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Tag: Speed
Financial Crisis and the Speed of the Zone
For many people, the financial crisis has caused a paralyzing amount of fear. A question on many people’s minds is how to cope with this gripping emotional state at a time when action is necessary. Perhaps this is the most relevant conversation as our emotional state is what determines the speed at which we are able to take action. Also, it is our emotional state that determines the accuracy of our perception and the mind’s ability to solve complex problems. At this very moment, the pace of communication and information is accelerating at incomprehensible multiples.
The emotional state of fear will have us wanting to slow down, or even stop. In the financial world, this translates to “wait and see,” “panic and sell,” “follow the crowd,” “run and hide,” “shame and be shamed,” “blame and justify,” “judge and be judged.” The mass fear is palpable and unbearable to be around, and the results are showing up in the markets, the media and everywhere.
The solution to this is to get in a different state, where we can move faster, make better decisions, and keep ourselves from being sucked into the vacuum of fear, like particles in space into a massive black hole. In order to do this, we have to step back and observe, speed up and change, and take the actions without hesitation. Buy great opportunities and resist selling those that will recover. History will prove that even though the market hibernates like a bear, it does make room for the bull sooner or later. This is the time to be bold and resilient and the internal state of fear is our enemy.
Below is an article I wrote in 2004 about the speed of the zone, for a group of leaders that I was working with.
The zone in sports is that magical moment when an athlete is totally connected to winning, physiologically and psychologically, and releasing chemicals that enhance the state. This emotional state takes us into a different reality beyond fear and into bliss. Everything is optimized and enhanced. I feel understanding this zone is a key to moving past the fear and into action again.
The Speed Of The Zone (copy of original article written in 2004)
Thank you for your courage and commitment to this journey that we share together, which can be very personal and alone sometimes. I have written about “the speed of the Zone” to support you in your understanding of what you have available to you.
The Zone is a very magical space; even though it can seem graceful and slow from the outside, it is actually moving very fast. What does this mean?
As we move up the zones the speed increases exponentially. What this means is that the feeling of each zone is dramatically different. As you move in your own personal journey up the zones you will hit invisible walls. This can feel uncomfortable and will have you plotting against yourself to move back into a lower zone that is more comfortable. We call this your havingness, or upper-limit. I will discuss more about this later but for now let me explain the speed of the Zone.
The important thing is that you will adjust and adapt and then it does get more comfortable again. However, in the middle of the adjustment it can feel confusing. Let‘s begin by understanding the context of the personal journey you are on as a Leader.
The Personal Journey
The voice of your Spiritual-Self compels you to let go of your comfort zone and embark on a personal journey that seems to have no limits, no restrictions and no end. In a life driven by goals, achievements and deadlines, this voice is seldom convenient, comfortable or timely. And yet when it’s time, the spirit moves quickly and ruthlessly like a storm from which you cannot protect yourself and there is no place to hide. The only solution is to stop the struggle and surrender to your spirit. Your spirit is much faster than your ego.
In a world of accelerating acceleration, where change is unpredictable, and complexity is growing at levels that are becoming evermore challenging, your ability to adapt must transcend previous limits in order to survive. You are on a personal journey, a quest for meaning, an evolution that takes you from your social act to your authentic self, from specialist to generalist, from dominance to partnership, from competitive to cooperative, from fragmented to integrated, from an ego-centered person to a comprehensive, whole, spiritual being.
You are for the first time making room in your life for spirit and ego to walk in partnership, side by side, each making peace with the needs of the other.
From Surviving To Thriving
Human beings are complex and evolving beings, who thrive on problem solving, adding value and contributing to others; once survival is handled you are fulfilled only by things that move your heart and challenge your mind.
“It is not the strongest nor most intelligent of species that survives; it is the one most adaptable to change.”
– Charles Darwin
Change is something that requires action and is, by its very nature, not a passive energy, but rather an energy that has force. This force is required to take action from a lower zone because there has to be a dramatic increase in energy. Not only is more energy required as you move up the zones but also more velocity or speed. Things happen faster, and more powerfully. At first this can feel draining and tiring, but as you adapt you begin to have more energy and power available to you. This is the same as someone learning to run their first marathon. It takes persistence, determination and commitment. The body has to adapt physically and they have to increase the distance in incremental steps, not run the whole distance the first day.
Let me explain through an analogy from a story.
A Clue From The Red Queen
For Alice, in Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass,” advice from The Red Queen is that “in this place it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.”
“Through the Looking Glass,” is the imaginary life of a young girl who, while playing the game of chess, walks through a mirror into another reality where the pieces of the chess game become giant and real, and The Red Queen is showing Alice the way. This statement inspired Evolutionary Biologist L. Van Valen to come up with a principle called the “The Red Queen Principle” which states that “for an evolutionary system, continuing development is needed just in order to maintain its fitness relative to the systems it is co-evolving with.” The evolution here is in our consciousness, our collective knowledge and how we individually operate within this.
