Some dials are bigger than you think!

Now we’re talking!

So it happens we have not been posting for a while but this came up recently and I love this story so I decided to kick off again… so here we go.

I was talking to a managing director of a great company last week  and we were discussing his business and how it moves up and down and his involvement in his business tends to fluctuate with his mood … he often found himself deep in the depths of detail and monitoring every nuance of the quite complex system he had going. Sure enough, he found this hard work and his staff came to him for every decision and question and report. Do you see an issue here? Well that’s kind of why we were talking.

We quickly got into the management of the business and the indicators he used to make decisions and while he had indicators it appeared he was watching all of the dials intently, without stepping back and taking an overview of the business. 

Looking for some inspiration, I noticed the Hotel we were in had wonderful arrangement of books on one shelved wall and so I asked him to look at the them and said, “if all of those books represented your business as the dials and measures you use, is there one which we might pick to measure the health or do you look at all of them?” … “All of them!” came the reply.  I picked a book off the shelf and pointed out to him that he in his business was looking at line three of page 68 of this dial.  

A little amusing, but it had a ring of truth for him. I asked him to take a step to the back of the room and look at the wall of books and asked him, “if you looked at the shelves of books, from the back of the room, could you look at the wall and see what the general state of the dials would be? What would be the general colour of the business?” “A bit red” was his response. 

I then told him about when I used to fly aeroplanes for pleasure. I too had a set of dials and as I learned how to fly, the bewildering array of dials in front of me were constantly on the go as we changed direction and altitude and pitch etc. After a while it occurred to me that the dials just needed a glance one and a while to check nothing dire was going on. We were heading in the right direction, we were climbing or sinking when we shouldn't be, we had fuel and the engine revs and critical measures like oil pressure and temps were in the green. The thing was I only got to the state of scanning when I realised I had a much bigger dial… The horizon in front of me (the bit where the sky and the land met!) out of the cockpit windscreen was another and potentially more important dial!

When the horizon was top left to bottom right in the screen it meant we were turning left.. when it was top right to bottom left it meant we were turning right… when it was below the screen we were climbing and when it filled the screen, (this was the important one) it meant we were heading for the ground.. there were things to do! 

When the plane is straight and level all is well. As you learn to fly the plane of life or your business you will find the horizon which will guide you the most and as you relax with it you will only glance at this dial from time to time too. Then when you look again, you will enjoy the horizon for what it is, it’s a great view up there and the flying is fantastic once you let go of the dials as “must do” activators. 

The dials will bounce around, but you don't have to!

The principles of mind, consciousness and thought will always be there to help you fly your through life as soon as you get out of their way. If you get confused feelings when while you study the indicators of your business its because of the thinking you are getting at the moment. It has nothing to do with the dials!  When you relax in these feelings and just observe them as feelings (do nothing), your tendency will be to slow down and watch the thinking move on. The deeper you go with this understanding, the more resilient you will be to the ups and downs of live and the more you will enjoy the flying and the view of the horizon.  Its great up here!

Happy Monday!