I Can’t Decide! 5 practices to break through on tough problems

We've all been there...the decision that just won’t come...the problem that won't get solved. We've pondered, poked around, purloined others’ solutions, practiced team brainstorming, purchased problem-solving/decision-making tools, procrastinated, paced, and packed up and gone to the pub. 

Still nothing happened...

We know from neuroscience findings over the past decade, we are using the wrong part of the brain to get the answer. Discovering the best solutions is not about Mr. Spock logic, deep thinking or wrinkling our brow.

Making successful decisions and solving intractable problems require total relaxation, going to our "happy place," and upping our energy level. This is not some new-age amateur reading of quantum physics. Scientists can scan the brain as we solve problems to demonstrate exactly what is happening where. 

Luda Kopeikina wrote a break-through book based on neuroscience research, in-depth interviews and problem-solving sessions with leading executives, and years of observing her boss, Jack Welch, as he made decisions and solved problems. In The Right Decision Every Time: How to Reach Perfect Clarity on Tough Decisions, she details her findings, which have been augmented by ongoing independent research. 

We must harness the assets of our physical, mental, and emotional functions and enter what Kopeikina calls the Clarity state. 

The key to reaching mastery in decision-making is the ability to focus your physical, mental, and emotional resources on an issue like a laser beam. Such focus enables you to reach decision clarity faster and easier...Clarity is a feeling of certainty and of internal alignment with the solution. The objective of a decision-making process is to reach clarity. A right decision is one when the decision maker is emotionally and mentally congruent with it. Reaching clarity quickly is a differentiating mark of leaders.

5 practices to break through on tough problems

Kopeikina describes the full decision-making process in her book. I use it myself and with a wide variety of clients. The results are solid decisions that leave you energized, confident, and ready to implement. Here are the essential steps to get you into Clarity state before you tackle the decision.

1. Prepare
Find a quiet place to sit comfortably. Turn off your phone! Have paper and pen on an otherwise empty table in front of you. Close your eyes. Your goals: Eliminate distractions and be ready to jot down ideas as they come to you.

2. Relax your body
Progressively relax your muscles starting with your feet and working up to your head. Describe each one relaxing. When we are tense, our fight-or-flight mechanisms interfere with thought as adrenaline builds up and blood flows to our extremities and away from our brains. 

Breathe deeply from your diaphragm and focus on your breath. Count 4 beats on the inhale and 8 on the exhale. More oxygen enters the body to replenish the brain cells. Continue focusing on breathing until you feel relaxed.
  
3. Calm your mind
When we are tense, anxious, angry, resigned, frustrated, or in a state of negative emotions, our bodies pump out cortisol. Many folks are unaware of the large part emotions play in decision making. To make good decisions, we must move from negative to positive emotions, pumping out DHEA and feeling energized. 

Continue to sit in a relaxed state with eyes closed, breathing slowly and deeply, and focus on a word; nonsense or positive. As stray thoughts appear, acknowledge them and return to breathing and repeating the word. At first, it takes a while to calm emotions. With practice, you can do it quickly.

4. Clear your mind
When you are fully relaxed and calm, begin repeating a phrase such as one Kopeikina suggests, "I feel totally fine and joyful about how life is going." As thoughts appear to counter this, visualize putting each one in a box on the floor and amend your phrase to, "Other than that, I feel totally fine and joyful about how life is going." Continue to stack up the negative boxes and do not engage with these thoughts. Move the boxes out of sight. 

When these thoughts have dissipated, see yourself surrounded by light. 

5. Charge up
You are ready for the last step to reach Clarity. Visualize events from your life when you felt powerful, positive, and full of energy, happy or exhilarated, and. most invested in an exciting and satisfying event. Choose 3 of these events that required effort on your part and re-experience them. Thinking about these events will be your trigger for charging up your energy to enter the Clarity state. 

When we reach the Clarity state, the brain shifts where it will make the decision or solve the problem and blocks are removed. We have minimized the fight-or-flight response and maximized the positive chemicals flowing through our bodies. We are ready to use the robust problem-solving/decision-making techniques Kopeikina developed.

None of these practices is new and most have been practiced for millennia. Top athletes have been using them for decades to prepare for peak performance. Kopeikina found successful leaders could enter Clarity almost immediately and were ready to make decisions quickly and effectively with absolute confidence. Avail yourself of this powerful approach and start making better decisions today.

