Purpose Driven Learning

Discovering and Focusing on Your Purpose and Contribution

When everything is feverishly changing around us, how do we know which way will lead toward success?  When we define our success on what is going on out there, the path will always be shifting and changing creating a confusing, exhausting, and ultimately futile journey. 

However, when we shift our definition of success toward one of living our own purpose and contribution, the path forward is clear, more stable, and more powerful.   We aren’t just looking for shifting opportunities to get something we need; we come from a solid place of offering real value to the world and expecting to be fairly compensated for that value.

Whether you are an individual or an organization, answering the fundamental questions of what is your essence of being, what offer are you making that is of real value to others, and toward what mission are you moving toward will ground you in a stable bedrock of purpose that will serve to clearly guide you when all else is chaos.

This use of purpose goes far beyond the standard vision or mission statements meticulously word-smithed by countless companies or individuals long forgotten in filing cabinets as part of a strategic planning exercise.  To discover your purpose means reaching down into your soul to find the answers that rock your very being and deeply move your customers or clients.  It’s not so much about what you do as what you stand and strive for.  It’s more alive and more compelling to ourselves, our colleagues, and our customers.  It is a huge differentiator in a competitive market. 

To be continued…

Do you think you already have a purpose and that you can discover it? Or do you lean toward the notion that you choose your own purpose?  Either way, is there a purpose that would help bring more meaning and fulfillment to you and your life?

If you answered yes, then sign up to participate in June 25^th’s Thursdays at 3:00 discussion on what it means to Find Your Purpose.  Discussion inquiries will include:

• What is purpose?
• What are the 3 separate elements of purpose that can bring you clarity?
• What does the journey to finding your purpose look like?
• What impact will finding your purpose have on your life?

Jeff Leadership, Learning, Purpose

It used to be that we prepared ourselves for our future by gaining skills for our lives and the workplace.  In a conversation I had after viewing the video I found another important distinction:  That in today’s world when we can no longer know what the future brings, we need to become more capable of meeting the challenge.  The difference between capabilities and skills, in my mind, is that skills are about being competent in what you do.   Increasing your capability has more to do with who you are being.  It is more of a measure of what you have inside of you that you can bring to bear on your situation and the likelihood of you being successful.  It has to do with the less tangible aspects of your character, resiliency, attitude, and eagerness to learn and do what it takes to be successful.  To adequately prepare for our future, we need to shift our attention from just adding to the content of what we know  and the skills we have (both of which will soon be outdated) toward strengthening our capability and resolve to adapt.   

To learn more, come to my weekly Tuesdays at 3:00 (PDT) webinar and discover an alternative, where the focus is on helping you find your own unique learning path and developing your capability to adapt and be successful in a world where tomorrow always remains shrouded in a mist of mystery.   To register, visit http://www.coignite.com/index.php?pr=Register_for_Tuesdays_at_3. 

Jeff Adaptation, Leadership, Learning

A colleague of mine shared a popular YouTube video with me.  It’s called “Shift Happens” and you can view the video by following this link:  http://www.coignite.com/index.php?pr=Suggested_Videos.   He offered it because it highlights a central theme of mine that economic discomfort we are experiencing is not just a recession, but a symptom of much larger changes and challenges facing us.  These changes are reaching a point where they are breaking many underlying assumptions we have about learning and education.  My favorites among the facts highlighted by this video are:

·         The amount of technical information generated in our world is doubling every 2 years. 

o   For students starting a 4 year degree, half of what they learned in their first year of study will be outdated by their 3^rd year of study!

·         The Top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004.

·         We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist.  Using technologies that haven’t been invented.  In order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.

·         The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that today’s learner will have 10-14 jobs…   By the age of 38.

·         1 in 4 workers has been with their employer less than one year.  1 in 2 has been there less than 5 years.

Are our schools and universities adequately preparing us and our children for our future?  When I saw this video, my doubts were dramatically increased.  If our schools and universities aren’t adequately preparing us, who will?  I am dedicating myself to create a practical alternative that works.  To learn more about how you can prepare yourself for this future, come to my weekly Tuesdays at 3:00 (PDT) webinar and discover an alternative, where the focus is on helping you find your own unique learning path and developing your capability to adapt and be successful in a world where tomorrow always remains shrouded in a mist of mystery.   To register, visit http://www.coignite.com/index.php?pr=Register_for_Tuesdays_at_3. 

Jeff Adaptation, Learning

I have been talking with a lot of people recently and boldly sharing my sense that:

• There is a fundamental shift in our world going on.
• A new era is being born – right now in front of our eyes.
• We probably won’t be going back to the way of life we had just a few months ago.
• The rules for personal and business success have changed dramatically.
• Maybe the age-old strategy of creating a resume and looking for a job just like the one you had previously may no longer be the right strategy.

