You may have noticed I took a break from your inbox for a few days. Since I got some questions about it, I thought I’d explain it to you.
So here goes: I took my own advice.
One of the things I’ve been harping on about for the last couple of weeks is that if you want to really change things in how you’re working, you need to, well…
CHANGE.
Yeah, that’s right. Change.
That word everyone seems to hate with a passion.
It’s funny really, because we seem to have this resistance to change, and yet we change all the time—and so does the world around us.
The problem we have is that our brain wants to immediately jump to the negative, and that means our brain associates the word “change” with the word “lose.”
When it comes right down to it, we fear change because we’re afraid we’re going to lose something we already have. And the psychology has already proven we absolutely HATE to lose things we have—even if we’ve only had it for a moment or two.
Once we have it, then we latch onto it in this vice-like grip and even if someone came and told us if we didn’t let go in 10 minutes we’ll be zapped by 100 electric eels, we’d still at least hesitate before we gave up that widget.
So there’s a couple of things at work here that make us resistant to change. The first is the aforementioned psychology, and the second is habits.
More psychology says that at least 40% of what we do every day is out of habit. We don’t think. We just do.
Why habits?
It’s easy. We’re all lazy, and no part of us is lazier than our brain. It’s looking to optimize things as quickly as possible, so once it gets very good at understanding the triggers where it can go onto autopilot, it starts doing it as often as possible.
And once that happens, we’re no better than those famous dogs of Pavlov:
Bell rings, then drool city begins.
So it’s no wonder it’s so hard to change behavior and that we get so worked up about it. Not only are we afraid we’re going to lose something we have, but we’re also fighting all that default response programming to those triggers we’ve built.
Those triggers like being not quite where we’d like to be with a pice of work:
Your brain says: “Well, I’ve managed to make up time before, so I’ll just work a little longer today, and it’ll sort itself out.”
And then tomorrow, something you were supposed to get done that didn’t because you weren’t finished with that other thing starts shouting at you (or the person that wants the results)…
…and that trigger does it’s magic, and before you know it, you’re caught in a firefighting cycle.
And the behavior that got you into it, e.g., “just work a littler harder for a little longer,” are exactly the behavior – the habits – that make it worse, not better.
So my dirty little secret is that I’m not immune to this stuff either. It happens.
It happened for a while, and even though I know all about it, and I teach people about it in our consulting engagements, our training programs and in our 1:1 coaching and mentoring programs, it still bites me.
Fortunately, those bites aren’t nearly as big – or as often – as they used to be.
But the difference is, I did something about it.
For about a week, I made a calculated plan and thought through what would happen so I knew what to expect and could prepare for it, and then…
I stopped the world for 3 days.
Well…mostly.
And it broke the cycle. I let some fires burn themselves out, and I focused on the things that were critical for me to do.
Unfortunately, that meant no emails.
However, the good news is that since I was able to break that cycle and finally close off those tasks that had me going in circles, it means that not only will you get more emails, but I can now make this a priority task.
As I said when I started this a few weeks ago, I’m writing these emails so you can be better at what you do – in all areas – but in particular in self discipline, leadership, critical and strategic thinking and, of course, security topics like governance and architecture.
And right now, as you may know, we’ve re-launched our unique 1:1 coaching and mentoring program that I’ve been talking about, and we’ve done it for a limited time.
This opportunity – and, perhaps importantly: this price point – won’t be around for much longer.
So, since it might take some purchasing or procurement prompting and participation in order to allow you to get started tackling your toughest security leadership challenges with me, that means that of the 3 weeks before the end of the month, you might only have one week left to start taking action.
…or maybe, you can take action today—if you qualify and your application is successful.
Go to this URL: https://archistry.com/go/SecurityLeader
and have a read. If you have any questions about the program, hit Reply and let’s talk about them.
Otherwise, set up a call so you don’t miss out on one of those slots.
Because I can’t exactly say when we’ll have more available. It all depends on the people in the program.
So, what do you say?
Are you ready to do something so you actually get different results than you’re getting today?
I hope so, because I’d really like to work with you as part of the program.
To set up your application call, use the button at the bottom of this page:
https://archistry.com/go/SecurityLeader
Tick. Tock.
ast
—
Andrew S. Townley
Archistry Chief Executive
