[Neurons] 2020 Neurons #4 AND YOU THINK YOU CAN PLAN?

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall 

2020 Neurons #4

January 17, 2020

2020 Vision series #3

 

 

AND YOU THINK YOU CAN PLAN?

 

Most people do.  Most organizations think they can.  It's a human tendency.
We think we are fully competent to plan for things of the future.  When I
lived half the year in Australia, I visited the famous Sydney Opera House on
numerous occasions.  That led me to became acquainted with some of the facts
about it.  When it was first planned, the designers estimated that it would
cost $7 million and would be completed in 1963.  It was not.  It cost $102
million and was not completed until 10 years later, in 1973.  Oops.  Someone
mis-calculated!

 

Then two decades ago, here in Colorado, the new Denver International Airport
opened.  But it was 16 months late in opening and worse than that, the
planning that estimated the cost went over-budge by $2 billion dollars- that
billion with a b.  That was a big Oops!  More mis-calculations.  And such
mis-calculations seem to be built into our basic thinking patterns.

 

In NLP, Neuro-Semantics, and Meta-Coaching I regularly see and experience
this planning fallacy.  It doesn't just happen ever-now-and-then, it happens
nearly all the time.  Because we use the NLP Well-Formed Outcome pattern so
frequently, we are constantly dealing with the human capacity (or
incapacity) for effectively planning and estimating costs, time-frames, and
effort.  

           This becomes obvious when we ask question #4, "When do you
realistically think you can achieve this objective?"

           When we ask question #7, "What do you have to do to achieve your
outcome?"

           Question #14, "What could stop you or interfere with you
achieving this goal?"

           Question #16, "Is reaching this objective ecological?"

 

The Planning Fallacy is a common cognitive fallacy and one that's been
researched, described, and explained in multiple books.  It is driven, in
part, by the Understanding Bias- we think we understand things when actually
we do not understand- what's involved, how much time things take, how much
effort and how many resources will be required.  It is further driven by the
Availability Bias inasmuch we plan things based almost solely on what we
know without even taking consideration that there are and will be multiple
things we don't know.

 

Then there is the Confirmation Bias that further complicates things given
how our beliefs and inputting of information as well as our processing of
information tends to be biased by what we already believe and expect.  All
of these distorted and biased ways of thinking seriously undermine our
ability to effectively and realistically plan things.

 

The fact is that planning, estimating how long things will take, how much
they will cost, what it will involve in terms of effort and discipline, all
of the things that could interfere, and creating an effective and actionable
plan is much more difficult than imagined.  To check this out in your own
life, pull out your list of goals that you intended to achieve in 2019 and
the time-frame that you set on those items.  Then examine how long it did
take (or is still taking) to achieve.

 

There is a structure and a strategy to effective planning.  The delusion is
thinking that it is easy and natural.  It is not.  That's one reason the
eighteen questions in the Well-Formed Pattern provides such a powerful tool,
and why it takes skill to be able to use those questions effectively.
That's also the reason why the Decision Conversation in the Axes of Change
Model further provides a way to think through a decision before jumping in.

 

Effective planning inevitably also involves systems thinking because
whatever you are planning occurs in a system and that system is also within
yet other systems.  For that reason there are inevitably systemic factors,
contributing factors, and systemic effects that need to be brought into
consideration as you plan.  The good news is that we have lots of tools in
Neuro-Semantic NLP that can enable your very capability for effective
planning.  More about that in the coming posts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director, Neuro-Semantics

P.O. Box 8

Clifton CO. 81520 USA

www.neurosemantics.com   look for the special offer

 

Author of the stunning new history of NLP--- NLP Secrets.  

Investigative Journalism which has exposed what has been kept secrets for
decades. 

Several international NLP trainers have said, "It is a juicy read." 

http://www.neurosemantics.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/NLP-Secrets-2_sml2.
png

 

 

 

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist8.pair.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20200119/dbcb8937/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.png
Type: image/png
Size: 137551 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://pairlist8.pair.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20200119/dbcb8937/attachment-0001.png>