Learn more about decision making and problem solving in my upcoming webinar: 
If you missed the live webinar catch it  on DVD or on demand http://eventcallregistration.com/reg/index.jsp?cid=44502t11

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© Rebecca Staton-Reinstein, President, Advantage Leadership, Inc.

Learn the entire Clarity problem-solving/decision-making process: The Right Decision Every Time: How to Reach Perfect Clarity on Tough Decisions, Luda Kopeikina, Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005 

World-Changing Anniversaries

This week marks two world-changing anniversaries -- they will go unnoticed on your Outlook calendar or CNN's news crawl. You won't hear your favorite NPR or PBS commentator wax eloquent about these propitious days. The blogosphere and talk show hosts, left, right, and center, will not be foaming at the mouth about them...BUT...

On May 25, 1787, the U.S. Constitutional Convention officially opened in Philadelphia. Delegates from 12 of the 13 states were drifting in with different agendas and expectations. Some thought they were just going to spend a few weeks making some amendments to the existing Articles of Confederation that had governed the new nation for a handful of years. Some weren't sure what was going to happen but they knew something had to be done to get the country out of the crisis at hand. A few had come to defend the status quo and try to stop any changes from being passed. And then there was that core group of conspirators that were preparing to commit treason for the second time...but more about them later...

What was that crisis facing the U.S. in 1787? A few years after the hard-fought Revolution, the country was on the verge of collapse.

• With no central currency or monetary policy, states printed their own worthless paper money, driving triple-digit inflation.
  
• Inflation led to foreclosures on many farms in the largely agricultural nation.
  
• Taking matters into their own hands and led by Revolutionary soldier Captain Shays, a gaggle of Massachusetts farmers closed down the courts that were taking their farms, and marched on the arsenal in Springfield, declaring a second revolution. Although they were routed by the state militia, Shays' Rebellion sent a shock wave through the country.
  
• The British, Spanish, and French were circling like vultures waiting to pick apart the new nation like road kill.
  
• Meanwhile the states were feuding with one another over boundaries, fishing and navigation rights, and trade. Several were preparing to go to war while others considered abandoning the fragile union and going it alone or allying with a foreign power.
  
• And what of the Confederation Congress? It was impotent since it could not impose any legislation on the sovereign states and could only beg for money, which was seldom forthcoming. The Articles could not be amended unless all 13 states agreed and that seldom happened.

Back to those treasonous conspirators...James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Ben Franklin, and a handful of others decided that the time had come to overthrow the Articles of Confederation and establish a new constitution that would have authority over the states. To this end they called the convention, connived to get Congress to approve the session, and enlisted George Washington to come as a representative from Virginia and provide the political cover they needed to create the new constitution.

Of course, the Convention, as one of its first acts, elected Washington to preside over the meeting. And this brings us to our second important date, May 29, 1787.

On this day, the conspirators tipped their hand to the shock of many of the delegates. Edmund Randolph, the Governor of Virginia and host of the Convention, rose to present his opening remarks on the crisis and then read out the Virginia Plan. Authored for the most part by James Madison, it laid out a radical proposal for a republican form of government with representation of the people in a tripartite organization of legislative, executive, and executive branches. These were designed to check and balance one another. This bombshell plan became the agenda for debate that lasted for another four months. But in the end, the Constitution that we know today was written and then ratified by enough states to go into effect.

As the Convention ebbed and flowed, the delegates used many of the techniques we recognize today as strategic planning. In my new book, Conventional Wisdom: How Today's Leaders Plan, Perform, and Progress Like the Founding Fathers, 20 contemporary leaders describe how they use these same techniques.

• Luda Kopeikina, CEO of Noventra, describes how she encourages debate and idea generation.
  
• John Zumwalt describes how he uses a common mission to drive successful action at PBSJ just as that quintessential mission statement, the Constitution's Preamble, sets out our country's mission.
  
• Howard Putnam, an early CEO at Southwest Airlines, used his planning session to set the floundering company on a new path and unite his team behind it.
  
• Michael Howe describes his evolution as a strategic leader who decided to change the face of health care.
  
• Alan Levine, now Secretary of Health and Hospitals for Louisiana, relates how he turned a county health care system into a world-class operation delivering high value to patients and lower costs to tax payers.

What can we learn from these remarkable anniversaries?

In times of crisis -- seek bold, break-through solutions -- reject the status quo and your comfort zone -- stick to your mission.

(c) Rebecca Staton-Reinstein

Check out the book for more tales of strategic leadership both at the Constitutional Convention and in today's successful organizations. http://ConventionalWisdomCenter.com/

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