If the environment is fixed or unchanging, it can limit your possibility of reaching the goal. If your ability is fixed, you may only reach certain goals – and perhaps not the ones you want. If your purpose, your mind, your drive is fixed, it can blunt your chances of achievement.
Zooming in on the Purpose part of the above triangle. If your awareness is fixated, you may become unaware of your true goals, the barriers or dangers on the road, or what is required to reach the destination you desire.
If your desire is narrowed, it may serve to drive you in a specific direction, and that may be all well and good. As long as that direction is truly where you want to go.
And lastly, if you have set values in life, it may well serve as a straight jacket in your quest for real happiness.
Rather than “be firm”, “adamant” or “holding your position in space”… be water, my friend.
It deserves its own blog post so as not to drown in the PRINCE2 primer. Here goes:
The company “Å” (Brendan and me) is truly a “cut the crap”-company. We inspire and enthuse people and help them realize their potential. We help people take 100% responsibility and to excel in their communication with others. This is why we try to keep formal structures at a minimum. This is why we see methodologies such as PRINCE2 as a casual toolbox and not as an end-all. And without further ado, here is how we practice project management, regardless of the size of the project. Here’s a short HyperList showing just how we do it:
Project Management, Å-style
START PROJECT
Supplier and the Customer agree on the Project
Measurable Project Product(s)
Resources needed
People with 100% reponibilities are appointed [?] Documents
PROJECT
Project is delivered
Work is assigned, executed and approved [? issues arise] Parties agree on issue handling or to stop the project
CLOSE PROJECT
Benefits Review [?] Project report;CONTAINS:
Project Product(s)
Project Benefits
Lessons Learned
Recommended actions after Project
We just completed an article on the project management methodology called PRINCE2 – Projects IN Controlled Environments, version 2. From the article:
The purpose of this article is to provide the shortest possible description of PRINCE2, to compact the methodology and make it easier to understand and implement also in small projects.
PRINCE2 contains three major parts consisting of 7 principles, 7 themes (tools) and 7 processes. A brief explanation of each is provided in this article. At the end of the article, you will also find a much simpler, leaner way of looking at project management.
“Could you explain what ‘Knot Theories in N-dimensional space’ is?“, I asked while we walked down the stairs to the ground floor and down the long corridor to the soda vending machine. The Chemistry Department at Oslo University was the venue for the weekly meeting in the role-playing association. It wasn’t much fun to have John Rognes as one of the players in my role-playing world. He was far above anyone I’ve known when it came to problem solving and getting the player characters out of a tight spot. It seemed to passify the other players. But that night I at least got to pick his brains about the passion that brought him mathematical fame. At age 18, he had won prizes in several European countries for his theories that only a handful of people would understand. He was a mathematical genius at the age of three and excelled in math and natural sciences since.
“Sure“, he said, “It’s easy“. He then went on to explain his theories in less than 10 minutes with a simplicity that even my grandmother could follow. I was stunned. I still am. And on top of his obvious genius, he was a fun and social guy. And bereft of arrogance.
I sometimes wonder why Brendan doesn’t display any arrogance. He has a remarkable background with amazing stories from Northern Ireland, plays golf like a pro, can easily make a living as a street entertainer with juggling and magic, competed in the World Championships in Foosball, beats the crap out of me at the pool or snooker table, is the most excellent instructor I’ve met, runs half marathons… etc. Everything the guy touches becomes a product. And he is a social and fun guy to be around.
Maybe the lack of arrogance is because Brendan doesn’t need to prove anything. Just like John. And so many other guys with great skills who are just confident at what they do. Not looking confident and having to prove it, but just being confident.
OMG! Brendan, Anette and myself did a US race in one week, with two days in New York City, one day in Phoenix/Grand Canyon and four days in Los Angeles. We met with more than 35 people in more than 20 meetings covering anything from business to Scientology, HP calculators, art and music. We had a blast!
A picture tells more than a thousand words. And this time I will let the pictures do the reporting:
New York City
Times Square – New York City is like the real Bladerunner
Anette & Geir kissing as part of the “making out in front of churches”-series
Beautiful Central Park
Two squirrels in the park
Brendan and Geir trying hard to follow the rules of the Soup Nazi
Had a late coffee with Tony Ortega. Intriguing talk with a highly intelligent man. And way too interesting to remember taking any pictures… so here’s his official FB pic.
Zana – we had an interesting chat 🙂
Meeting Victoria and her wonderful and loving family.
Meeting Dave in Little Italy talking about Life, the universe, everything.
Martin the genius DJ
A taste of Martin’s music (he’s half of the duo CLMD):
Phoenix & the Grand Canyon
Visiting Chris (our resident blogger) and his gorgeous family. Love’em to bits.
Chris took us to Grand Canyon… OMG!
Got real close to an elk up there.
Saw the outside of Hubbard’s home in Phoenix (he lived there for about a year back in the early 50’s). No one answered when we rung the bell.
The almost staff-less but huge and beautiful Church of Scientology in Phoenix.
Los Angeles
Making out in front of Celebrity Centre International (Scientology’s VIP church).
Meeting Jeff and Karen – what a wonderful, energetic and creative couple. The planning of some counter-OSA-ops was fun.
