-Leaders-4501602/about

Looking forward to seeing you there.

Filed Under: Leadership, Personal Mastery, Relationship Skills Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Change for leaders – Does it start out there or in here?

April 25, 2012 By 2 Comments

Jar in front of a mirrorMessing about with key phrases on Google such as “change for leaders”, it’s very striking that most of what comes up is about doing change to other people—organizations, employees and so forth, usually by or on behalf of various corporate bodies or consultancies.

It’s all about making change happen out there—the assumption being that there is no need for change within the leaders themselves. They are the leaders after all.

Now I’m just looking at the listed search results and maybe when you click through it’s obvious that the various organizations and individuals realize that in order for us to lead change in other people, we must first change ourselves.

Or maybe not.

But that’s the thing. Change done to other people doesn’t stick, if it works at all in the first place.

Change begins “in here,” and then it happens “out there.”

Try it and see.

Filed Under: Change, Leadership, Learning, Organizational Learning, Personal Mastery, Wisdom Tagged With: , , , , , , ,