Tag: children

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Preventing the corrective mindset

jugglingWe are all under enormous time pressures.  We juggle our competing interests, responsibilities and deadlines.  We rely on others to help us get to the finish line. We want their input to equal a standard that allows us to juggle uninterrupted, taking pleasure from keeping everything successfully in the air.  There is no room for errors.  Just juggle, juggle, juggle.

Ooops!  A ball is dropped and something is broken.  

Invariably with all the things we need to focus upon, it is not unusual to find something will drop or break.  As we juggle the remaining elements, we know we can only afford to make a quick stop to correct the fallen or broken element.  And get back to juggling.

Following this path is only going to lead to more balls being dropped and more items to be juggled.  Sometimes we drop things for the same reason.  Deep down it doesn’t feel good knowing we or others are making the same mistake, but to stop and do anything differently, puts pressure on all the balls and the decision to stop and rethink the situation can feel bigger than it needs to.

To break this pattern we need to think about the corrective mindset vs. the preventive mindset.  This is a well known concept in manufacturing and Quality Management Systems where the focus may be on continuous improvement and customer satisfaction.  However the concepts can equally apply to our own professional and personal lives.   

When operating in a corrective mindset, you will focus on fixing the immediate problem, and maybe even be able to stop the next occurrence.   But it may not solve the bigger issue of being more effective, getting the best out of your time, based on focusing on the right priorities and the best strategies for achieving the outcomes you are looking for.

Another way to look at this is Past vs. Future.  One is looking backwards to the past and trying to fix what didn’t work.  But this often means we assume the way things are being done today is the right way, so we only fix what we have in place.

The other way is to look to the future to try to work out what is likely to happen and what are the likely influences and inputs that you will or can be working with.  Time can be spent then determining what you are really looking  to achieve, what is required to get there, the best way of getting there and what may be required to prevent any likely roadblocks or the undesirable from happening. 

We know we can’t accurately predict the future so we need to build a flexible approach to deal with all the possibilities. Flexibility is far more important to develop as a mindset rather than as a well constructed disaster recovery plan covering every conceivable problem. 

By taking time out to reflect and reconsider the corrective measure of past and the preventive measures you may choose to take in the future, you may find a much more powerful approach to the things you wish to achieve.  Edward de Bono once said “It is well known that “problem avoidance” is an important part of problem solving.  Instead of solving the problem you go upstream and alter the system so that the problem does not occur in the first place”.

By looking to the future you can ensure you are investing your time on what is most important to you and what is likely to bring the best and most preferred outcomes in the bigger scheme of life. 

Whether as a boss or a parent, the best outcome may no longer involve you.  A far more powerful approach may require you to stop and develop people (your team or children) or to devise a better system, one that no longer involves you or the thing you think you need to do because you have always done it that way.

One of the things that always stopped me in my tracks opening my mind to future possibilities was the challenge to ask myself “does this need to be done at all” and “what are the real consequence if this was no longer being done”.

By taking time out, deliberately stopping the juggling process and allowing time to move out of the corrective mindset, you now have the chance to strategize around your priorities and plan for the future resulting in greater creativity, enjoyment, satisfaction and rewards.

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Nurturing and inspiring tomorrow’s heroes

superhero1Most of our kids harbor a burning desire to be number one at something.  They can easily conjure an image of themselves scoring the winning goal, coming first in a race, hitting the winning shot….but how many of them at first call on an image of the invention they are going to create that could change the world?  Or a design of a building that breaks all previous thoughts or examples of possibilities?  How confident beyond the age of two or three (when they really do believe they are a superhero), do they think they have a chance to be society’s hero?  And if you asked them if they wanted to, would they think it is possible for them to be able to do so? 

