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Missing Time in Performance

Posted by Joseph Riggio on Saturday, August 19, 2006

Time forms just one of the paths I’m sharing about how to manifest your outcomes on your own and with others as I begin to consider great decision-making and the making of great performances today with you all ...

Good Morning, (at least here it is, overlooking the bay and the Golden Gate Bride in San Francisco from my hotel suite in Tiburon, the Water's Edge Hotel, where I"m running the Integration Module of the MythoSelf Facilitator's Training program),

So many thoughts for this morning that I really had a hard time choosing which one to write about. Usually I don't choose, I've learned that the most effective means to a great performance can be NOT CHOOSING, because then you remain open to what actually emerges in the context you're operating in and can respond freely. Yet, we must have the skill to choose ... and choose wisely when so many choices emerge as they have this morning - and in this case so many good ones to choose from that a great process for choosing most surely helps.

Let me begin at an early point in time - not in history, but relative to this discussion only. How do you know how to make a good decision - the essence of choosing well?

Knowing how you make your best decisions explicitly - with precision and specificity - revealing your personal strategy for making decisions well, i.e.: on demand, deliberately and instantly ... I'd argue has always been the key to creating great performances.

YET MOST PEOPLE HAVE NO IDEA HOW THEY MAKE THEIR BEST DECISIONS!

This in a way amazes me ... not that people don't know how they make their best decisions, or even that they don't necessarily have a strategy for making great decisions ... but what amazes me has been that we haven't insisted that this become the essential teaching in our schools. We have placed so much attention on our children learning "stuff" ... "information/data" ... that, we've ignored our children's essential ability to use the information/data they have well (including ourselves when we were children and this was being done to us by our schooling).

Then of course, we're surprised when people in business and government don't make good (or at least better) decisions! How can we be ... how can we be surprised that we don't make better decisions all around for all intents and purposes when, no one has ever really been taught how-to make great decisions.

So the question that becomes outstanding for me would be:

"What does it take to make great decisions in terms of strategy and process?"

Let me begin from what doesn't constitute a "great decision-making process" from all the evidence I've accumulated. A great decision-making process does not rely on information and/or data. Let me repeat that one (as I believe learning and all great skill come through repetition, especially of the basics) ...

"A great decision-making process does not rely on information and/or data."

How could I possibly say that, especially in the face of virtually every academic decision-making course being based in learning how to use and/or manipulate data?? (Take a look at: Changing the Game: Negotiation and Competitive Decision Making from Harvard Business School's, Executive Education program.) Easy ... because, all the evidence I have says that this process has little to do with how the most essential decisions are made ... when they are made well! Let me reference a different kind of decision-making strategy often referred to as "Naturalistic or Real-World Decision-Making" (for an overview), for a great book on this kind of decision-making, (well worth the time to read it, a major consideration in my suggesting books to people) see Gary Klein's, Sources of Power ... a thousand times better than Malcolm Gladwell's book, "Blink" in my opinion.

So now you have some background ... I don't to take all your time so I'm actually going to break this posting into two parts, today's and tomorrow's, however let me move just briefly now onto the point I want to share with you.

Great decisions are made at a future point in time that hasn't happened yet. This process is non-cognitive in the ordinary sense and relies on the pre-conditioning required to recognize a great decision the instant it emerges in the system.

Great performances rely on the ability to make great decisions - AND THEN TO ACT ON THE DECISIONS YOU'VE MADE - without hesitation and with persistence and tenacity ... despite all evidence to the contrary!

I'll get into some of the details around this process tomorrow, but for today I'll just share one more book with you ... "Making Waves - Irving Darkik and His Superwave Principal", written by Roger Lewin - in my library this book has become essential reading (and for everyone Nancy and I care about who we think will be open to it in our family and among our personal circle of friends whom we give copies out to in quantity).

Enjoy the reading ... I catch up with all'ya'all again tomorrow ...

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Tiburon, CA

Finally ... I've gotten the production of the EPC(tm) Series One Audio CD Set finished!!! This is a four CD and one Video CD set, with the full workshop manual included as well, about the EPC2 - Exquisite Performance Coaching Process. I'm making this last offer to purchase at the discounted price until 31 August 2006 ... after that the price will increase without exceptions!

To read more about this package and order it directly for the discounted price while you still can go to: EPC(tm) - Series One (0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

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