Of late I've been training rather hard, for those of you that know me know that I've been involved in mixed martial arts for going on 8 years, which is where a large part of my sports psychology background comes from. The cross-integration between sports psychology and the psychology of the real world is interesting, simply because the structure is so amazingly similar. You really get to know a person once you've spent 5 minutes beating at each other with leather gloves (please note I do not suggest this technique when trying to get to know someone on a date).

Over the years I've noticed a distinct trend in how people become better fighters, and unsurprisingly the trend follows through to business, relationships and of course life. We know we have comfort zones, these zones act as our default behaviours, our routines and how we generally function on a day to day level. On either side of this zone we have upper and lower bounds, where extra stress is the upper bound, and less stress than the ordinary is the lower bound. In life we have the option to utilise either at any given stage, however there are awarenesses which are important. By pushing ourselves too hard, we move ourselves past a state of learning into a mental state of anxiousness and without enough stress we become lethargic and lazy. The perfect point of learning and growth is with just enough pressure that there is discomfort, but discomfort that you can deal with. Soon this zone becomes the default zone, and the natural state.

The most growth I see is when people understand that their growth, their success, is their own responsibility.

I've been falling asleep to screaming the last couple of nights, after tearing myself away from an addiction. The incredibly beautiful Little Big Planet has taken over my household, and the world shakes because of it. This is not a review of the game (for reviews look at IGN, Gamespot, or 1Up) this is a review of something that I've noticed whilst playing, that translates beautifully to "The Real World[TM]".

In LBP the levels require working together to reach a common goal, your standard teamwork type structure. There's an incredibly interesting spanner that gets thrown into it however due to two reasons 1) by having a winner at the end of each level, your standard title for any finite game, and 2) different personalities are driven by different sub-goals in the level (e.g. collecting stickers). Assuming 4 players are madly thumbing their keypads, the structure of what happens is this:

The level starts, 4 sock puppets come thrashing onto the beautifully structured level screen and almost at once chaos ensues. One player is in the background collecting stickers, another thinking that they are an invincible ninja is using up all the shared lives by attacking box-robots, whilst yet another is proactively running forward trying to get to the end of the level. The fourth is doing nothing but shaking their head in dismay whilst they are trying to work out how the levels tricky bits work and strategise around them.

Back in TRW (The Real World[TM] - Again) there is a couch of players hurling abuse at each other, because of the fact that they need each other to succeed, yet because of their various sub-games within the game are making each others lives increasingly difficult.

The solution that my family has finally reached is this: Be aware of that the sticker collector will want to collect everything, so point the stickers out to them. Create open communication about what is going to happen, before you act. Solve problems together. Let the guy who wants to win for the title win (Don't let him know though). Be patient with both the level, and your teammates, and of course...The obvious one: Align your sub-goals to the greater goal, and work together.

Over the past couple of weeks I've noticed several changes in
behaviour and happiness. Part of the behavioural change has been due to the fact that I'm borrowing someone elses mac. These are some of the things I attribute to my new found freedom:

- I spend less time at the computer because it's not mine
- Due to my newsfeeds not coming in, I havn't been reading RSS.
- Due to a web based browser, and a resource intensive machine I tend
to only read emails of either massive relevance or of exceptionally
high priority weighting.
- My to do's are not really getting done, (part of this is an excuse,
part of it is linked to not being around my to do list)
- I've been using paper and pen in meetings with wonderful effect,
and taking notes.
- I'm more likely to spend time reading books that I've set out to
read with intention, than randomly click around the internet until
something interests me.
- Any work I do on the computer is done with intention, and once
completed I step away.

It's difficult to attribute which factors are making me feel so good,
especially given that I'm not really drinking, have been drinking
lots of water and am back at training too. So I don't want to create a
false idol from the above processes which I'm blaming on the mac,
however I have found them incredibly useful.

I'm currently under commission to put together a 360 profile which has been custom built, in order to measure the alignment to values in an organization.

For those that don't know how a 360 degree profile works, it's quite simple: Your manager, sub-ordinates and peers are all fill out a questionnaire, the questions are rated on a scale, and the outputs from this are then mapped so that there is a 360 degree view of how your behaviours are perceived.

A good friend of mine Masedi Molosiwa asked what my insights where on the process. Initially I responded that it was all about appropriate information chunk size.

Values are an abstraction of importance ("What are my criteria?", "Why is this important"), through which some very interesting games in our universe get played. It's values all the way up. How values get played out in organizations is incredibly interesting, and outside the scope of this post. Values will dictate that certain patterns of behviour get lived out. As with any system, the following structure holds true:

Systems Structure -> Pattern of Behaviour -> Events

The above structure gives us an inkling on how to measure the acting out of values.

1) [Events] What sensory specific actions will be displayed in order to ascertain that those values are being played out (What will I see, what will I hear?).
2) [Patterns of Behaviour] What events do I group together to show a pattern of behavior which describe the values

The output of the above will bring out questions, or patterns to rate in the 360. Difficulties I picked up in this process are:

1) Values mean different things to different people, and what some people may classify as one thing, may get displayed by others differently.
2) The shift from System Structure to Event needs a parity check, only by moving in and out of state (something I'll try and blog about soon), does one get a feel for which actions attach to values.
3) This is a personal disclaimer - You cannot force values through an organisation any more than you can force a belief through a family system. The measure and importance of a value system in an organisation needs to be carefully chunked all the way up to "Do we work together towards a common purpose."

Human systems are complicated things, and while checking an odometer of a car will let you know how fast you're going, it may not let you know if you are any closer to your destination. 360's are exceptionally powerful tools, and when used in isolation they will feedback only what the have been created to measure.