Deprogramming is a form of management detox. We navigate and work in organizations with a great deal of automatic pilot even if we don’t accept it freely. We are stuck in expertise and experience. We lack the expertise of detoxing ourselves from our own expertise. There is nothing intrinsically bad with expertise and experience. Chances are you have been hired because of them, so it can’t be bad!
Our programming is a safety system. It is there to facilitate work, to avoid repetition, to be reliable. It’s an insurance system.
We rely on ‘the way things have always been done’ because it’s safe or even because this is what our hierarchy expects. I’ve seen may times managers referring to somebody as ‘Peter is a good manager, sometimes a bit too creative’. It’s not a compliment.
We start projects with a set of preconceived ideas and the we continue looking through those glasses and filters
Deprogramming entails asking that precise question: what are the preconceive ideas here?
Deprogramming entails leaving your sandals at the door’
Deprogramming requires a dose of boldness and courage. Courage to challenge, to not to accept the status quo, to look at possibilities and not settle for the ones in hand.
Deprogramming accepts that a diet of old ideas is needed.
The main cure for programming, or main deprogramming programme is to expose yourself to your own alien world
News and magazines you never read
People who think differently form you.
Disciplines not taught in traditional management
- Suspend judgement
- Test your comfort. I correlates inversely negative with innovation
- Force yourself temporarily to an artificial territory
- Ask how would X do this. X being not your hero but somebody you are miles away from
- Do something completely alien and not work related the week before you have a major project or task starting
You can add your own.
Detox is good.