Chapter 20: Making Change Easier 327
An urban legend pertains to a top salesman at IBM who reputedly lost a very
large amount of money on a project. When the salesman was summoned to
see Thomas J Watson Snr, one of IBM’s most influential leaders, he offered his
resignation, which was rejected. Watson said that IBM had just spent a vast
amount of money on the salesman’s training and didn’t want to waste it.If you’re holding yourself back because you’re afraid to do something, for
example, you may be afraid to move to a different job, accept a marriage
proposal, move house, accept a promotion, and so on, the following exercise
may help you to uncover your hidden fears.This exercise helps you with your decision-making. Even if afterwards you
decide to do nothing, you’ve still made a conscious decision. This process
itself can dispel a lot of your fears:- Ask yourself the questions from the well-formed outcome exercise that
we describe in Chapter 4. Here ‘x’ relates to taking some action, such
as the ones we mention above.
What will happen if I do x?
What won’t happen if I do x?
What will happen if I don’t do x?
What won’t happen if I don’t do x?
- Make a list of the pros and cons of making your decision.
- Make a list of everything that you think may go wrong and how you’d
deal with the arising problems. - Decide that you’re going to learn from the situation, no matter what
happens. - Release any fears that haven’t gone away using submodalities (see the
following anecdote about David).
In the world of business, the fact is that companies sometimes set up change
programmes to improve efficiency for survival – which often means cutbacks
in hours or people – or to improve the bottom line. Departments can be
merged or closed down or a problem – such as strong competition, high
attrition rates, low morale, or low productivity – may need to be addressed.
NLP techniques can help you through such difficult times.When David and his colleagues faced another swathe of cuts at work, he
felt the old dread of losing his job dogging his waking moments. He’d been
through several changes and states of feeling ‘not good’ and realised that his
motivation and well-being had both suffered. He decided enough was enough
and adopted the following strategies to stay productive: