<\/p>\n
\u201c<\/i>To improve is to change, to be perfect is to change often. \u201c<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n
Winston Churchill<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
We began considering why people in project environments, who can clearly explain the best practices likely to resolve the problems they are facing, fail to act on those beliefs under \u201creal world\u201d conditions? The state of constant urgency (\u201cI need it yesterday!) permeating project culture keeps people in a state of chronic stress that neurologically predisposes them to these behavioral contradictions (say one thing, do another.) Because these disconnects function like a biological \u201coperating system\u201d they often prove to be incompatible with the technical and behavioral fixes provided by training. In this last section I would like to suggest some approaches that can produce positive change at this deeper level.<\/p>\n
You can\u2019t fix a problem you don\u2019t know you have. The fact that their actual behavior is deviating from what these people know to be best practice is often not even on their radar. Making the problem visible is the first order of business.<\/i> Blaming others for the breakdown is one of the most common strategies for sustaining the blind spot: unrealistic deadlines are caused by upper management, resource constraints are being caused by the lack of cooperation from other departments or groups, scope creep is being driven by unreasonable customers, etc. Since you can\u2019t \u201cfix\u201d someone else, people conclude that these problems are just something they must live with.<\/p>\n
Project simulations and related experiential exercises have been an effective way to address this misunderstanding on two counts. First, participants are shocked to discover that they have done things or failed to do things that fly in the face of what they know to be effective. Second, they see that they have reproduced these frustrating problems without any of the usual suspects being present.<\/p>\n
For some people seeing how they have contributed to the breakdown is all that is necessary. They are immediately ready to find better approaches, and practice applying them. Others, however, will begin vigorously defending behavior that has clearly contributed to a failed or suboptimal outcome. This is where we start encountering the deeper layers. Why would anyone fight for failure? Sometimes it\u2019s because they are afraid, often unconsciously, that the alternative will be even worse, and that alternative is the direct, somatic experience of their own anxiety.<\/p>\n
FDR made famous the statement \u201cThe only thing we have to fear is fear itself.\u201d Although catchy, I\u2019ve always found it a little cryptic. What does that actually mean? We know that some people develop phobic patterns of disattention to somatic feelings of anxiety. This is fear of fear itself \u2014 fear of the conscious experience of fearful feelings. One reason for this is that the headaches, stomach distress, and painful muscle contractions accompanying these experiences can create high levels of physical\/emotional discomfort. For some people suppression may be the only remedy in their toolbox. Others may feel defensive because they believe or have been told that the anxiety is \u201cnot real,\u201d \u00a0\u201call in their head\u201d or signals some form of personal weakness. This mind\/body split can seriously undermine performance.<\/p>\n
For example, here is the report of a police officer forced to fire on an armed assailant grappling with his partner, Dan, who he was afraid he might shoot inadvertently:<\/p>\n
I fired five rounds. My vision changed as soon as I started to shoot. It went from seeing the whole picture to just the suspect\u2019s head. Everything else just disappeared. I didn\u2019t see Dan anymore, didn\u2019t see anything else. All I could see was the suspect\u2019s head.<\/i><\/p>\n
Fortunately, he didn\u2019t shoot Dan, but because of this contracted focus, he could have. People often experience this kind of out-of-body contraction of focus, and loss of context in moments of high stress. A milder form of this contracted awareness may explain why actual workplace performance falls short of best-practice understanding. Teaching people how to maintain \u201cfluid attention,\u201d the ability to shift effortlessly from big-picture contextual awareness to laser-like task focus and back again, under stress conditions can correct this performance shortfall.<\/p>\n
Using a range of simple techniques that direct people\u2019s attention to their internal experience (introception) unifies their attention with their visceromotor sensations in the body. These body-based somatic markers often lie at the border of consciousness, and can be brought into awareness by noticing such typical displacement responses such as:<\/p>\n
\u2022 lack of awareness about how they feel (\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d \u201cI wasn\u2019t aware of anything.\u201d)<\/p>\n
\u2022 perceptions, phrased as feelings (\u201cI feel as if he doesn\u2019t like me.\u201d)<\/p>\n
\u2022 action tendencies phrased as feelings (\u201cI feel like I want to get out of there.\u201d)<\/p>\n
\u2022 an externalized explanation of why they are anxious ( \u201cI\u2019m worried about what might happen.\u201d)<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t have EEGs or fMRIs available as we rush to get projects out the door, but becoming more skilled at noticing our own physical cues can tell us a lot about \u201cstuck\u201d or counter-productive neural patterns.<\/p>\n
You might also take a look at \u201cThe Open Focus Brain,\u201d by Les Fehmi and Jim Robbins for a simple, but highly effective practice for cultivating this state of fluid attention. This is obviously a huge topic for such a brief format, but I hope that it can invite a larger discussion about the incredible possibilities presented by this frontier of performance improvement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PART THREE: CULTIVATING \u201cFLUID ATTENTION\u201d \u201cTo improve is to change, to be perfect is to change often. \u201c Winston […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1540,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1540"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11613"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11615,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11613\/revisions\/11615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}