With three children of my own, and with experience of schooling across 3 stages (preschool, primary school, high school) and across four schools and three schooling types (State, Catholic and Private), I have discovered a distinct gap in our education system in helping nurture and inspire our children to become the inventors, entrepreneurs, and creators of tomorrow.  As many of us know with our children, the connection between what they are learning today in school and how it helps them in their future is rarely understood by them.  And to be honest, unless you raise the level of abstraction in how the skills they are really learning can be applied in life – it is difficult for us to provide an answer to that connection in a way that will satisfy them.  More than that, it seems that whilst our children might get lucky with an inspirational teacher, the exploration of engineering something new, the time given to create and celebrate a new invention, learning how previous inventions have changed our lives and the extraordinary achievement it represented in its time, does seem to be lacking, particularly in the early years of schooling. 

By the time our children hit high school, unless they have a particular self-interest, most do not relate their natural strengths or interest in Mathematics, English, or Art to the possibilities within engineering and invention.   We begin to prescribe requirements for university entry scores in relation to possibilities for pre-defined career paths, but are we really engaging our future minds on the problems, opportunities and possibilities that present every day for them to be inspired to solve and the path to get there?

Thomas Edison claimed that Genius was 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.  It seems to me that our education system is putting too much emphasis on, and we are providing too much by way of our own example, of the perspiration element.   We seem to be ignoring the importance and are not providing enough emphasis and example-setting on the inspiration aspect.  By emphasis I am talking within the design of our education system and in the time and responsibility we have as parents in encouraging, nurturing, and inspiring our children’s creativity and exploration of the “what if you could…” scenarios.

As we have increased our protective care, prescribing the after-school activities in a way that gives our children the best possible opportunities (or so we rationalize),  is it possible that we may have not correctly weighed up the cost of preventing or constraining the ability for our children to run free and learn through natural exploration and invention?  As we look to ensure enrichment, gifted and learning, and assisted programs to be supported at schools, have we put the same energy into seeing how creativity and invention is being supported and celebrated at school?

World PopulationIf we think about the future for our children, where do they sit within the world’s estimated population?

We know IQ is distributed evenly through the population.  So how do we help our children make a positive footprint on the world, both for their generation and for their children’s generation?

Australia has an estimated population of 21million, an approximate 0.3% of the total world’s population.  Rather than accepting it is OK to plod along, and accept what is, we have a responsibility and requirement to create a country of global visionaries.  Those who see their playground as bigger than the constraints of our shorelines and the comfort we feel in our history of enjoying “the lucky country” and the “she’ll be right” philosophy. 

It is absolutely critical that we teach our children now the importance and relevance of their uniqueness.  Their unique mix of talent, skills, smarts and experiences.  Of the same opportunity that they have as an individual to anyone, anywhere else in the world.  They have an equal chance to make a difference; and that difference can come from their own creativity and invention.  The problems they can be thinking about to solve may not just be the ones that they face, but rather the problems that we as a global nation of people face.  Or may be something that can be enjoyed by others, enhancing and improving many lives, not just their own.

As a country, as business people, as parents – we have a responsibility to nurture and inspire our children to become tomorrow’s heroes.

I know I don’t have all the answers but I do want to keep asking the right questions.  And help my children to keep pushing and exploring what could be.  I would like for us all to find a way to break inertia, break stereotypical types, break the habits that too much “dead use of technology” like television and electronic games etc provide, and muster the energy to encourage our education system and society in general to promote and support invention and creativity in our children.  For us to celebrate our inventors, engineers and entrepreneurs so they become the leading examples in our society. 

Here are my thoughts of what we can do to nurture and inspire tomorrow’s heroes:

We must accept our responsibility to inspire and nurture our own children.  We must help our children explore what could be and not allow them (or us) to get bogged down on the “how to get there”.  We must make the process of exploration and creativity positive; we must invite it, suspend judgment, and allow for self evaluation.  We must help our children see the beauty and the impact that inventions have bought us – everything from the printing press, microscope, bike, paperclip, microchip, spaceship all the way to the iphone and everything in-between!   They are just a few examples – I am sure you can think of many more exciting examples to inspire others.

And it may be that with this focus, our children will dream bigger dreams, will be given the confidence to explore what could be and take will become tomorrow’s hero.