The zones are the equivalent to our own personal evolution as human beings. Only the whole thing is happening in one life and not over millions of years.
Understanding The Landscape
Like Alice in “Through the Looking Glass,” understanding what it takes to thrive in the Zone begins with looking into the mirror, and stepping into a future reality that is at present a possibility only as surreal as the room inside Alice’s mirror. Where things are operating differently than you know, the rules are different, the players are different, and everything is unpredictable, outside your current concept of time and space.
Let’s imagine the world inside the mirror, which on the surface looks similar, and yet everything is on different sides. Things that were on your right are now on the left, the sizes and proportions are constantly changing as you walk in. To see further into the mirror, you have to literally step past your current limitations. In the story, Alice is a self-centered girl who is insensitive to her cats and to her sister has an opportunity to learn some valuable lessons. Her journey begins after she steps out of the room in the mirror (her previous limits), and steps into the landscape outside and is joined by the Red Queen (who has transformed from a few inches tall on Alice’s chessboard to a full size woman, taller than Alice. She looks over the hills and sees that everything is divided into squares, like her chessboard and realizes she is in the game. The queen is showing her the way and, they have been moving very fast and take a break when:
Alice looked round her in great surprise. “Why, I do believe we’ve been under this tree the whole time! Everything’s just as it was!”
“Of course it is,’ said the Queen, `what would you have it?”
“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else — if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”
“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
A New Reality
This dialogue is a great analogy of the world you are stepping into, fast and unpredictable and where the rules feel as different as a reality without gravity. This is the context of the “The Red Queen Principle” where running is an analogy for adaptation to the environment. Using the characteristics that you developed to achieve success in the past, the ACT will only manage to keep you at the same place even if you are playing at full speed. So what will it take to achieve success in the future? The single word answer is CHANGE.
This is your individual ability to change and re-invent yourself, to adapt to the new rules of the game. Literally going from mono-dimensional thinking to multi-dimensional thinking. Imagine that the two-dimensional chess board now surrounds you, you are in it and the pieces have come to life, and you can move in ways you do not understand from your current perspective.
The challenge presented to Alice is “If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!” On a purely physical level, the fastest runners in the world are not twice as fast as their peers, only milliseconds faster. The change that is required is in the way that you perceive, think, and respond, not a physical adaptation that would take many life spans to accomplish.
You have been thinking and responding to a slow world and the Zone is like another reality and nothing in your past can prepare you for this. The Zone requires all of you to be present in the NOW!!
Remember the Zone is an ideal that we are always reaching for and there is no limit, no end. However by reaching for Goldzone we will surely live above the line in Greenzone and Bluezone and sometimes Goldzone.
To Your Goldzone!
Anjou MacPherson
Co-founder
Goldzone Education
© Goldzone Education. All rights reserved.
New Paradigm Leadership
Most people upon hearing the words “leader or leadership,” assume that the reference is to the people at the top in the power positions with authority, and not the managers, supervisors and team members who make up the organization.
Ask any room full of managers how many of them are leaders and you will find that most managers do not see themselves as leaders – and yet, how do you manage without leading? Leadership is one of the world’s oldest and most widely studied subjects. Leaders as prophets, priests and kings have long served as symbols, representatives and models for their people. In modern times, athletes, musicians, actors, businessmen and gurus have replaced the kings of old.
Leadership is often perceived as something elite, hallowed, special and reserved for the minority of people at the top with “true” power concentrated in their hands. These people tend to dominate the organizations or groups they lead (at least until someone overthrows them and takes their position) through the use of the age-old methods of authority, domination, command and control.
This style of leadership leads to organization structures that produce results by forcing compliance, adherence to rules, established conventions and old ways of doing things. Change is seen as a threat – even though it is openly stated that change is required. When it comes to taking action, new ideas and new ways of doing things are often met with anything from mild hostility to outright resistance.
The Hands of The Few
This concentration of power “in the hands of the few” may have worked in the past when things remained unchanged for long periods of time, however in today’s world, the pace of change is accelerating exponentially. We are living in a world where globalization isn’t the stuff of the future – it has already happened! We are more connected to our neighbor countries on the other side of the planet than ever before. There is a free flow of capital, ideas, information, technology, goods, services, and people worldwide. Ferocious competition is breathing down our necks from the most unlikely sources.
This new world requires a new leadership style that is very different from the successful formulas that worked well in the past. This is a counterintuitive, very difficult thing to do… to let go of the very things that made us successful in the past. Yet, this is exactly what we must do to survive, let alone succeed, in the future.
Transformation from Position Power to Personal Power
It’s all about power: who’s got it and who wants it. It is well known that traditional models of leadership are based on gaining and keeping power through establishing a top “position” and then protecting one’s “turf.” The thought behind this is that power comes from position, cannot be shared, and that by sharing it, it is somehow diminished. So if a leader has spent a lifetime building, enhancing and developing their power base, they are not easily going to empower other people in the organization. Yes, they will talk the language of empowerment – but when it comes to moving the decision-making – the words don’t quite translate into actualities.
