The Real Challenge

Question 1: What’s the real challenge for me here?

Thanks to Michael Bungay Stanier for that question from his latest book, “The Coaching Habit”, which is a brilliant read. It’s a quiet time and I have a few minutes to think about this big awesome question. I’m spending too much time stuck in busy at the moment. It’s like the motor is turning, I’m revving it to make a lot of noise, but I haven’t put it into gear so I feel like I am going nowhere!

Six things spring to mind:

• Funding – chasing the money to do the work. Without the funds we can’t pay the wages, but money can become too much of an obsession. And it can be a real drain to energy for anything else. Equally it can generate a creative approach. A real double-edged sword.
• Capacity – being stuck in a loop, at full capacity when we need to grow. This is the classic business growth trap. We need time to develop new things, but we are really busy doing the existing things to create the growth we need. Capacity blockage!
• Ideas – new ideas, plenty of them, but lacking capacity to move into them. Left with frustration and potential boredom. Really want to get on with new things.
• Energy – low levels of energy. Is this because of burn-out? Which way does it go? Are energy levels low because of the previous three issues, or are these issues real because energy levels are low? Loop thinking again.
• Focus – the constant battle between curiosity and a diverse set of interests, competing with the need to be really focused to get anything done.
• Profile – if nobody knows, if there is no audience then what is the point of doing this. Make it and they will come no longer holds true.

Then Michael suggests another question.

Question 2: What do I really want?

Wow. That’s a piercing question that cuts to the core of what I am trying to get to. In amongst those six issues that I am working with there is something at the heart of it all that really drives what I am here for. Finding that will create a key. One of my weaknesses / strengths depending on the context is the ability to hyper-ideate or create a stack of new ideas in response to something. I tend to over-complicate things and distract myself with an over-long list of ways forwards. Sometimes what is needed is to just focus down on what I really want and go for that and only that.

The third part of this exercise is to massively inflate the issue to shift the thinking to something radically new. Take the likely outcome and multiply it by 10. Then think how it can be achieved. This shifts to a new way of thinking. You can’t keep doing the same thing if you want to go to 10x!

I have gone through the exercise and it is getting me to think up and outward in a different way.

In the archive of this blog is a post about Michael – one of the series I am writing called “Who Inspires Me”. I said there that I looked forward to continuing to be inspired by Michael. This exercise is a great example of that. Thank you Michael.

Also published on Medium.