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Using systems and habits to improve your life is a proven method to succeed. It requires seeing the work as a system and then adjusting your thoughts and behaviors to be able to take advantage of your opportunities in life.
We all want our problems to be fixed immediately. We want to instantly solve all our work or business problems, all our team problems, and all our habit problems.
The impatience that most of us have is normal. But this normal impatience is the reason so many of us don’t improve.
Read MoreYears ago when I started a new job I remember getting into the role and identifying problem areas right away. From talking to others on the team, to reviewing data on past trends, I started to see a few areas that I would need to address in order to improve the team.
I remember feeling like I already worked through these problems. It was almost a feeling of deja vu. But it was new people, new projects, new situations, new everything.
Read MoreThe other day I was reading a story about a successful basketball coach. The story explained a situation where the team started to lose games and were in the midst of a disappointing season.
He was incredibly frustrated and felt the team didn’t care enough. So he relied on punishment to try and motivate the team. He worked them harder and harder and harder. But nothing worked and he just kept getting more and more frustrated at the team’s performance.
Read MoreWe are all constantly interacting with systems. Systems are all around us and constantly “working”. Sometimes they are specifically designed systems, such as the traffic light system, and other times they are there and we barely notice them, such as our habits around driving a car.
Systems thinkers argue that the deeper you get into the understanding of the system, the more leverage you gain. This means that you have more ability to change the system when you fully understand that system.
Read MoreWe all know the feeling. We feel frustrated and trapped and seem unable to break through. We don’t understand what is holding us back but we certainly feel it.
But while most of us intuitively know this feeling, we don’t explore it with enough depth and insight to actually make a change. Instead we usually power through until it eases up or we change direction.
Read MoreEveryone is busy. I’ve worked in many different industries and in many different roles. I’ve worked with small businesses and large businesses and everything in between. One common theme is that everyone is always busy.
There is always something that needs attention, something that needs to get done. Fires are constantly coming up and most managers use the majority of their time to put the fires out. But there really is a better way.
Read MoreFor the latest version of this article, click here.
Read MoreWe all have gotten feedback on something we do or something we did that we didn’t like. It might be during a performance review at work, something a friend tells us or receiving a bad grade in school. While the information comes as something negative, we usually don’t realize that we can actually take this and use it to improve.
We don’t take constructive criticism very well. We get a jolt of emotion (fight or flight reaction) that often comes and it starts to cloud our thinking.
Read MoreI learned a lot from being forced to get through a sleepless night. When my first daughter was born I was in complete shock at how little sleep I would get. I struggled each time I had to get up to help feed her, change her or just calm her down. In the morning I would have a difficult time making it to work on time and then making it through the day with such exhaustion.
But over time it got easier. By the time we had our second daughter, I would quickly wake up and tend to her. I could wake up over and over throughout the night and get little sleep. Somehow I got up for work and would make it through the day. It wasn’t always easy but I was shocked at how much easier it was once I got used to it.
Read MoreYears ago I read about a doctor who was frustrated by his patient’s lack of physical activity. Regardless of the shape or ailments of the patient he stressed the importance of getting 30 minutes of exercise every other day.
But when those patients came back to see him weeks or months later, such a small number had taken his advice that he grew frustrated. He decided to change his approach. Instead of 30 minutes every other day, he simply said to do 60 seconds (1 minute) of exercise every single day.
Read MoreIn an article titled Some Notes on Management in a Hospital, Dr. W. Edwards Deming said, “Hard work and best efforts are not sufficient for optimization of a system. A system must be managed.”
There is a lot of value that can be taken from this quote from Deming. We can use the wisdom from it to help us improve.
Read MoreSeeing the underlying systems in our lives helps us to improve. It allows us to see more and understand more when trying to get better.
Dr. W. Edwards Deming is well known for his work with Japanese manufacturing after 1950. Many people point directly to Deming to explain the incredible success that Japanese manufacturing had in the 1980s and beyond.
Read MoreThere is a trend in business management right now where leaders of companies sacrifice the long-term health of their business to achieve quick results. They do this by making shortsighted decisions that will bring in early wins but ultimately impact the future of the company in a negative way.
This makes sense when you study today’s business environment. Board members seem more and more impatient. They tend to look at the CEO with a “what have you done for me lately” mindset.
Read MoreThere is a flaw in the way we think. While there are complex systems all around us at all times, we tend to disregard most of the system to key in on the specific piece that matters most to us.
At times this is useful. We may not care about the full parking enforcement systems in a city to know that we should put money in the meter to avoid a ticket. We may not care about weather systems when we just want to know if it will rain on our cook out.
Read MoreNinety percent of an iceberg is under water. That means that the visible, above-water section of the iceberg is really only 10%. But if we never explore below the water, we would never even realize that most of the iceberg is not seen from the surface.
Systems thinking is the mental equivalent to the 90% of the iceberg that is hidden. It goes deeper than the linear thinking which only accounts for the visible 10%.
Read MoreSetting goals or New Years Resolution can be a great way to take charge of the direction of your life. But too often these are misunderstood. They are set and then we expect motivation, effort and willpower to take over and drive us towards success.
But this is misleading. Have you ever set a goal but then over the next week or so completely lost the motivation to pursue that goal? Of course. We all have.
Read MoreI talk to a lot of people about goals and New Years resolutions. Whether in business, sports, finance, or health I tend to hear people talk about what they hope to achieve.
This makes a lot of sense. We are taught throughout our lives that we have to know the target we want to hit. But this is very misleading.
Read Moreost people never really evaluate or focus on the systems and habits in their lives. They simply focus on the end result or changes that they deem as temporary.
But temporary doesn’t work. Changing your diet, exercise routine, spending habits, work processes, goals etc. won’t have lasting change when we only set a short time frame to make these adjustments.
Read MoreYears ago I had a chance to listen to a successful business owner speak about what he did to have the success he had. He gave a very inspiring speech with valuable business insight but there were two things that he really emphasized throughout his talk.
The first was to keep things simple. He talked about the complexity that naturally comes over time and that in order to stay focused and rule out distractions we have to simplify. We have to find the unnecessary complexity and remove it. Even when complexity exists and we can’t avoid it, we have to find ways to understand the situation in a simplified way to make the best decisions and avoid getting analysis paralysis.
Read MoreOne of the things that I have learned when I talk to young people is that they tend to see things in black and white. They see all of the pros of a situation or all of the cons but they can’t see both to realize that both always exist together.
It may be that they always see the grass as being greener on the other side or they can’t keep a job because once they start working they quickly see the hard work instead of the benefits of having that job.
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