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Founded in 2002, the blog here continues to be a space of daily conversation about the science of mind and its implications and applications
Another refinement of responsive planning. It’s interesting that Ikuan in Chinese is moving forward as one.
Interests: What are we interested in discovering, exploring, learning, mastering, creating, co-creating, trying?
Knowns: What is clear, true, decided?
Unknowns: What is unclear, unconfirmed, undecided?
Assets: What do we have available to work from our interests, knowns and unknowns?
Next: What can we start, move forward, complete and pay attention to next?
It's useful to think of constraints as conditions that plans need to accommodate for progress and success. Inadequate resources or time for the original plan form are constraints. We adapt plans for the resources and time we have. This is part of responsive planning. The adaptation might or might not impact velocity or outcomes.
Nuance is the art of distinction. Discovering new distinctions is the core of all new possibilities.
In every instance of learning, growth, development, and maturing that we experience we have discovered new distinctions that offer us new options to consider, explore, and experiment with.
It is these distinctions that allow us to become mindful and notice what's new in our world and what's new in possibilities space.
All of my work as coach, designer and writer is informed and inspired by the power of distinctions. Language shapes us in our narratives, our way of knowing ourselves, each other, and our world and new ways. To expand our language is to expand our consciousness and sensitivity and resilience to new opportunities emerging and awaiting us in every moment.
When we want to understand someone's choices of action and inaction, we can explore the beliefs that shape and inform their choices. This is being curious about what they think is true in their world. It's not important to make sense of what we discover, since beliefs never need to be logical, rational or reasonable. All we can do is share further insight, options and questions.
When we inquire about "the plan,"we can sequence the question in several forms.
Is it clear where we would like to be in two quarters?
What decisions need to be made?
Are we working from any assumptions we need to confirm?
What do we need to pay attention to?
What are our opportunities to get momentum?
There is nothing rational about the idea that there is value to setting 3 or 5 year goals. Declaring something as a 3 or 5 year goal has no power to create a knowable future. Because of the constant of change, planning assumptions are largely reliable for about 2 quarters, at which point they need to be revisited and refreshed based on what's different. We accelerate change whenever we are dedicated to learning, innovation and mindfulness.
Goals of any timeframe are interests, directions we can move toward, one question at a time. The prime way to miss opportunities is to try working from planning assumptions, which is exactly what goals classically favor.
When a group is trying to quantify an interest, goal or direction people can propose conflicting numbers. The reality is that everyone knows things others don't, so differences are inevitable. The wisest approach is always to go with the midpoint of the proposed numbers. This is far more efficient and intelligent, especially when our knowledge of the future is always incomplete and volatile in the present.
When we understand that the future is intrinsically unknowable, and shapeable, the whole business about assessing our potential becomes interesting. We get into potential assessment when we're trying to determine what we should set as an outcome we want to realize within a specific timeframe, like what we can make happen in the next 2 quarters.
Reality is that of we act like we lack faith in ourselves, we lose faith in ourselves and miss opportunities.
Responsive planning flourishes when it engages a variety of perspectives: dreamers and visionaries, analyticals and researchers, tacticians and doers. When any of these dominate or disappear, it becomes a constraint on the possibility space. Each has value in each iteration of learning and action.
The good news about luck is that we can create the conditions for our own luck. We do this when we invite or take up conversation with a stranger, when we browse things we don't usually read about, listen to or watch, and when we try anything new. When we travel and explore our unknowns. This can happen with any interest, in any responsive planning.
It is a common axiom that people resist change. This creates a dilemma for change agents which can be approached by positioning change as responsive and iterative experiments rather than unresponsive mandates. People become empowered than than victimized by turning change into a source of learning. It also makes changes intelligent and mindful rather than a new source of mindless compliance.
When we live and work from interests we don't have to push ourselves. We don't need someone to "hold us accountable." Pushing and accountability are required when we lack energy for doing or creating something
When we move in the direction of what interests us, we have energy. Interest energizes. An option otherwise is to create some dimension of interest for an obligation. Many can be made interesting by being creative with it, creating new constraints.
When we identify something as an interest, we naturally act on it. We do what we can to explore the interest. We naturally adapt to our questions and discoveries along the way. We can trust our interests to energize action. When we delay, postpone or fail to act, it’s likely not an interest. It’s an obligation instead. Even so, we can sometimes find something interesting in an obligation, making the obligation more interesting than dull.
A responsive plan is a plan we keep adjusting to unplanned and unpredictable knowns and unknowns.
This is the opposite of an unresponsive plan, a plan based on assumptions that we try the best we can to follow. In this world, success is measured as plan compliance.
Responsive plans are based on questions. Questions work because the only thing we have in abundance with plans is uncertainty. Questions translate unknowns into actions that make progress towards our interests possible.
Any kind of planning, without exceptions, can be Interest-based Planning. This iterative and agile process simply involves four parts:
Interests: What are we interested in creating, doing, making possible?
Knowns: What's clear, decided, confirmed so far?
Questions: What's unclear, undecided, unconfirmed so far?
Actions: What will we do, when, to move forward on our questions?
Strategic planning was originally conceptualized to help companies compete against others. It often operates from the belief that equates success to size: bigger and more is better. This equation goes unquestioned in typical strategic planning exercises. It's possible that the question could emerge and open new possibilities and perspectives if the process was simply called "planning."
It's optimal to have every function and team in an organization do planning, with a multidisciplinary and multilevel project team facilitating alignments and collaborations.
In teams of any kind, team culture and constraints have a unique influence over how work gets done. Culture is what supports people's sense of freedom in their work. Constraints are the boundary conditions teams work within.
Teams do well when they feel free to work together from what they know, decide and learn. They consider constraints design assets.
There is a simple way to grow our base of questions. For any question, we consider two things: What questions should come before this? What questions should come after? This also creates more continuity in our interest pathway.
Interests are time unbounded. Goals are time bound.
The idea behind a goal is to engage in activity we want to end at a determined point in time. The activity only has meaning in its ending.
In an interest, meaning is continuous rather than postponed. There is meaning in what we are interested in exploring, experimenting with and enjoying.
One of the ways to get and keep momentum in any interest is through habits. Two questions happen here:
What habits do we already have that could support any of our questions?
What habits could we start or grow to support any of our questions?
The power of habits is the potential energy released when they are engaged.
