Let go of your musts,oughts & shoulds

"I didn't know we were allowed to do that in business" was someone's response when I suggested during a coaching session that they share how they were feeling as part of a negotiation with a supplier.

It's a response I often get when I'm suggesting coachees or training attendees tap into their inner potential and do something I think will be effective at shifting the current challenge they're facing, but just so happens to be a part of being human too - for example kindness, not game playing, saying it as it is, showing gratitude, not leaving their humanity at the entrance, and so on.

Yes, these are often derided as soft and fluffy, and they're also what being human is all about - unless of course this collage already represents reality.

Asked to simple be themselves at work and trust in their inner potential feels like a stretch to many people.

I know it's hard - I really do. Having asked on LinkedIn for suggestions for topics for my posts I've had a great response. I'm can also feel the expectation weighing heavy, and the need to please, succeed and be congratulated rising, and yes I also fear the negative responses I might get!

As a result I can feel a desire to make the unconventional more conventional! Despite their unconventional nature being the reason they work!

Yet it's these feelings that if I'm not careful will mean you get a very inauthentic post. Feelings that will also get in the way of you understanding what I'm writing too. Feelings that may also get in the way of the efficacy of the tools I'm using being fully demonstrated.

Which is where letting go of the musts, oughts, shoulds comes from.

That is, we can use so much energy and our heads become so full of searching for "how should I act", "what ought I to say", or "what must I do" that the idea gets lost. It's too easy to translate what's in our head into how we think it should, ought or must be communicated, and lose the essence of the message, and lose the essence of who we are at the same time.

I talk and write often about amending our communication to suit the preferences of your audience - it's essential to improve understanding. That's not the same as changing the message.

For example if I'm frustrated with a supplier I could choose to tell them using a variety of words depending on their personality and our relationship:

• I'm feeling very frustrated because of x or y
• When I hear about x or y I get very frustrated because I thought ....  
• Can I share something with you because otherwise I think it will get in the way of our relationship going forward.. 

The musts, oughts, and shoulds would be getting in the way if we avoid sharing the frustration, or assume the reason for our frustration have validity, or if we believe that sharing how we're feeling is too vulnerable resulting in:

• You need to sort x or y out
• Just do z - now
• You have a problem - sort it!

Last year when suppliers accused procurement of being like wolves that's what they were suggesting procurement were doing: walking into work and putting their wolf masks on - taping into a stereotype of how procurement should, must or ought to act and doing that. Rather than listening to that quiet voice inside that knows precisely what do if only we thought we could do it.  

Over the next few weeks, possibly months as the list increases, I'm going to be writing blogs sharing the use of unconventional tools to get a different perspective to common procurement challenges. For it to work it requires that we both let go of some musts, oughts, and shoulds:

• My oughts, shoulds and musts are about letting go of what I think you want to hear and trust in the tools I use - many for over 20 years.
• Your oughts, shoulds, and musts are about what you think would or wouldn't work in business, or within your organisation and with your team - to give the processes the benefit of the doubt and explore the options that emerge. 
• Both of us's musts, oughts and shoulds associated with assumptions and judgements about what we already think the solution is.

It also requires us both to understand what's stopping us from making the changes we say we want to make -  more here on what that might be.

If we both commit to taking the necessary actions then who knows what opportunities to resolve the challenges we're facing might emerge.

I look forward to exploring together how to unlock your personal, procurement and organisational potential using unconventional tools.

Alison Smith
The Purchasing Coach 
Unlocking personal, procurement and organisational potential using unconventional tools

Hypertext links take you to blogs on the subject highlighted.

What works for your long term sustainability?

As I generally do at this time of year I was reflecting on the last year and the changes I wanted to make that would ensure that 2014 was even more successful than 2013. It came as no surprise as I did this that one of the new processes I developed during the year came to the fore. 

 

Landscaping Your Life (LYL) is a concept that uses nature as our teacher to provide insight on our life and current situation. I've been using it to facilitate change with others since the late 90s (even using gardening as a metaphor for purchasing with business leaders and managers to help them understand what the devil procurement is all about - but that's another blog entirely). A new LYL process that emerged this year was the ICECAPS checklist. 

The ICECAPS checklist is a reminder that in order to make progress in life we, just like the planet, need to preserve our ICECAPS (achieving this through: Integrity, Creation, Evolution, Collaboration, Action, Perspective and Sustainability). It's only by achieving all seven elements that progress is assured. 

As I reflected on 2013 I realised it was Sustainability with respect to Integrity that that had waned towards the end of the year and should be bolstered as I start the new year. 

Integrity is about knowing who we are, our values, our strengths and our passions. Integrity is about being true to ourselves and our essential nature. From nature's perspective if you're a rose then be a rose. If you're a butterfly be a butterfly. In nature a rose never wants to be, nor tries to be a butterfly. (A pity we so often forget this simple truth that the easiest, less stressful, person to be is yourself). 

