Our Thoughts

Purposeful Practice – Part II

Purposeful Practice – Part II

Recently Laura has been inspired to change her eating habits by planning in advance – particularly when working on the go.

Understanding how people deal with and make change is at the heart of pretty much everything we do here at C&T.  When organisations want to change and develop they need their people to lead, deliver and go along with that change.

It isn’t easy – we’re programmed to like habit and routine and easily fall back into old habits, so however willing a team member might be, there will always be bumps along the road.

We spend a lot of time understanding how to minimise those bumps, how to speed up the process of change and how to make it more comfortable.  There are lots of elements to this and we draw on the work of many different people.  This month we are trying out some techniques on ourselves, this time from Matthew Syed who wrote Bounce.

It’s Jade who got the ball rolling.  Jade joined us as a graduate in Applied Psychology from Durham University so as you’d expect she’s really into understanding the theories and putting them into practice.

After reading Bounce last month she wrote a blog about Syed’s concept of Purposeful Practice – the idea that to progress and develop you need regular and focused ‘training’ or practice.

The regular bit helps you form a new habit – we know that the only way to build something new into your life is to pretty much force yourself to do it regularly until it becomes the new norm – this is well accepted now and many of our clients understand it.

The purposeful or focused part is the bit which often makes the difference though.  By linking your practice to an overall aim, and thinking about that aim each time you practice, you accelerate progress.

This takes us to a whole wealth of work around motivation.  Essentially though what Syed is saying is by tapping into your personal goals you can make your regular practice more effective.

And we think he is right.

Following on from Jade’s commitment to improve her fitness by doing a month of daily exercise, I’m making my own commitment to improve my health by working on my eating habits.

Anyone who knows me well will know that I often forget to eat or plan meals and that can mean I end up filling up on rubbish.  So as of Saturday 18th February I’m making an effort every day to have a plan for food.

Not that I’m always sticking to it.  Yesterday I had a plan but managed to leave my lunch in the fridge at home.  Still, having a plan is a step forwards.

Is anyone else up for joining us on the change band wagon?  If you are we’d suggest you pick something small.

Add in a five minute mediation every day.  Get up five minutes early or go to bed five minutes earlier.  Switch off screens 15 minutes before you normally would.

Or perhaps there is a skill you’d like to develop – pick a small element and try to practice every day.  And let us know how you are going.

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