This type of power is known as Position Power, which comes from formal authority or the right to command. Results are achieved by autocracy, coercion and the extensive use of punishment and reward (ie., If you agree with me, I will reward you. If you don’t agree with me or do what I say, you will be punished.)
Position Power works when you are in a position of authority over the person you are working with. However, it is ineffective when influencing networks of people in other departments, as well as suppliers, customers, peers, and project teams. If people have no choice but to do what they are told – then Position Power works. However, with increased demand and competition for talent, using autocracy is less and less effective. In fact, it can be outright counterproductive!
No longer is economic success dependent on natural resources, manufacturing excellence, and scientific or technological prowess. Today, the terms of success revolve around an organization’s ability to mobilize, attract and retain creative human talent. Every competitive dimension depends on creativity and ingenuity of the people that make up the organization.
It is impossible to think of new ideas, creative and innovative solutions that defy old ways of doing things if we are afraid of making mistakes and are constantly worried about the real or perceived threat from a leadership style based on autocracy, coercion and punishment. Leading a team of creative talent is very different from leading a factory line of workers who do similar tasks repetitively, or a service staff who provides functional services. It simply does not work to command creativity! Can you imagine Mozart or Picasso being told to produce or “You are out!”
Many of today’s leaders are still operating from this old leadership model. Leadership in the creative environment of 2006 and beyond requires a vastly different paradigm. Today’s new model involves partnership, cooperation and team. It’s not about abandoning Position Power – it’s about adding, developing and enhancing every individual in the organization’s Personal Power and working the agenda together in a partnership.
The most significant difference between Position Power and Personal Power is that the former is handed over or given to a person, whereas the latter is developed through personal development and improving one’s ability to communicate, influence, and inspire actions from others.
Personal Power is required when working on project teams, flat organization structures, and where people have the free choice to give you what you want or not. Creative and talented people always have free choice – because their skills are highly sought after.
Both sources of power are valid and needed depending on the situation, the skill, responsibility level of the team and the nature of the task. The use of power can be viewed on a continuum with ultimate Position Power at one end and ultimate Personal Power at the other end. Most situations require a leadership style that is somewhere in the middle of the continuum.
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The Definition of Power |
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Power is the ability to get someone to do something you want done or the ability to make things happen. |
Transform Every Person in the Organization into a Leader
Empowering individuals in the organization means to share the power with them. Shared power adds up to more power – not less. It means everyone has an increased ability to get more done and to make things happen. This can make a dramatic difference to the bottom line results of the organization. To do this means making everyone a leader.
An organization comprised of leaders adds up to a leading organization.
Like any skill, Personal Power can be learned and developed by anyone, however it requires a new leadership context that begins at the top and extends throughout the levels of the organization. It simply doesn’t work to send the people in the organization to trainings, alignments and educational sessions if the entire organization isn’t sharing the same context. Leading by example means that the context must be shared at all levels. Otherwise you end up with disillusionment, skepticism and a lack of belief that there is one set of rules for people at the top and another set of rules for everyone else.
It’s about Personal Leadership
For most people the concept of Personal Leadership is new. It is not simply a case of someone attending a three-day seminar or reading a book and then is transformed into a new leader! Developing Personal Leadership is a long-term commitment that involves an ongoing education combined with application – all with bottom line results in mind. This is a substantial investment in time, energy and money – not just from the organization, but from every individual, too. This is why the context of partnership is so important. The individual and the organization are in a long-term partnership for mutual benefit.
If this investment in Personal Leadership is directly connected to bottom line results that are measurable, significant and connected to the organization’s vision – any board of directors will approve the investment.
Band Aids Don’t Work Long-term!
The challenge for most organizations is that the leadership agenda is not consistent, nor is it communicated to the entire organization from top to bottom. Commitment must be backed up by action and a comprehensive Leadership Development Roadmap that everyone can follow to know where they are and where they are going.
If the leadership agenda involves everyone except the leaders at the top who retain the Position Power model – there will be results; however, they are limited compared to what is possible if the entire organization is aligned and all heading in the same direction.
The Need for Speed
Concentrations of power in the hands of a few, bureaucracy, and turf protecting slow everything down to a crawl. With every person in the organization empowered and aligned, cycle times from plan to results are dramatically improved. The speed of change and implementing new initiatives improves and results accelerate. The leadership agenda is mission critical and cannot be left to the HR and Training Departments alone – it must have the attention and commitment to resources that are required to succeed.
To change things that have worked for us in the past before they stop working is the essence of visionary leadership. The key to becoming or staying competitive globally is to transform our fundamental concept of leadership and to live, eat and sleep Personal Leadership at all levels of the organization.
The Goldzone Leadership Curriculum offers comprehensive, custom Leadership Development Roadmaps. Using the revolutionary New Paradigm Leadership Model, participants master more effective tools, strategies and methods compared to the old style and traditional leadership models. High stress and low performance is replaced with optimum personal and organizational performance.
Renaissance for LEADERS 