The Strategic Edge: Simplify

I am pretty excited about a new website I'm building. Unfortunately, I'm a writer not a website builder so it's been a high learning curve and it is taking up a lot of my time. It is almost ready for launch though - I'll keep you posted.

When there is a lot going on focus becomes critical. It's easy to get sidetracked and off chasing pretty red balloons. Right now, I don't have the luxury to indulge my adult A.D.H.D. When I add the time it takes for my passions and my responsibilities there's nothing left over. In fact, there's a time deficit. This is nothing new. I've been operating at maximum capacity plus 10% since I was 12.

Those of you who've followed me for a while know I experienced a burn-out a few years ago. My health went to hell and I started drinking again after over a decade of sobriety - it wasn't pretty. The road back to health has been slow. One of the biggest lessons I learned was:

Doing more and going faster is almost never the answer.

This was one of the lies I told myself that kept me from my true potential. When I ran into a challenge I beat the challenge into submission. This only works until it stops working - for me it worked until I was forty and then I ran out of gas. Not only was my tank empty but I was blowing blue smoke out of every orifice and had developed a speed wobble over 50 mph. I had to stop and take a good long look at what what had worked and what hadn't. 

I found that I was always successful when I took a focused, strategic approach. 

As a community planner, strategy was a major part of what I did. In it's most simple form, a strategy begins with three questions:

1. what do you have?
2. what do you want? 
3. how can you get it? 

The way forward is simple - eliminate everything that doesn't help answer these questions. We hear about the value of simplicity all the time. I'm not going to tell you to give all your stuff away. I still like stuff.  But there's a lot of stuff that is just clutter. And it's not only material things that cause clutter. People and emotions can cause more clutter than anything.

So that's what I've been doing for the last few years - gathering the good stuff and purging the clutter. It not easy. It takes time, self awareness and brutal self honesty. A lot of what I've been writing about here on Notes from the Edge is about managing the emotional stuff that stands in our way.

After tens of thousands of dollars on self-help programs and books and thousands of hours of self examination, I have come to understand that my feelings are motivated by two things. 

Love and Fear - everything I do is motivated by one or the other.

So my quest for simplicity is to keep all that is motivated and promotes love and purge everything that is motivated by and promotes fear. Sounds easy if you say it fast. The truth is I came to this epiphany a few years ago but it's a lifetime process. The good news is we have a strategic approach to follow.

Start today! What do you have? What do want more of? How can you get it?

Who are the toxic people? Start to politely distance yourself. Write down some fears. The big ones are easy - death, being alone, finances. What are these fears keeping you from? Get rid of some stuff. A messy closet is the sign of a messy mind. For guys: do you have any cut off t-shirts or pre-ripped jeans? For gals: you have any mom jeans or bedazzled whatever?

For the love of God purge that stuff!!

I loaded all my CD's onto my iPod and computer years ago. Nothing I have plays CDs anymore but I still have hundreds of CDs spilling out of my entertainment centre. WHY?

Depending on where you live, the weather is about to get really nice after a long winter. Use this time of year to simplify your life and de-clutter. Make 2014 the year you started taking control of your life. The year you got focused and strategic.

Live Long and Prosper.

The Edge of Perception:

"Can we talk of integration until there is integration of hearts and minds? Unless you have this, you only have a physical presence, and the walls between us are as high as the mountain range."
Chief Dan George

We tend to react to people, places and things based on our individual perceptions. Our perceptions are largely governed by our value systems, childhood, education, culture, family values and so on. Therefore, as individuals, with a wide variety of  experiences, two people can look at the same thing, come up with two entirely different conclusions and both be right - or at least neither is wrong.

Dispute Resolution 101

So it stands to reason that if we can link specific experiences to our perceptions we can determine whether our reactions are accurate or not. If they are inaccurate we should be able to simply adjust our perceptions based on new information and change the way that we act and react with the person, place or thing.

For example; it would be tough to find two people more at the opposite ends of the human condition than me and my Wife. She is detail oriented, organized, structured and very fond of rules and regulations - I am ... ummm ... not. 

We have been in some humdingers as far as disagreements go. 

As our marriage progressed, and the initial, lust-driven, infatuation gave way to the painful process of getting to know each other, we realized we respond to many situations not just differently but, in many cases, the exact opposite of each other. Realizing that we are now stuck with each other, and this was really as good as it gets, we went to work on figuring out how to squash these disputes in the early stages before they got ugly.

Surprisingly it was only a matter of coming to a few simple realizations:

1. Just because I'm right does not mean that she's wrong;
2. Our perceptions together often form a "higher truth";
3. We would rather be wrong and happy than right and single;
4. In a marriage you have to pick your battles and live to fight another day.

This is a simple model for dispute resolution. But it works. 

This works for a community as well as for a household. As a community planner I often deal with opposing perceptions: industry vs. environment, liberal vs. conservative, labour vs, management, Ford vs. Chev, and so on. In my experience the solution is rarely found in either extreme. It is usually found in a combination - or a dialogue between the extremes.

Let's test it against a more complex situation. 

One of the great divides that I have encountered growing up and living in British Columbia is the rift between the Native, or First Nations, people and the non-native people. Here there are many disagreements. Mostly around the management of land and resources, and mostly based on culture and perceptions. 

In the book "The Resettlement of British Columbia" author Cole Harris has constructed an accurate historical geography of British Columbia. He describes BC as being "resettled", not "settled". According to Harris, there was a sophisticated and thriving indigenous population long before the Europeans came in successive waves of fur trade, gold rush and agricultural settlement. The "resettlement" undertaken by Europeans was based on the perception of Terra Nullius or "Empty Land".

