Message-ID: <852567AE.005CB5C3.00@nthhqsmtp.hud.gov> Date: Wed, 14 Jul 1999 12:50:15 -0400 From: "Michael O. Patterson" <mailto:Michael_O._Patterson@HUD.GOV> Subject: Vision vs. "putting out "fires" To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
Some folks complain of spending all their time "putting out fires", they
want to do more than just that.
Steven Covey has an exercise, where participants are given a toy bucket,
with larger stones, smaller stones, gravel, and sand.
He tells people to fill their buckets. When they have done so, he sees how
many larger stones they have left. Most have quite a few.
He tells them the larger stones are their big priorities. You have to
figure out what is really important. You put the big stones
in the bucket FIRST, just as you concentrate on your priorities FIRST,
because otherwise you will never be able to fit them in.
You put in the big stones, then the small ones, then gravel, then sand, to
fill the bucket efficiently.
In the same way, you have to concentrate on your priorities. Priorities
come from Vision. This is a useful area to be aware of,
because ALL highly successful people running good programs come from
Vision, whether they express this consciously or not. There is an
easy test
of whether you are working from your Vision: are you satisfied with things,
are you sufficiently challenged. If you feel a vague sense of
dissatisfaction,
or that really sharp sense of dissatisfaction that comes from knowing you
are draining your life energy away in useless activity,
this is a clear sign of inadequate Vision. Sometimes community organizers
ask me about getting resident groups going. I ask what the issue
is that drives this. If someone is trying to organize such a group just to
get a group together, just to meet because it's a good idea,
this is inadequate Vision. Consider you: what would so excite and
fascinate you that you would willingly miss MASH and Cheers reruns
and invest an evening in? Would YOU do this just to go to a meeting,
because organizing is a good idea? I wouldn't. But if you
had something really neat and exciting, well... yeah. I'd show.
Resident organizing is best done around a task, a mission, or best: a
Vision. If you are doing all the work, you aren't doing your job.
Creating a Neighborhood Computer Center [as at
www.neighborhoodnetwork.org], a Community Garden, or something else
that residents want: properly done, this excites people, and you will
get the help you need. Talk to a Peace Corps volunteer; they know
they get things done by eliciting what people want, and then figuring
out a way to create it. A definable goal makes all the difference in
the world. You also want to "chunk down" the tasks; instead of
asking for volunteers, you ask who is really good at something, and
then ask them to do a clearly defined task with a beginning and
ending date, preferably. Asking someone to spend a weekend building
tables for computers is much more likely to get a "yes" than a vague
request for volunteer time.
Think about your Vision- what do you want to leave behind? They are having
the retirement party, 10-20 years from now, and they are
reciting your accomplishments- all the really cool things you did. What
are they? What excites you most? You've all seen the left-brain
stuff about
planning, project management, timelines, and so on. There is, however,
another side: the energy side. What does your Vision
FEEL like? If it were a vibration, a power, an energy, how would you feel
as it coursed through your body? Could you tune your body
to this frequency, just like a radio, for a few minutes at the beginning of
the day, to align the day's efforts?
Of course you have the fires to put out. Vision has effects that are hard
to put in words, though. Somehow, the more you focus on your vision,
the clearer and more primary and pure it is, the more the Universe
will help you. Work expands according to the time you have.
If all you are doing is "putting out fires", you won't have a lot of
energy, the day will drag, and you'll never quite clear it out. If,
however,
you have an exciting Vision of what's possible, with items that residents
really like, then you will be more excited, and somehow time
will open up during the day, resources will appear as if from nowhere, for
you to do something to make an element of that Vision happen. The
Dream drives the Action, without Vision, the people perish. You
right now are the summation of your Vision, and your questions, which
drove your choices and actions.
What would it feel like to resonate to your Vision- every day? To feel
that energy flowing through you, into your compute screen, into your
files, into your work, into everything you do?
Body posture affects mood; it is very difficult to do depression with
really good posture. If you are still kinda down,
stand up. Put your hands high in the air. Feel how it feels to triumph-
do what those soccer players did at the Rose Bowl.
Practice triumph, winning, what that feels like. Feel like a winner.
Entrain yourself.
For that matter, physical layout affects how a group interacts. Sitting in
a circle, where everyone
can see everyone else's eyes, where a talking stick is passed around, is
totally different
from sitting in an auditorium with a podium at the front. Totally
different; the energy dynamics are different
what people say is different. Simple things can make a massive difference.
Could you bring in a painting, or
something that would really inspire you and constantly remind you of the
excitement you feel about your Vision,
and keep it on your desk?
There is communication and meta-communication. Only about 8% of
communication is the text, or words. Most
of communication is the tone, the nonverbals, body language, and so on.
What I see that poisons meetings
is people who are never listened to, whose poisons and resentments have
built up to incredible levels,
"vent", instead of concentrating on the mission. www.rc.org mentions a way
to deal with this. Indigenous cultures
went to great lengths to align groups before speaking. Ancient Hawaiians
would breathe, in unison for up to 6 hours before anyone could speak, and
there are other cultures that would sit silently before speaking. Even 15
minutes of such
alignment makes a massive difference. The Navajo purpose of life is the
creation of sparkling, harmonious, joyful, healing beauty. This kind of an
undercurrent makes a massive difference in how even the most mundane
communications are received. The ambient 'energy' or frustration level or
inner peace of a person is communicated in everything they say.
The energy of your Vision, or lack of Vision, is carried in everything you
do- what you say, what you write, how you present yourself, and so on.
People with a very clear, exciting Vision, experience life totally
differently from those who don't have such a Vision.
Consider this hierarchy:
pure being
Vision/mission in life
Values/Principles
Long range goals
short range objectives
daily/weekly task lists
gather resources/tools
do it
This message is based on my observation of people who are highly successful
at running good programs. If you took a vacuum cleaner out of your closet
to use, without plugging it in, you would just be going through the
motions. In the same way, if you don't "plug in" to your mission, to your
Vision, you are just going through the motions. Our industry, and many
others in the country, are full of walking dead people, for precisely this
reason. We can't heal the world, but we can heal ourselves, and affect
things in a small way. Yes, the really stupid Dilbert in Wonderland things
management does are disheartening- but recognize they flow from lack of
Vision. As you operate more and more out of Vision, you give others
permission to do the same- you throw concentric rings in anything and
everything you do. The more Vision you and others demonstrate, the less
DilbertWorld you'll have to deal with. How else can you deal with it,
anyway?
If you are bored, or easily irritated, or dissatisfied, or just not happy,
aside from the Dilbert issues your Vision may not be big enough. Just
putting out fires isn't usually satisfying. Humans were built to exceed
the specification, to go beyond, to do what hasn't been done before, to
seek out the impossible and do it. If you're not on the edge, you're
taking up too much space. If you are cocooned in your zone of comfort, how
will you grow?
Consider a Vision of what's possible, maybe just outside of the range of
what you think possible. Does it excite you just a bit? Fascinate you?
Would it be really satisfying to accomplish? Fun? Then you're on the
right track.
You CAN do it, and you can HAVE FUN doing it. Every great human
accomplishment started out as a feeling in the heart
of one person, who persisted at bringing it into form. Even the Internet
started out as an idea in the head of Professor Licklider, at MIT.
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I'd be curious to get your comments on Vision, not on the listserver,
off-line directly to me. I see it in every single
really good program I've run across, and I'm still learning about it.