Hey everybody, this is Steve. Let me ask a question: who here would love to
continuously improve with something that they're doing, or continuously improve
the results they're getting with some project that they're working at? Good,
it means you're in the right place, and if you're in the right place, please click
the like button, because it tells me that I'm speaking to the right content,
and it also helps other people who might be interested to see it as well. Now in
today's video I'm gonna be explaining a really simple strategy for managing and
driving that continuous improvement, so that we can continuously improve our
skills and results in any project, and I really mean in ANY project, and stay with
me to the end because as part of this strategy, to finish it off I'm going to
show you how to use a very simple one-page stop-start board so that you
can really organize this continuous development and really drive it through.
I've used this strategy for many years to improve my skills and result in
many areas, for example I've used it to become a better coder when I was
learning how to code programs, I've used it to improve my skills in, don't laugh,
kung-fu, I've used it to improve my presentation skills, my team management
skills, and indeed my coaching skill,s and also my knowledge, skills and abilities
in recording these videos. I've also seen this strategy used in really large
corporations to drive continuous improvement within their organizations,
so trust me, it works, but first a confession, I don't really think of this
as self-improvement. You don't need improving as a person,
you're amazing as you are. There is nothing lacking in you. When I talk about
self improvement I'm really talking about improving our skills and results,
and what I'm doing there is I'm separating the value and worth of the
human being from the skills they know how to do and the results they're
getting with those skills, and I think that's really important
because when we buy into the idea of self-improvement, we're also buying into
the idea that we are, in this time, some way, inadequate;
lacking for something, and I don't think that's a good presupposition. We're not
lacking for anything. We're wonderful as we are. Let's separate
who we are from the skills and the results that we're getting and it's this
that we're working on. Now, before we jump to the stop-start board which comes at
the end of this I think it's really important that we recap the four golden
rules of progress. Golden rule number one is to know what good looks like, so if
it's a skill that you're developing, is there a good model to go by? Somebody who
has already mastered these skills that you can look at, because they are what
good looks like. Or if it's a procedure or a way of working, do you have a full
set of notes about what good looks like for performing that procedure? Do you
have examples to work by? Do you have a model Illustrated have some way, of
knowing what good looks like? The second golden rule of progress is to start
small, not too small but small enough that you can manage what you're doing.
Most skills and projects are overwhelming to someone who's never done
them before, to the beginner. Think about driving, think about how overwhelming
that was when you first started it, think about project management, think
about, I don't know, if you're a hypnotherapist think about when you were
learning hypnotherapy, it probably did seem overwhelming when you first started
it, so don't try and start big, don't try and be the master
straight away. Pick off something you can do, something that should be a stretch
for you, but doable. There's no point biting off something
so small that it's easy, because you won't progress that way. There's
equally no point in biting off so much more than you can chew that you
will never be able to make any progress with it.
the third golden rule of progress is to build up in stages, so however much
you've currently bitten off of the whole thing, as soon as you start to find that
it's not that much of a stretch for you to integrate all that, add something to
it, bite off a bit more, and work at integrating that. In other words go again
to something that's a stretch but doable and the more doable it becomes, stretch
again, bite off more, add to what you're doing, integrating it. The fourth golden rule
of progress is to get a feedback loop going know how on track or off track you
are, get feedback so if you're learning from somebody, get feedback from them, if
you're using a role model for what good looks like, keep noticing what they're
doing that you're not doing, if you're learning a procedure or a way of working
and you have notes about how that should be, refer back to it and see how much of
it you're integrating successfully and how much you're not. If you can make it
measurable, brilliant, make it measurable. You know,
when coaching sports people, somebody's got a stopwatch, if the goal is to keep
improving your race time then you're using that stopwatch to find out what's
making you faster what's not making you faster, so implement that kind of feedback
loop. Now here's where we can get to the stop start board itself which is the
thing that I really wanted to show you. A stop stop board represents an
organizing method for for those four rules, for that iterative loop. When I
was learning for instance to become good at doing YouTube videos I took copious
notes from the people I was learning from, copious notes, pages of notes, but it
was way too much to take on board at once, about scripting, about filming, about
editing, about optimizing. Too much to do at once, so what I did is I bit off
more than was comfortable but was doable, as per our golden rules, and I
would work with that for a period of time and then I would get to a point
where I would take a retrospective on where I was, and when I did that I
compared myself to what good looks like in the notes, and I noted about
seven mistakes. I didn't note too many mistakes, especially at the beginning, about
seven mistakes, things that I hadn't yet integrated, things that I'd forgotten to
do, things that maybe I wasn't doing quite right, and I would write them down
and that would have on my stop column, stop making this mistake, and to the
right hand side of that I would have my start column, the thing to start doing
instead, and the idea is in the next iteration of development I would
continuously work, consciously integrating those start points. Now this
is best illustrated by example, so I've produced the beginnings of a stop-start
chart. It is hypothetical, it's not a real use
case, but it is based on real use cases that I've seen. The imaginary
scenario is that you (I) are developing your sales skills so you'll notice that
in the stop column, the first thing I've noticed is I'm still introducing my
sales presentations with too many vague platitudes. Now notice that in the actual
document, I've written it as if I'm speaking to myself as a third person. You,
Steve, are still introducing your sales presentations with too many vague
platitudes, and the remedy, the thing to start doing instead is, Steve, you need to
start using a really specific desirable outcome in your introductions. So, there I
have it, I have my first point of continuous improvement, and so this is
the first thing that I'm going to be consciously integrating, consciously
correcting in the next iteration of my development in this skill. Now the second
thing that I noted down on this stop-start board was, Steve, you're still
caught up on what the potential thinks of you, and the remedy based on
looking at what good looks like, is, Steve, you need to start focusing on what the
potential client thinks of their product, so I've noticed a need to make a focus
on me versus focus on product shift, by referring to what good looks like, by
referring to the role model, and so that becomes the second point to feedback
into the next iteration of my development, the second point to
consciously work at integrating into what I'm doing. And then the third thing
that I noted in this hypothetical use case is, Steve, you're writing lists of
benefits that are running on too long, and referring back to what good looks
like, good looks like smaller lists of more powerful promises and I actually
personally remember reading David Ogilvy saying long lists of promises are a
symptom of your promises being weak. I always remembered that! And so in this
hypothetical case I took that down and put that the start is to make shorter
lists of stronger promises. There's no rule on how many things you should
put on a stop-start board. I would say don't put more than seven things on
because that might be too much additional stuff to try and integrate
into what you're doing in the next iteration of your skills development, but
it might only be one or two, it depends on how close you are to what good looks
like, and it also depends on how difficult those individual points are to
integrate. If they're very difficult, don't pick too many, if they're quite
easy pick more, the key thing is that you are, with every iteration, integrating
something new into what you're doing, so that you can move in closer and closer
to what good looks like. If continuously improving your
skills and results with something is something that you'd like to do more
work with, something you'd like to talk more about, I would certainly love to
hear from you. You'll find my contact details in the pinned comment below this
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