"Help me get my feet back on the ground"

Note: Thanks to The Beatles for the post title and to Baba for the idea.

As yesterday's post so clearly indicates, I have some compelling personal reasons for looking at the HAVE TOs to which I am subjecting myself. The next 6 weeks will be fairly full of business based demands - including 3 consecutive weeks away from home. For many people, the life I will be leading is so normal that it doesn't even bear questioning. It is pretty obvious by now that I am questioning it.

I should point out that my journey down this path has actually been funded the very same corporate entities that I am now questioning. It has always been my job to make things work better. For the last 12 years, one company or another has been paying me to question the reasoning and validity of everything that they put in front of me. I get paid to question what is and dream about what could be. I've done that with machines and manufacturing processes for semiconductors, with satellite phone call center operations and financial statement reporting. I've always set out with the premise that optimizing the silly bits frees everyone up to do the real work that the organization needs done. And I've usually done it by teaching people tricks and tools to make their own work lives better.

But it turns out that I've learned at least as much as I've taught. I know more about business processes, time management techniques, cross cultural and cross generational communication than is probably healthy. I've researched management theory, effective meeting tools and methods for identifying and engaging the disengaged. I know how to read corporate culture and body language. I can greet colleagues in Hindi, recognize exclamations of surprise in Malay and know what words don't mean what I think they should when talking to team members in the UK. Along with a host of problem solving tools, analytical methods and a genetic predisposition to see things differently, these things have brought me to my current position.

To clarify, my current position is the pinnacle of my corporate career. It is not the pinnacle of my possible corporate career. It is probably not even the pinnacle of the career that my current boss has planned for me. It is just as far as I plan to go. The problems that I am interested in solving these days are quickly running cross current to the jobs that have been funding my life for years.

I am much more interested in the problems of creating a user-friendly life style. For me, that obviously includes being an independent small business owner. But it also touches on certain aspects of the green movement - particularly where energy consumption is involved. It is related to sustainable living - especially in the "think global, buy local" aspect. It includes understanding the social factors involved in our cultural choices. And, if I can just figure out how to do it properly, it makes more time for my family, my friends, and the band.

The trick, of course, is doing it properly. To accomplish this task, I will have to question a number of assumptions that are part and parcel of the pie-in-the-sky, gizmo driven, 2Fast2Furious, HAVE TO inducing marketing job that is being sold as "The American Dream". It is going to take some thought, as much time as I can find in the next several months, and a whole lot of remembering my roots. But it feels like it is just about time to get my feet back on the ground.

HAVE TO reduction concept - values

After last weeks' excitement, I've been thinking more and more about the basic ideas behind HAVE TO reduction. The one that I think will be the most difficult to work through (although possibly the most interesting to write about) is how to explore personal values. Understanding what I value will be critical for my ability to distinguish between the real HAVE TOs and the silly ones. So, I have a few ideas on how to approach this which I'll explore below. I'm still in research mode on the subject, so if you have a method that works for you, let me know in the comments!

Personal value exploration method 1: What we say

I see this used often. Ask me what I believe to be important in life and I give you an answer. In fact, most of us have been through the process of listing values at one point or another. This is a fairly common tool for identifying potential jobs or career paths. Values also play a large part in religious belief, so I, like most people, can come up with a list that is consistent with my faith.

Positive side of this method: It is fairly simple to do. It may take some time and a small bit of introspection, but it isn't horrible. It is accomplished by a very simple tool - a list.

Negatives: It often reflects my ideal values more than my "as practiced" values.

Personal value exploration method 2: What we do

The idea here would be to observe my own behavior as objectively as possible. The method of accomplishing this, however, is painful. It could involve keeping a journal of how I spend my time and money for a few weeks. It could also be accomplished retrospectively - looking at the bank statements and reviewing appointments or events from a calendar. Once the "data" are collected, they would need to be reviewed and affinitized in some way. There are a few different tools for that, but they aren't complex. It is just a matter of grouping the time and money spent into categories that make sense to you. Clumping single events together builds a picture of common themes - which should be expressive of my values.

Positives: It can be more reflective of how I express my values.

Negatives: It won't be easy. It is still somewhat subject to my biased view of myself.

Personal value exploration method 3: What we teach

I have always maintained that raising children is an expression of personal values, because what we teach them is reflective of what we believe. (Please don't misunderstand that statement. What they learn is not always reflective of what we teach, since there are a number of other influences in the life of a school age child. But what we teach is reflective of our values.) I find that what I teach in my corporate Six Sigma classes is far better expression of my approach to problem solving than it is of the printed material. The same shows up in my mentoring and coaching relationships - whether they be official or otherwise.

The method for gathering this information would have to be, again, more observational - journaling and recording concepts and theories expressed and, again, affinitizing. Basically what I did in the initial "Cutting Down On Have Tos" post is just a modified version of this approach - taking ideas that I am reserching and trying to figure out how they are related.

Positives: Again, this canbe an actual expression of values, not just a statement.

Negatives: Not everyone teaches. In fact, some people avoid teaching like the plague!

So, here are my first 3 ideas on exploring values. My concern is that both 2 and 3 require a definite step outside of my comfort zone. I can't just BE myself. I have to OBSERVE myself. Yuck! Even I haven't done #2 and I like this stuff.

Obviously, I'll be researching more options. I'll let you know what I find. And, before the end of May, I will make the effort to observe where both my time and money go. That should be intersting....