 

Integrity is also knowing about what works for us and enables our energy to soar, and knowing what doesn't work and brings our energy crashing to the floor. Otherwise without this energy how can we move into the Creation stage of envisioning the future state we're wanting to move towards or taking the necessary Action to get there? 

 

Today I was reminded of the essential components that allow me to be me. The essential components, or actions, that provide the energy (whether mentally, emotionally, physically or spiritually) to move in the direction of my goals and to stay true to myself. They're not difficult, they're certainly not new -  just very very (perhaps even too) easy in a busy world to forget. Yet when I do forget them the sustainability of my actions is lost, and I live one day to the next in a constant battle trying to retain some sense of balance and self and trying to get back on track. 

 

For me these essential components are:

• Eating more of the right things throughout the day 
• Drinking more water
• Breathing in fresh air
• Getting enough sleep 
• Exercising - especially with weights
• Doing more things I enjoy doing
• Spending time with people I love
• Focusing on the positive and things I have to be grateful for 
• Long baths (a biggie for me as I think its when I'm at my most restful and contemplative)

And perhaps just as importantly:

• Minimising eating the foods that negatively impact me (wheat, night shades & alcohol)  
• Avoiding doing things that don't give me pleasure 
• Reducing time in a state of negativity and fear

I said they weren't new ideas.

 

I know, however, if I follow through on these and commit to doing more of them daily the energy I have for everything else in my life will be significantly improved. A bit like the Buddha above that emerged from the garden this year after 3 or 4 years of being smothered by overgrown shrubs and plants. 

What do you know you need to do more of to help you be even more successful in 2014? Perhaps more importantly what will you do first and when? 

Do let me know how you get on - as you can tell from the frequency that wellbeing crops up here in my blog there's a constant dance going on between getting it right for me and not! 

Festive greetings and wishing you all a 2014 of your wildest dreams come true :-)

Alison

Alison Smith

Inspiring change inside and out

+44 (0)7770 538159 alison@thepurchasingcoach.co.uk

Values don't inherently drive right action

Post has moved to my new website

Support Integrity

 

When local roadworks first significantly delayed my journey I got straight on to twitter to ask for details. I was told "they'll be completed by 4th of August". This meant an estimated duration of 4 weeks (for the roadworks not the journey :-)). Yesterday 10 days after this initial deadline I was caught in a traffic jam again as a result of the roadworks. The Twitter response this time was "closure has been extended and we don't have a completion date from the contractors".

I'm not sure where to start with my disbelief:

• That the initial estimate was so wrong - currently 50%
• That as a result of this overrun no completion date had been communicated *
• That no reason has been given for the original estimate being soooo inaccurate

Which makes me wonder if the issue really is ineffective project management on behalf of the contractor and fife council or if in fact its more about us not being told the truth at the start?

The roadworks are at an intersection. Two of the roads are major routes into the town with one of them also being fed by a large estate. It's also the main route from those two directions to the main high school in this area. For anyone travelling in that direction the alternative route into town and beyond is over 30 minutes. In other words there's little alternative but to stay in a queue for 25 minutes. (I saw a bus earlier outside my house catch up with the one in front of it. Which I now realise will have been as a result of them both getting caught in the congestion.)

I suspect anyone delivering a response that congestion in this area would last for more than 4 weeks, and would therefore finish after the summer holidays would have been shot down in flames. The residents, police, bus companies and visitors would have said "No! Find an alternative plan to do what you're doing."

We've all been on the receiving end of situations like this. We ask when something will be  completed by and we get a response the person thinks we want to hear rather than the truth. After all, as the saying goes, "it's often easier to ask forgiveness than permission."

A friend has the same situation with her phone provider. There's a problem with the network. Despite numerous calls she's been given the run around as every different call centre handler tries to take her through the same fault diagnosis process. Each providing a different potential cause that points to it not being their fault. A recent Facebook advert saying how great they were was met with over 1500 responses (to date) saying they were having the same problem as my friend. So no it's obviously not the sim, phone or local mast but the network! One person even shared of being told "I'm at the mast at the moment trying to sort out the problem" as she heard the sounds of the call centre in the background.

What's the cost of truth saying I wonder that means many believe its better to fudge the issue than tell the truth. Integrity is at the heart of any relationship. Once integrity has been proved to be lacking then trust is forever and irrevocably lost. I can only think that many company's risk assessments obviously suggest (based on evidence) that the number of customers lost by telling the truth at the beginning are obviously higher than when they let people down later on. What a sad world we live in if that's the case!

In order to redress the balance we need to support integrity (#supportintegrity) - which means taking action when we get let down by someone over promising and under delivering and, as Nicolas Parsons says in Just a Minute, giving them the benefit of the doubt when they tell us it can't be done sooner.

Alison Smith
Inspiring change inside and out

* Further investigation online provides a completion date of 26th August.

Picture copyright and courtesy Fife Today.