I did a series of videos at Karen’s detailing my various experiences in Scientology – from my work with OSA Int to my meeting with David Miscavige. I will do a blog post for each of these videos as the are produced and released on Karen’s channel. Karen has done lots of videos, like this one:
Attending a show on Scientology at the Silent Theater (Cine Family). Got invited by Karen and Spanky. Winged it… got on the panel and did a demo session. Awesome fun!
Here’s Tory and Mark’s video on what went down that night:
Doing a demo session with the organizer of the event, Hadrian. He was a good sport and as funny as they come. He even said he had some gain out of the two auditing questions he was asked.
JD Shapiro talking about his script writing for the movie Battlefield Earth. Some interesting insight right there.
Meeting the lovable Tory Magoo 🙂
Spanky and me in the garden behind the theater. You just gotta love that energy and compassion.
The happiest place on Earth 🙂
Doing the “Star Tour” at Disneyland.
Boat trip down at the wonderful Newport Beach with Mike and Betsy. Great couple. Very interesting talk.
I’d take it if someone had begged me to live there.
…especially with this pelican outside the door.
Jason the Writer and Video Producer with Brendan looking over Newport Beach.
Tom and Anette on Venice Beach. Tom’s a cool chap.
Meeting Garth and Joe at our “mini HHC” (the yearly HP Handheld Club is in the autumn). Great to meet with some fellow geeks and talk HP calculators. Yeay!
Talking Incas and her upcoming book and TV series with Theresa. Fascinating stories!
At Aida and Dave’s. The powerhouse Mexican served authentic food from her home country – all made from scratch. Oh yummy.
The view from Aida’s is not bad… not bad at all…
Jason the Writer invited us to the Magic Castle with a really fun show 🙂
Spent hours with Jason – but with him and us being so much into the conversations, we forgot all about taking pictures together with him and his family…
…but Anette did take a picture of me kissing one of Jason’s bunnies…
…and his duck. After which Angie took us on a Black Widow safari around their house. That woman’s got balls of steel.
Flying home
There are so many pictures we didn’t take in all our awe and rush. It was a week we will never forget. And with people we will have many years ahead with great friendship and lots of fun. Next time we’ll go to…
We are sooo looking forward to our US trip, Brendan, Anette and myself. We will meet with lots of people both in New York and in LA. And of course Chris in the Grand Canyon. There will be pictures and videos, laughter and fun. And you will get reports along the way. We leave on the coming Friday (June 14th) and arrive back in Oslo 9 days later. It’ll be a busy, busy trip 🙂
Tag along if you feel like spontaneously joining us – just drop me an e-mail – or if you are in the LA area, join us at Disneyland on Thursday the 20th or at Universal Studios on Friday the 21st.
To all the people we meet along the way; Let’s have some pure, unadulterated fun 😉
Note to OSA: Please don’t spend parishioner’s hard earned cash on PIs or silly surveillance. Just send me an e-mail (g@isene.com) instead to ask for whatever information you feel you need.
You can present uptime statistics, production efficiency, delivery times and numbers of this and that as much as you want. At the end of the day, it is the customer’s feelings that determines if he will continue buying your products or services.
Our emotions, our feelings are the sum of the impressions we value. And our emotions direct our actions. It matters little that you complied 100% with the SLA if the customer doesn’t feel like renewing the contract. You may think it’s unfair, that you did everything you could, or that it is irrational on the customer’s part. But the fact remains, if it doesn’t tickle the customer’s fancy, he will vote with his feet.
This is precisely why it is so important to talk about feelings. Invite the customer to open up. Make it safe to talk about that elusive airy-fairy stuff that women have been babbling on about for eons. Just as you tell the customer straight what you think, just like you open up fully about your emotions, so should you help the customer open up to you. Get underneath each other’s skin. Only then will you be able to figure out what’s really going on.
But a customer’s feelings toward you are usually not conglomerated only from his experience with you. He may have had a bad day, a quarrel with his wife or an excellent weekend trip camping with his daughter. They are elusive, these feelings. But to figure out what you can do about his experience with you, you need to get him to talk about it. Only then can you better sift out what emotions he may have specifically toward you.
Management frameworks tend to disregard emotions. Frameworks such as ITIL or PRINCE2 treat them as irrelevant and tries to supplant them with SLAs and the like. Other frameworks, such as Hubbard’s Management Technology treat them as contemptuous… HE&R (Human Emotions and Reactions) is an example of inventing a term to belittle another’s feelings.
All this goes for other relationships as well. The more important the relationship, the more important it is to talk about feelings. If you value the other person, value his or her feelings.
I hold that your feelings are your most important markers in life. It is the zest of living and should be treated with utmost respect. It is what we live for, the reason to enjoy the games we love to play, even the game of life itself.
Many people responded to the previous blog post and several meetings have been booked. While many readers of my blog know me through my Scientology connection, we are looking to make this more of an “Å” tour than an “ex-Scientology”-tour. It would be great to meet people to see if we can create some interesting opportunities together. Anything fun. Anything out of the ordinary. We’d like to inspire some people on our trip. So, if you want some inspiration for free, or a chat over a coffee, there is still ample time slots available. We’d like to have a really busy tour.
We will be in NY Saturday 15th and Sunday 16th of June and in LA Tuesday 18th until Friday 21st.
Drop me an e-mail if you’d like to meet up – for whatever reason 🙂
Geir Isene - uncut 