Want Different Results? Do Something Different

From an article by the Newfield Network on observing and action:

We maintain that whenever individuals and organizations are dissatisfied with the results of their actions, they tend to reflect on the actions and on improving their performance by speeding up the process. We observe that dissatisfaction remains because basically the same kind of action is being performed. We believe that in these cases reflection should focus on the observer that they are, namely, that they should discover the basic assumptions that have been limiting their scope of action. From this perspective an unknown world of possibilities for actions and meaning opens up, a world that was inconceivable under the old paradigm.

What I took away from this paragraph is that revisiting our actions and endlessly refining them won’t necessarily fix problems. When something is less than satisfying, we need not to refine what we’re already doing, but to question the assumptions that led us to those actions in the first place. Reminds me of the saying that the definition of insanity or stupidity is doing the same things over and over and expecting different results.

I posted on my coaching blog about how coaching coaxes us through this process, moving away from doing the same things over and over and moving towards examining our assumptions and considering other options. Coaching expands our skills as observers and alerts us to new possibilities of action.