I picked up a book whilst browsing a charity shop entitled “Managing with the Power of NLP” by David Molden. I’ve heard people mention NLP but not had the time to look into it so I took the opportunity of reading this book and bought it for £1.49. After a long day gardening I decided to relax and begin reading the book.
The first chapter talks about “Ultimate Flexibility” and gives a great example of how difficult situations or problems can be tackled. It gives the example of the common problem, how do you fit a square peg in a round hole? and suggests 4 responses/approaches/attitudes;
Defeat; It can’t be done
Reaction; Get a hammer and make it go in
Sophistry; Reshape the square peg or the round hole so they fit
Curiosity; Ask why the square peg (or round hole) were brought together in the first place
I’ve seen lot of job adverts that ask for a ‘can do’ attitude. I’ve met many people that think the same way; they just want it done. I agree that the defeatist attitude is wrong but the exact opposite i.e. ‘it can be done’ is no better.
A common reaction to project schedule slippage is to throw more people at a task; it’s by far the most common initial response to a report that we’re falling behind schedule. Reacting to a situation without thinking about the problem gains little more than the Defeatist attitude; time to ask ‘what is causing us to fall behind schedule’?
Have you ever been in the situation where you are integrating one system into another and find that one system has a fibre optic interface and the other a copper cable; similar to our square peg and round hole? Been there a few times as a techie. My initial thought was to reach for the fibre to copper converter. This is an example of a sophisticated approach to the problem which attempts to change the properties of the problem to solve the problem.
Pausing for a few moments and asking why the problem is there in the first place is a major step forward in solving the problem. Why are we trying to fit a square peg into the round hole? Have we bought the wrong pegs? Do we have the wrong shaped hole? Could we swap the equipment with a fibre interface for one with a copper interface of the right type?
I’ve only just started reading this book so I’m not going to make any judgement on it or NLP yet, but you can see that by being flexible in your approach as opposed to slotting your thoughts into the same old channel the results can be quite effective.
What are your thoughts on this article? Have you read “Managing with the Power of NLP”? Have you studied/practiced NLP and would like to share your experience or resources?
If so, please leave a comment.
Until the next Post…