As I have shared these seemingly shocking observations and questions I have been surprised at the almost unanimous nodding heads of agreement.  Not a single person has argued with me.  No one has told me I was off base.  It is as if most of us already know deep inside of ourselves that this is true even if it isn’t generally talked about.

Yet what do we do?  Where do we go to learn the skills we are going to need in this new era where we probably will continue not to know what the world will be like a year into the future?  Do we go back to school to learn these new skills?  Traditional schools, colleges, and universities have been very good at collecting and giving us the subject knowledge and theories that have been found to be useful by offering us informational lectures and testing us whether we remember what we have been told.  But, with few exceptions, traditional schools at any level have not really focused on helping to develop a student’s ability to:

• Find the inner compass of their inner purpose.
• Define their contribution toward a collective vision of the future we want to make for ourselves as a community, country, and world.
• Create an adaptable plan that keeps them on their path toward their life’s purpose and goals.
• Identify what they need to learn to become the person they most want to be.
• Execute their plan in collaboration with others
• Adapt to the change we know is coming. (This is the only thing we do know about our future!)

Introducing the Coignite University of Adaptive Learning

I have found my life’s purpose to be helping people learn how to thrive in this new era.  I have always wanted to be a teacher, but was never comfortable in a traditional school setting.  Instead I became a technology designer – designing helpful tools for the future.  In this time of great need I am combining my deep knowing of being a born teacher with that my creative spirit of invention to create a new style of learning community – where we collaboratively help each other learn our purpose and contribution to our community and learn how to become the person we need to be for this world.

You can take your first step into success in this new era by participating in a free discussion I hold each Tuesday at 3:00pm Pacific.  Each week I will introduce a timely issue that affects us all and talk about a new way of looking at it that I see as a new way of thinking for success in the new era.  But instead of just having me talk about it, I invite anyone who is interested to discuss it with me so we can all learn from each other.   There is no obligation or pressure to sell you anything.  My intention is just to let you know who I am and the learning approach I believe in.  So, when you are tired of struggling with the rusted thinking styles of the industrial era and are ready to learn a new approach to success in your life, career, and business, I hope you will remember me.  I will be here to receive your call. 

Register for the Next Tuesday at 3:00 Discussion

The Coignite Adaptive Learning Process that I teach is already described on my web site and I offer several depths of learning and practicing it in your own life to discover your purpose and path to success in the new era.  You choose the level of learning and commitment that is right for you and that fits a budget I realize is very tight in times like these. 

What future will you choose to invent for yourself?

Jeff Young
jyoung@coignite.com
www.coignite.com

Potential Learning Facilitator Faculty

I am also interested in talking with you if you see yourself as having a contribution to the life practical curriculum that tomorrow’s leaders want to learn to be successful.  My intention is to grow this effort into a University with a diverse faculty all dedicated to helping teach the practical skills people need to be successful in the future.  If you think you would add value to our learning experience, please give me a call.

Jeff Adaptation, Leadership, Learning

I was talking with a successful small business person today and he was scared; really scared.  He was wound up so tense, I wondered if his muscles might fuse his bones in place. Welling with tears, he shared with me that for the first time in his life he wondered whether he would become homeless.  His spouse was in home remodeling and she was struggling to find remodeling jobs after being so successful for many years.  He was a teacher, recently out of work.  Now they had only half the money coming in that they needed to pay the bills.  The fear in his eyes was heart wrenching.

Like so many hard working, successful people, he is now facing hard choices.  Most of us are shrinking back to live on as little as possible waiting for the good times to return.  However, I sense that something more fundamental has changed that calls this strategy into question.   Like a great meteor hitting the Earth in the days of the dinosaurs, huge forces are at work changing our economic landscape.  I suspect the change these forces are bringing to our world will make our future look very different from our past.   Not necessarily bleak or bad, just different than it was before.  Whether you perceive it as good or bad will depend upon your ability to adapt. 

Unlike the now extinct dinosaurs, we have the ability to learn and change during times like these.  We have the ability to understand what is going on and choose a different path and a different way to live in the world.  Taking a step back and understanding the larger picture of what is going on and choosing to invent a different future is our biological advantage.  However, it does require us to make a choice to change.

Will you be a pawn, wearing yourself out doing more of what worked in the past with less, feeling like a victim? 

- OR -

Will you choose to take control and invent your own future, giving yourself more options, and make your ability to quickly adapt to the future your competitive edge?

