Productivity will improve only when individuals increase their operational responsiveness. And in knowledge work, that means clarifying actions on the front end instead of the back.
Empowerment
Perhaps the greatest benefit of adopting the next-action approach is that it dramatically increases your ability to make things happen, with a concomitant rise in your self-esteem and constructive outlook.
People are constantly doing things, but usually only when they have to, under fire from themselves or others. They get no sense of winning, or of being in control, or of cooperating among themselves and with their world. People are starving for those experiences.
The daily behaviors that define the things that are incomplete and the moves that are needed to complete them must change. Getting things going of your own accord, before you're forced to by external pressure and internal stress, builds a firm foundation of self-worth that will spread into every aspect of your life. You are the captain of your own ship; the more you act from that perspective, the better things will go for you.
Asking "What's the next action?" undermines the victim mentality. It presupposes that there is a possibility of change, and that there is something you can do to make it happen. That is the assumed affirmation in the behavior. And these kinds of "assumed affirmations" often work more fundamentally to build a positive self-image than can repeating "I am a powerful, effective person, making things happen in my life!" a thousand times.
Is there too much complaining in your culture? The next time someone moans about something, try asking, "So what's the next action?" People will complain only about something that they assume could be better than it currently is. The action question forces the issue. If it can be changed, there's some action that will change it. If it can't, it must be considered part of the landscape to be incorporated in strategy and tactics. Complaining is a sign that someone isn't willing to risk moving on a changeable situation, or won't consider the immutable circumstance in his or her plans. This is a temporary and hollow form of self-validation.
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, — make them.
— George Bernard Shaw
Although my colleagues and I rarely promote our work in this way, I notice people really empowering themselves every day as we coach them in applying the next-action technique. The light in their eyes and the lightness in their step increase, and a positive spark shows up in their thinking and demeanor. We are all already powerful, but deciding on and effectively managing the physical actions required to move things forward seems to exercise that power in ways that call forward the more positive aspects of our nature.
When you start to make things happen, you really begin to believe that you can make things happen. And that makes things happen.
13. The Power of Outcome Focusing
THE POWER OF directing our mental and imaginative processes to create change has been studied and promoted in thousands of contexts — from the early "positive thinking" books to recent discoveries in advanced neurophysiology.
My own interest has been in applying of the principle in terms of practical reality: Does it help get things done? And if so, how do we best utilize it in managing the work of our lives? Can we really use this information in ways that allow us to produce what we want to have happen with less effort? The answer has been a resounding yes.
Over the years I have seen the application of the method presented in this book create profound results for people in their day-to-day worlds. As you begin to use it habitually as your primary means of addressing all situations — from processing e-mails, to buying a house or a company, to structuring meetings or having conversations with your kids — your personal productivity can go through the roof.
Many of the professionals I have worked with who integrated this method now find themselves experiencing enhanced or even new jobs and careers. These processes really work in the arena of the ordinary things we must deal with daily — the stuff of
our work. When you demonstrate to yourself and to others an increasing ability to get things done "in the trenches," you probably won't stay in the same trench for very long.[15] It's been inspiring for me to learn and coach others how to deal with the immediate realities down where the rubber hits the road — and how to tie in the power of positive imagery to practical experiences in all our daily lives.
The "fast track" alluded to in the section heading above is a bit of misnomer. For some, slowing down, getting out of the squirrel cage, and taking care of themselves may be the major change precipitated by this methodology. The bottom line is it makes you more conscious, more focused, and more capable of implementing the changes and results you want, whatever they are.
"Create a way to regularly spend more time with my daughter" is as specific a project as any, and equally demanding of a next action to be determined. Having the vague, gnawing sense that you "should" do something about your relationship with your daughter, and not actually doing anything, can be a killer. I often work with clients who are willing to acknowledge the real things of their lives at this level as "incompletes" — to write them down, define real projects about them, and ensure that next actions are decided on — until the finish line is crossed. That is real productivity, perhaps in its most awesome manifestation.
What I want to emphasize now is how learning to process the details of our work and lives with this clear and consistent system can affect others and ourselves in significant ways we may not expect.
As I've said, employing next-action decision-making results in clarity, productivity, accountability, and empowerment. Exactly the same results happen when you hold yourself to the discipline of identifying the real results you want and, more specifically, the projects you need to define in order to produce them.
Defining specific projects and next actions that address real quality-of-life issues is productivity at its best.
It's all connected. You can't really define the right action until you know the outcome, and your outcome is disconnected from reality if you're not clear about what you need to do physically to make it happen. You can get at it from either direction, and you must, to get things done.
As an expert in whole-brain learning and good friend of mine, Steven Snyder, put it, "There are only two problems in life: (1) you know what you want, and you don't know how to get it; and/or (2) you don't know what you want." If that's true (and I think it is) then there are only two solutions:
• Make it up.
• Make it happen.
We are constantly creating and fulfilling.
This can be construed from the models of yin/yang, right brain/left brain, creator/destroyer— or whatever equivalent works best for you. The truth is, our energy as human beings seems to have a dualistic and teleological reality — we create and identify with things that aren't real yet on all the levels we experience; and when we do, we recognize how to restructure our current world to morph it into the new one, and experience an impetus to make it so.