Chris was the speaker at a recruitment event for the Federation of Small Businesses – which I’ve now joined. With Bob Griffiths, Chris has shown how problems can become opportunities and how a sense of stuckness can be overcome. The model is well known in business circles and applies equally well to personal situations.

GROW: start with Goals. What do you want to achieve, what’s the objective? It won’t work if it depends on other people – you cannot live out your goals through others because you are unlikely to have sufficient authority or power to control what others do, at least in the medium to long-term. How will you know when you have achieved that goal? What is the success criteria?

Reality: identify and describe the current situation. Where are you at now? How near is that Goal?

Identify the Obstacles, the problems that stop you achieving that goal. What is in the way?

Consider the Options, what you can do to get round or through those Obstacles? This is where others can really help you to see new possibilities, ways to get through the ‘stuckness’.

So then, what is the Way Forward? What are the explicit steps and actions you need to take to reach that Goal? Create then monitor the action plan until the successful outcome is achieved.

Using the GROW process with 3D HR, we have identified the Goal of a sustainable income and a mixed, balanced work portfolio. The Reality is that work is coming in but insufficient demand for training workshops. An Obstacle is lack of marketing and the Options include proactive marketing and producing training materials on CDs. The Way Forward is to identify who can produce CDs in the most attractive format, at what cost and to send out to potential clients. Another Option is to work out what else can be done as part of the business using our skills and experience. It’s all very exciting!

Ref: Grow your Own Carrot by Bob Griffiths and Chris Kaday, ISBN 978-0-9555074 -0 -3

3D HR Bookstore

• Process the past
• Plan the future
• Action the present

If I live orientated towards the future, always making plans and setting goals, this diminishes past experience. It lessens the opportunity for learning and growth. It risks a cyclical pattern of repeating the same mistakes, however they may be camouflaged.

Conversely, for ever looking backwards – the golden era of “if only” – stifles advance and risk-taking which could prove highly rewarding. So learn from the past but don’t try to live there. And anticipate the future but don’t live there either – its time will come.

Hence action or manage in the present – for that’s all there is for certain. Therein lies authentic happiness – according to my latest reading from Martin Seligman (see the Bookstore or his website) . Moving deliberately away from its roots in pathology, Seligman promotes Positive Psychology with its focus on strengths rather than weaknesses. Doing for humans what Appreciative Inquiry attempts for organisations.

May 2008 be great and truly happy for you and yours!