MANAGING THE OVERLOAD

MANAGING THE OVERLOAD
By
Bill Cottringer

“Offices, desks, drawers, attics, basements, table tops, backyards, closets, medicine cabinets, garages, mailboxes, minds…all getting full of clutter and spilling over.” ~The author.

Everything I read, see, think, talk about, and experience these days leads me to perceive a huge problem ahead for management. The problem is the mega overload Tsunami that seems to be bringing more and more things to know and do and not enough people or time to do them all. I don’t suspect that anything today is exempt from this overload problem—kids in school, stay-at-home parents, older couples in solid relationships, front line employees, mid-level supervisors or leaders of small or large organizations.

I believe this daunting problem is happening for a good purpose—It is causing a gap within ourselves between what we know and can do and what we need to know and do to unload the overload. It is also causing a wider gap between management and employees, in the very same regard. And the noisy symptoms are confusion and mayhem and nobody being able to keep up the pace of today. What is behind this mess? We are all being challenged to:

• Get more in touch with our feelings that know the problem and its solution.

• Move past our traditional thinking that has lead us to this current conflict in our development.

• Explode forth into our unknown, creative potential.

This overload problem has at least one good aspect for us all. Sooner or later we are going to get sick of it (getting in touch with our bad feelings) and finally do something about it. And when you are able to detach and separate yourself from the raging fire to think rationally about the bad feelings this overload is causing you and everyone else, you become very motivated to find and apply a solution quickly.

Add to this very real problem of information overload, another potential problem for management—the distinct possibility we are all headed towards uncharted territories without a map (in our personal and organizational development) and success in the future becomes invisible. Most management and leadership books today admit we are at the end of our forward progress prescriptions and the most common mantra in business organizations is “What got you here won’t get you there.” What does all this mean?

I really don’t think this popular buzz phrase means that we have to completely delete our whole brain’s hard drive and entire familiar skill tool box. What probably has to happen is that we need to pick an important paradigm in our particular field that, when changed or at least re-arranged, has a big impact on opening the biggest door to success. Everything seems to point towards the wisdom of this approach. Take the whole multi-billion dollar industry of success and self-development books, on-line self-help programs, and human potential seminars that has evolved over the past 40-years, as a good example.

Two major paradigm shifts have occurred within this movement that have had a significant impact on the unprecedented growth of what is know best termed “institution” of self-improvement. The two major paradigm shifts have been: (a) going from a pessimistic, pathological focus on human failures and what was wrong” with people, to a positive psychology movement that only studies success and what is right and possible with the world, and (b) rising above human limitations and material world solutions to a higher consciousness of enlightened spiritualism to create win-win outcomes above and beyond the traditional win-lose ones.

Like any good change, and all our history of paradigm changes reveal that they are significantly beneficial in the long-run, progress comes with a price that is smart to anticipate. We failed to do so with the self-esteem shift in schools and now we have to pick up the pieces (inability to accept and get past failures).

In our present world of mega overload, the paradigm shift that probably needs to occur is an overhaul of our thinking about four things: (a) what our most fundamental purpose (purest intentions) is in doing something (b) what really matters most when you have to make tough decisions, (c) our obsolete perception of time and how we mismanage it, and (d) our feelings about all this.

The price of these four enabling changes involve:

• Dealing with personal fear feelings about giving up the familiar (what you think you know about all this) and letting go to the unknown of uncertainty. These feelings can be overwhelming and just make the current overload worse if they aren’t exposed and understood. They will continue to get in the way until they are dealt with.

• Compromises have to be made in surrendering personal preferences (in the way of knowledge and how to do things) and getting to the neutral ground. involves some very difficult, open conversations where the outcome isn’t known until you get it. These are the most difficult conversations to have because no-one feels in control.

• Finding the underlying purpose that drives you is hard mental work pealing way the irrelevant layers you have built up by being effective and successful so far, knowing they won’t work anymore, but still hard to get rid of. This effort can also add to the overload if it is not managed well.

• Whenever you are headed into the unknown you usually don’t have a clear enough picture of where you are going (or think you want to go) or how to get there to articulate it well enough to be understood, but you have to keep trying regardless of how much mental work it is.

• Such a change really requires maximum mind and heart flexibility and trust, and we are all on the other side of those ideals struggling to be more flexible and trusting. Admitting this reality can be liberating and also free up some time and space to get going.

• This kind of paradigm shifting requires selling it to others who will actually help carry out the changes. But the trouble is the paradigm shift is coming from an entirely new belief system that has to already be in place to accept the new paradigm and the real work changes that come with it.

The best way to describe what is happening here is through the normal creative process. We start out grabbing the low hanging fruit—the simple solutions that are easy to apply. The when we find out that doesn’t work, we move onto the more complex solutions, but get lost in the details in the process which brings us to the current dilemma—too much to do and not enough time to do it. That is when we understand the four changes (finding purpose, making tough choices, rethinking time, and knowing what we are feeling) that we have to make and the price we have to pay to make them. Then we grab our arms around the plethora of overload and details and zero in on the land of simple that is on the other side of this insane chaos and complexity. There is light at the end of the tunnel!

William Cottringer, Ph.D. is President of Puget Sound Security in Bellevue, WA, along with being a Sport Psychologist, Reality Repair Coach, Photographer and Writer. He is author of several business and self-development books, including, You Can Have Your Cheese & Eat It Too (Executive Excellence), The Bow-Wow Secrets (Wisdom Tree), and Do What Matters Most and “P” Point Management (Atlantic Book Publishers). This article is part of his new book Reality Repair Rx coming soon. Bill can be reached for comments or questions at (425) 454-5011 or bcottringer@pssp.net