Coming to a TV Set Near you!

I can't believe I've forgotten to blog this.

So a couple of weeks back, while sitting in a meeting my Blackberry buzzed. Ordinarily in meetings I ignore the thing, but for some reason I grabbed it out of the holster without thinking and began to read.

Rude I know - like I said, I usually don't do this...

I quickly scanned the message and began to laugh.

Last year, I was contacted by a TV production company to work on camera for their show Style By Jury. Well there they were asking me back.

Here was the real kicker: it was Tuesday and they wanted to know how my Thursday looked... I thought about it for an hour, asked Jennifer and Mary (my sister who was staying with us for a couple of weeks) what they thought and then agreed to go on the show.

I received the confirmation at 12:30pm on Wednesday and was on camera at 11am Thursday.

We shot from 11am through to about 7pm that Thursday. It's always interesting working with someone I've just met, but it's very weird to do so with an audience.

James (who I had been meeting with that day) suggested I take some behind-the-scenes footage, so I loaded up my little video camera and brought it along for the ride.

I actually forgot about the camera until the very end of the day when we were shooting the interviews. I asked the producer and director if they minded and they were fine with it. I did a bit of editing and you can see the result here.

Oprah...PSST...over here!! :-)

Einstein regarding measurability

Here's a quote I received a couple of weeks back that I liked. It describes the paradox I'm confronted with when I am selling my services in the corporate world:

"Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts."
- Albert Einstein


Ahh bless. (not overly) Simple, and elegant, Einstein.

When I work in a corporate environment, I think of what I do as Measuring the Immeasurable. The irony is that measuring the immeasurable is a key skill in motivating people to do what they want to do which benefits you as well...but immeasurability is the bane of business.

If you're of a certain age, you might think about the impossibility of creating an Excel spreadsheet or Access Database to document Tom Sawyer's success in having others whitewash a fence he was supposed to take care of.

Motivation, inspiration, interest, joy, triumph, disaster, love, hate. None of these has an 0-meter with a crude scale beside it measuring what each one means to all people.

As an individual, the best thing is we're all different. As a CEO, the worst thing is we're all different.

That means the CEOs, the CIOs, the CFOs all have the task of getting themselves and their underling bean counters (True Confession: Jennifer's bookkeeping company is called "Bean Counting") to dismiss immeasurabiltiy as irrelevant because they can't be measured on an external scale and then leveraged for maximum productivity, or leveragability or negotiatability or motivationabilitiy...yadda yadda whatever.


Enter the Emir of the Immeasurables. What I do is intensely document the immeasurables on a more subtle scale. How do you quantify 'friendly'? How do you inspire people to be 'Professional'? what about welcoming?

How do you help employees to both recognize their own value, then value contributing that stuff to the place they work between 9 and 5?

To me, that's the fun stuff. Both showing people that what they do and who they are is intrinsically important.

True confessions: I've complained in the past about business being addicted to measurability, but have recently read an article about the war in Iraq which really underscored the point for me. (and really inspired the idea that measurabilty really has become some sort of addiction)

The US Government has made a big point of talking about how much, how many, how often, how few, how big, how little etc over the last several years and I wonder if it's Bush 43's education as an MBA... hmmm....

No disrespect to the MBAs out there (you know who you are) but there are certain things that you just can't measure and I know I've fractured your nads enough on this one...

That said, it's important to remember:

• You can measure how often a person is sick, and you can make up a factor about employee satisfaction, but you can't directly correlate that to dedication.
  
  
• You can measure lateness, and you can make up a number about employee effectiveness, but you can't directly correlate that to dedication.

The point is this: when you can't generally measure something empirically, don't. Really...just give it up.

HR departments are supposed to do this job for companies. The real problem is that they have to rigidify and quantify many things...some of the more difficult ones are: 'morale' and 'productivity'. The problem is that most HR departments are perceived to have 'sipped the Kool-Ade' by one or both sides of the equation, and after a while, because of the equal stresses they feel, their credibility tends to be dismissed.

Psst: the real problem was that they were dismissed by management as stooges for employees, and employees by stooges for management. The role of 'honest broker' can only be held outside the organization...

(otherwise the charge of protecting or selling out of friends might actually garner credibility when expert opinions are expressed...)

The best solution is often to bring in an experienced individual who served as an employee AND manager who, having lived on all sides in the corporate world, can truly see Management's dilemma and understand his or her challenges, truly see the employee's challenges and understand his or her situation, and forge a win/win that is real, just and sincere.

(James (my marketing guru and partner-in-another-business) is teaching me to release my inner self-promoter...breathe in....breathe out...)

:-)


Okay now read it again:

"Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts."


Gotta love Al...

Nerk-Nerk

To help differentiate between 'truth' and filters, I often ask people to pretend they have different professions and imagine walking down a street. Depending on 'who you are', the details of the street will appear to be different to you. Landscapers will notice trees, flowers, shrubs and grasses. Car dealers will notice makes and models...etc.

Many years ago a fictitious character entered the NLP scene. His name was Nerk-Nerk and he was from another planet. The purpose of this character was to help to differentiate between the map and the territory. I'll quote below from an article written by Robert Dilts found at the NLPU website here.

Epstein advocated entering a state of “not knowing,” in which all previous mental maps and assumptions are put aside with reference to one’s ongoing experience. To explain this state, Epstein invented the character “Nerk-Nerk.” Nerk-Nerk is the name of a fictitious space alien who has the exact same nervous system and physical characteristics of human beings, but none of the perceptual, linguistic or cultural assumptions. Nerk-Nerk has studied and is familiar with all forms of human language, but is incapable of making the deletions, generalizations and distortions that most human beings do habitually while communicating verbally with one another. Nerk-Nerk is only able to understand and respond to fully specified sensory based descriptions and instructions.

Thus, when a person enters a “Nerk-Nerk” state, he or she attempts to drop and challenge pre-existing assumptions, and get a fresh and unbiased view of a particular situation or experience. Another use of Nerk-Nerk involves acting “as if” one is describing or explaining something to Nerk-Nerk in such a way that he would be able understand it. Such an exercise forces one to be more precise and sensorially grounded.

How many times in your life would it have been useful to enter into a situation of not-knowing instead of 'knowing' and being completely wrong?

Sometimes it's a good thing to know nothing, but to be open and curious.

After all - "knowledge is the death of possibility..."

What has NLP been doing lately?

Since the summer, we've been a bit overwhelmed here at NLP Centres CANADA.

Overwhelmed in a good way, but the days have certainly been busy around here.

We are still making some changes to accommodate the NLPU curriculum, adjusting our coaching rates, working in the corporate field in an interesting new way, and developing a completely new direction with a fantastic new partner.

All in all, it's an exciting time.

So what's in store in the next little while? Easy - I'll tell you.

1) New Directions (more to come on that in the coming months)
2) New NLP Courses (we are proposing to offer NLPU Master Practitioner Training in early 2007... without geting too 'markety' it'd be smart to book as early as possible. It appears this course will be very popular and the seats will be very limited)
3) New Website (if you haven't noticed already, we've joined the new world of Content Management and changed EVERYTHING about how the site looks. There's still a ton of work to be done, but if you surf to www.nlpworks.com you'll see a nice picture of me and Robert as the banner.
4) New corporate approach (something for a blog entry in the coming months)

Hope you are doing well. If you have any questions about NLP, please feel free to contact me at hugh@nlpworks.com