In changing times like these adaptive learning is essential.  Your success in life may now depend upon your ability to learn new ways to see opportunity, new ways of earning money, new ways of living.  Luckily we are all in this together and we can support each other in learning what works now.  We can help each other stand up and choose to invent our future in a way we can thrive.  We do have an alternative that the ancient dinosaurs never had.  We can choose to learn.

Jeff Adaptation, Learning

There are so many people out of work these days.  I see news reports showing job fairs swarming with people armed with their polished resumes all scrambling to quickly find their next job.  Most people are dressed nicely, have professional looking resumes describing and documenting their past, and have practiced their interviewing skills to try to impress the recruiters to want to give them a job. 

There are four things that strike me as being wrong with this picture:

1. There are huge changes going on in the global economy. For the first time in a very long time there might not be enough jobs out there for people to find. This job hunting strategy assumes there are enough jobs out there to find the one you want. What if there aren’t?
2. A resume is a description of someone’s past. With the magnitude of the changes happening all around us, how will describing your past help you find a job for your future?
3. With so many people out of work and following a similar strategy, how will you stand out from the crowd if you do the same things they are doing?
4. Considering that most of us have been spending the past several years learning how to do more and more with less and less in an increasingly tense, pressurized, and sometimes painful environment, do you really want to go back to a job like the one you left?

Is there an alternative?  Yes there is.  What can be done instead is using this time between jobs to drop more deeply within yourself to understand how you can serve to meet the new needs of others in this changing world.  (For a good look at the process of transitions, take a look at the book, Transitions, by William Bridges)  It involves defining your own goals, a plan for your future, and marketing your value to others as if you were your own business.  It involves focusing on what you can give, not looking for what you need to get.  With a shift like this, you become more powerful, less of a victim, and you will find the job you want so much faster than any way I have seen or experienced.  You might just find yourself wanting a job unlike any you have had before.

Jeff Adaptation, Learning

Have you heard your customers tell you that they can no longer use your services because of the economy?  Do they politely tell you that they love what you do, would still recommend you to others, and they will return as soon as they have the money again?  This is one of the warning signs that you are positioning yourself too high for where your market is right now.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:

Do you remember Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs?  His model offers a way of understand how people are coping in our present economy and how you can adjust and adapt to meet their current needs.   In Maslow’s Hierarchy, a human being is able to address higher needs only after the needs of lower stages have been satisfied.  The levels of needs in Maslow’s model are:

Self-Actualization
Esteem
Love
Safety
Physiological

What has happened in our economy over the past few months has moved most people from higher levels on this model down to the level of Safety.  As a result, if your product or service is not absolutely essential to your customers’ survival they will view you as a luxury and will choose to stop buying from you.  It’s that simple. 

So what do you do?  

Find a way to change or connect your services to your customers’ survival.  As an example, Coignite used to coach people to self-actualize – to become better at what they do.  To adjust and adapt to the current economy, we have had to shift our focus to helping individuals and businesses adapt and survive the current economy through innovation and learning how to see and take advantage of opportunities before their competition; how to put your business “where the puck is going to be.”  It is how we can take our same skills and offerings and apply them in a different way to help what our clients need right now instead of what they needed six months ago.

The Only Sustainable Competitive Edge:

 The real problem is that once you have learned how to adapt to this situation, the economy will change, people will have different needs and you will need to learn and adapt again.  It is this constant learning and adapting we are recognizing as the only sustainable competitive edge you can have either as an individual or as a business.  The good news is, adaptation is a skill you and your business can learn to continually improve as a competency you can count on for your success.

Jeff Adaptation, Learning

I just bought a book titled The Upside of Down – Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization by Thomas Homer-Dixon. In it he makes the case that there is a very positive and creative opportunity inside every down cycle we have experienced in our history and, if we look for it, times like the present can be one of the best opportunities for innovation.

I personally am choosing to adopt this view. I am listening less to news and focusing more on what I see as possible and what I want to stand for and bring into this world. This is why the University of Adaptive Learning has taken such a leap forward in the past few months. I see it as a way that we can all help each other bring and unprecedented spirit of innovation and creativity to our lives.

We all have a lot to learn at many levels in order to reinvent ourselves, our communities, and our businesses into something that will be sustainable in this new era that is now emerging. The University of Adaptive Learning is a place where we can come together whenever it fits in our busy lives to get the support, the camaraderie, and the practical learning required to adapt to a new future.

What is it that helps you stay positive and innovative while we are all being challenged to learn new ways of living? Share them with me, this community, and your own networks of friends and family. This spark of optimism and innovation is where our new future is being born.

