Tag Archives: continous improvement

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

How do you see yourself; How do others see you?

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From birth to death everything we do is a form of behavior. The way you act is your behavior.  It defines you. Your behavior is not in isolation and most often the context for behaviour interpretation is how you conduct yourself toward others.

Categorizing your behaviour

Would there be value in interpreting your behaviors in terms of the impacts they have?  Do your thinking style and associated actions support personal effectiveness and satisfaction.

That is, what are the behaviors that define your lifestyle and what is their impact?   Of course, this question depends on perspective.  Your answer might differ from that of others.

Simply stated how you view yourself could be different from the way others perceive you.  To get real value from a behaviour analysis you need to get both what you believe and what others think.

Human Synergisitics

The best way to get information about your behaviour styles, both from you and others is through an anonymous web questionarire crafted by researchers who have developed questions that can be translated  to behavioural styles.

While no one can be 100% certain the results are accurate, if the consultants that administer the survey are supported by years of study and supporting data it is likely to have a high degree of alignment to reality.

I had the good fortune to have an assessment performed on me by Human Synergistics  and I found the results very useful to determine behaviour changes I wanted to make and ideas on how to execute the changes.  They do both lifestyle and leadership assessments.

Disclaimer – This post is not an endorsement of HumanSynergistics  ( they are just an example I used out of familiarity) Rather the post is intended to get you thinking about the value of having your behaviours assessed.

That is, to help you understand what others think of you and adjust your styles if you want to.

 

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

It’s getting better all the time

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Improvement is the act or a thing that makes something better.  This requires a change. By definition the improved state is better and so different from the starting state.

Bad to Good

A common misconception about changing for the better is the starting state was bad.  This is not necessarily the case, in fact, improvement from dire straits to an acceptable level in one step is relatively rare.

Incremental improvements or continuous improvement are both more common and better.  When the environment is at rock bottom sometimes just starting over is more practical than seeking improvement.

Consider an Olympic silver medalist attending the next Olympics and winning gold.  A silver medal is an exceptional achievement in and of itself.  Improvement to gold is a great improvement but, as noted, does not mean tbe starting point was bad.

Managing Change

At it’s core, improvement comes through change .  Whether it be internal change ( you change yourself), external to you or a combination.  Like all change, it is most effective when well planned and communicated.

In  essence, all change will have improvement as an underlying motivation.  There may be a variety of specific reasons to make a change, for example to reduce costs or increase revenue or quality,

Whatever the reason, to be executed effectively with a positive outcome,  those affected by the change must have a clear understanding of what the improvement is and why it’s of value.

Embracing Change

As we go through our lives understanding and believing in the value of change, we can lessen our natural resistance and this allows us to be part of the improvement, we become better.