So the opposing perceptions were:

1. We (First Nations) had a sophisticated culture, society and economy that was disrupted and crippled by the European resettlement.
2. The land was "empty" and by developing it We (the Settlers) brought commerce and infrastructure that increased the liveability of the land.

In his book, Cole Harris outlines the "Geography of Smallpox". It is historically accepted that the Gold Rush saw 50,000 miners roll through B.C. in 1858 and these largely unwashed miners brought an epidemic of Small Pox that nearly wiped out the indigenous population. 

Harris points out that the Spanish introduced Small Pox to the Indigenous populations of South America in the 17th century. The disease then spread spread north into the USA and Canada through trade routes and war parties into the American Plains and finally across the Rocky Mountains into B.C. long before European resettlement. 

Based on journals of the Hudson's Bay fur traders, Royal Engineers and early Gold Commissioners, Harris estimates a 98% depopulation of First Nations people prior to the first European arriving on British Columbian soil.

If Harris is correct then the idea of Terra Nullius is an inaccurate perception. The problem is that Terra Nullius is embedded in our history, stories, laws and legislation. There's a lot at stake in these perceptions. Coming to a common understanding on this matter may be a tall order; however, if we could re-educate the population on these ideas, and alter the perceptions of the non-natives regarding Terra Nullius, there would be less friction around the Land Question in BC.

When we talk about the complex applications of a simple principle like "two people can disagree and both be right" it gets messy. There's not much we can do about the thinking of a generation. We can influence the thinking in our homes and practice these simple principles of tolerance and understanding with each other. 

For now my wife and I will continue to adjust our perceptions to avoid arguing about what the best route is to drive from our place to the Starbucks. By passing this on to our kids by example we hope that the introduction of new ideas and changing of perceptions will not come as difficultly as it does to the rest of us.

Best, Sam Edge
The Edge on Strategy

The Edge of 2014: Resolutions, Goals and Values

It's just past midnight on New Years Eve - 2014 is here! I have a house full of kids on a sleepover - all crazy and hopped upon sugar and my in-laws are over for "games night". I wont get in to specifics, suffice to say this is a substantial departure from my younger days. I had planned to post something on resolutions today - but I kept getting side-tracked.

This is my better-late-than-never-post.

Resolutions are just another term for goals. It is widely accepted that setting goals is a good thing. We set short, medium and long term goals all the time. Even if we don't realize it. Sometimes they work out - sometimes they don't. When they don't we take a look at what happened, make the appropriate adjustments and move forward. In our day to day life this is an easy pill to swallow.

So why all the depression and anxiety around New Years Resolutions?

I've been hearing all day about how resolutions always fall apart in the spring and then we get depressed. So why bother? It's to the point the people get angry and animated when talking about resolutions. Rather than being a chance to practice our goal setting techniques, New Years Resolutions have be become a symbol of failure. It is so bad that suicide increases in the spring are directly attributed to failed resolutions. It takes real effort to turn a sound opportunity for growth into a fatal liability.

But it doesn't have to be this way. I embrace this time of year as time to set goals - a time for a gut-check. It's a great time to reflect on the year that passed, set my sites on the year ahead and put some thought into what I want more of in my life? Personally, I have had a rough couple of years dealing with a bitter custody dispute. I even had problems with addiction rear their ugly head after well over a decade of sobriety. Now, things are sorting themselves out on all fronts and I am feeling stronger that ever. I'm thinking 2014 is going to be a great year.

I recommend using S.M.A.R.T. goals:

• Specific: Our goals should be directly related to our project vision and have a tangible effect on manifesting our vision in our lives.
• Measurable: We want to ensure that we have a quantitative element to our goals so there is no ambiguity as to whether they have been achieved or not. We should be able to strike them off a list as “complete” or “incomplete”
• Achievable: We want our goals to be challenging but possible. A successful strategy for this is to break large goals into a series of smaller ones. We do need to use discretion here and find balance between change and intimidation.
• Relevant: We don’t want to create work. Life is short and economy of our efforts is a key to success. We should be checking back to our vision and ensuring there is a real link to our vision with all of our goals.
• Time-framed: When we set our goals there must always be a time element such as, “This goal will be completed by” or “to do x.y.z. every 2 weeks”. This gives us a schedule and also makes our goals more specific and measurable.

With this framework in place I look the the big three - Family, Work and Health - and identify the priority goals I want to achieve for 2014. By using this accountability framework I've given myself the best chance for success. 

I may fall short. The best laid plan of mice and men ...

If plans go awry, we adapt. It is a double whammy when we let the unrealized goals get to us. First, we didn't achieve what we wanted. And second, we beat ourselves up. This sucks vital energy from us and makes success difficult if not impossible.  To help take away the sting of failure, we look beyond the goals and identify the Values that these goals represent. We make sure those values are consistent with who we are and what we want in life. 

Values may include:

1. Love

2. Health

3. Peace

4. Freedom

These are the things that we want more of in 2014. If we get to April and discover that the specific goals we chose to achieve these values are unrealistic, we simply revisit the SMART goal model. Success and happiness are no longer tied to a set of goals - they are based on values. 

We are successful as long we work towards, and not away from, these values. 

For 2014 I wish you all the love, health, peace and freedom you and your families can manage. 

Best, Sam Edge