Jeff Adaptation, Learning adapt, Adaptation, innovation

What?  Have I not been listening?  Have I not heard the news experts describing the current times as the worst since the Great Depression, the loud cry of businesses watching in dismay as their revenues and investments decline, the very loud pop of the latest economic bubble, and real people losing their homes to mortgages they can no longer afford?  Doesn’t this author realize that many of us are facing real difficulty these days?

Yes, I have been listening.  I have heard and have personally experienced my own share of it.  And I also hear something else – something much quieter and, I think, so very important.  I hear some people wondering…

I hear people starting to ask important questions of themselves and about the future success of their businesses.  “How can my business survive this economic downturn?”   “What do I need to do to earn more money?”  “How can we possibly do more when we don’t have enough time or money as it is?”

So, what do we do in times like these?  Most will pull back and focus their changes only on what they shouldn’t do – spend the money they already have.  The changes they implement concentrate on controlling their expenses until times of prosperity return.  I think times like these are a huge opportunity for advancing the overall success of your company by focusing on a question:  How can you serve your customers’ emerging new needs better than anyone else?

With the pie of prosperity shrinking, what can you change within yourself and your business to make your customers want to give you a larger share of the pie than your competitors?   If most of your competitors will be focusing only on controlling their expenses now is one of the easiest times to differentiate yourself and gain market share.

Take a client of mine as an example.  He owns a flower shop.  As times get tough people will naturally tend not to spend as much in this shop.  But, he would still like his revenue to go up.  So, what does he do?  By noticing that he is really not so much in the flower business as in a business that symbolizes the beauty and romance of relationships, he is able to see many opportunities to serve his customers – even when the couple has less money to spend.   By creating a strong brand around being the expert resource for special relationships, he can get into other services such as cards, jewelry, romantic travel destinations, wedding services, etc.  He doesn’t have to do this all himself, he can partner with other people who offer these services and still become known as the “relationship place.”  By doing that, he is differentiating himself by becoming a more valuable resource to his customers.  Later on, his current competitors will likely still be flower shops.   Where would you rather go when you want something special for your loved one, but money is tight – a flower shop, or someplace that can help you add the most value to your special relationship with the money you have?

So, do you know what your customers really need right now?  Is it different than it used to be?  Can you shift and fully satisfy those needs faster than your competitors can respond?  Can you bring even more value to your customer so they will want to give you what little money they do have?  The companies who say they just don’t have the money to do anything new or to change,  well…  perhaps now is the time to leave them behind.

Jeff Leadership, Results

Are you satisfied with the results you are achieving in your business right now?  If you are like most of the people I have talked to over the years, you might sense that there might be something that could be improved.  For some people it could be more sales, more money.  For others it might be less stress, a comfortable retirement, or a dream they haven’t yet realized.

However, most people and organizations are surprised when they find out they have to choose to behave differently in order to achieve different results.  Einstein once gave a definition of the word Insanity as Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.  And yet when I have been working with businesses who are looking to increase their sales I often run into the attitude of “But this is the way we have always done it, why should we have to change?”

It may sound a little silly when presented in this way, but as human beings we love to and need to get into habits.  Habits are the mind’s way of remembering successful strategies for doing the things we do every day so our brains don’t have to think about every little detail.  Haven’t we all had the experience of arriving at work in the morning and wondering how we got there?  The problem arises when our circumstances outgrow our habits.  We keep on comfortably doing the same thing we have always done.  If we want more results, we just do more of the same thing.  This is what leads to the stress that is so common in our workplace today.  We are all doing a lot more of the same thing and getting frustrated that our increased efforts aren’t producing better results.

So why don’t we change our behavior when we notice we aren’t producing the results we want?  It’s because habits are mostly unconscious.  Especially within an established culture, we really aren’t aware we have a choice to do something different.  If someone ends up having the courage to try something different, the culture often rewards that brave soul with a reprimand saying something like, “That isn’t the way things are done around here.” 

So producing better results isn’t a very easy thing to do after all.  It requires looking at and noticing what you and those around you are unconsciously doing and having the courage to question and consciously choose a different behavior – usually before you really know whether a new behavior will create better results or even worse results.  This unknown adds more resistance to our ability to change, at least we know the results we currently have!  Anything different can appear scary.

So, finding ways of getting better results requires two things to be effective:

1. Working with someone outside your organization that can act as an effective mirror to reflect and highlight what you are doing unconsciously.  This role requires training and practice and has a name – a Professional Business Coach.
   
2. Measuring the results you desire so you can dynamically learn over time whether the new behaviors you are trying are getting you closer to your goals or further away.

By working together with a professional business coach to become more aware of your outmoded behaviors, trying new ones, and measuring the results, you and your organization can learn together how to achieve the results you dream of.

Jeff Results