Category Archives: Box-Free Thinking

Achievable Focus Essential to Success

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Achievable focus takes the “almost” out of your push for success in any context.

Have you gotten so close to achieving an important goal—you can almost taste success—only to find success slips through your fingers?

Therefore, your targeted opportunity suddenly vanishes or a focused competitor swoops in and you’re out. The prospect stays a prospect; the deal does not become a deal; your projected income is zero.

You can want something—a new client account, a new job, a new business, or a second shot at anything—very badly or urgently, but your need alone may not be enough to achieve what you want.

Desire may get you close, but if your focus is even slightly off center or your concentration lapses, success may slip through your fingers.

The truly discouraging truth is that lose your focus and “your success” can slip right into a observant competitor’s hands.

To “focus” means to strategically direct and intensively concentrate your attention, activity, resources, and what is necessary for a goal—“your point.”

As an achievement strategist, key skills lie in achieving and applying what I call Achievable Focus for clients. To me, the distinction between “focus” and “achievable focus” is the difference between “almost successful” and “completely successful,” or almost making your point and making it with a memorable bang for target clients.

No magic or secrets here.

This is well within the skills of an experienced professional, like you.

Focus is not an achievement asset if you lack clarity.

Achievable focus will elude you…

#1. …if you are not completely clear what your point is to achieve your goal.

#2. …if you do not “cut the crap” that has been holding you back and will continue to do so until you let go of the past and commit to moving Onward & Upward, the only directions that really matter!

#3. …if you do not know “Who your WHO is?” so that you can concentrate your focus on the ideal target client for your business efforts.

#4. …if you do not commit to a success that includes having your WHO stick with you, not just open an email offer, download a click magnet, attend an event, or click on your marketing ploy.

Add the preceding four focus elements together and you have created powerful achievable focus. You know what you want to achieve, why, and for whom, so success is crystal clear and your achievement strategies and focus are equally clear.

Weakness or lack of focus with any one element makes success elusive. For instance, #2 Cut The Crap above includes:

  • Stop making excuses
  • Stop blaming others
  • Stop obsessing on why you haven’t been successful so far
  • Drop that and all unproductive baggage that is holding you back.

I’m not expecting you to do all the above immediately, collectively, consistently, and permanently. The first step is becoming aware of your ingrained bad habits and counter-productive patterns of behavior in the context of one goal. We all have room for improvement whether we realize if or not.

As an experienced professional, you can make a serious commitment to suspend your crap as part of shifting to achievable focus. This will focus everything on the main point that you’ve chosen as your top priority.

For instance, the path to achievable focus lies in answering these questions honestly—to yourself, no one else:

  • What are my favorite excuses for not making my best effort?
  • Who is holding me back from success?
  • What “failure reruns” do I dredge up to explain why it’s not my fault things did not work out?
  • What are the top three roadblocks to my success? For example, screen obsession, multitasking to distraction, or mental clutter

In helping their prospects make decisions about their goals, professionals may achieve successful client relationships.

Tip #1: Achievable Focus: If the above effort seems too much based on what you want to achieve, you’ve picked the wrong goal or point to start with. Fix that lack of focus first.

Achievable focus achieves success.

Source: “What’s Your Point?: Cut The Crap, Hit The Mark & Stick!” by PJ Wade.

© Copyright  PJ Wade The Catalyst   All rights reserved.

Uncertainty Is Certain AND Manageable

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Suddenly uncertainty descended on us.

Across the globe, individuals from all backgrounds and cultures watched their world and way of life—and possibly their desired future—crumble under the threat of COVID-19 virus.

During the short time the 2020 Pandemic has been with us, we watched in shock as most, if not all, of the certainty of our lives was dismantled or vanished in our efforts to halt the viral force over which we have little control. Jobs lost, education curtailed, businesses trashed, professionals shut down, dreams dashed, hard-won triumphs negated, lives lost….

The war against the invisible virus redefined almost every aspect of society, the economy, and our lives in a few weeks. This reset continues.

The “new normal”—if there even was a “normal” in the first place—is living with uncertainty on a scale never considered possible nor experienced by many people—except perhaps those who’ve lived through a war or an invasion. Now tariffs and social uprisings bring uncertainty to the forefront again.

Your clients are dealing with all of this uncertainty, plus the loss of your supportive business offerings and possibly your presence. Compounded by personal losses, financial uncertainty, and re-directions, this is suddenly overwhelming on almost every level from emotional to financial, from medical to social. That’s an exhausting load of negative or destructive uncertainty.

How can you help prospects and clients manage this level of unexpected destructive uncertainty?

Obviously, any relevant constructive solutions you can contribute, depending on your field of expertise and type of products and services, will be valuable and valued.

Uncertainty in itself is not evil. Nor is this hovering unknown an “it” but rather a “them.”

Uncertainty can be either negative or positive and anything in between:

1. In uncertainty’s most negative extreme, uncertainty can be a powerful undermining force or destructive uncertainty, as described above.

2. In the most positive state, uncertainty is constructive uncertainty and can be a terrific motivator and  driving inspiration:

  • Anticipation associated with uncertainty believed to be good, great, or magnificent, is a thrill and an energizer. For instance, looking forward to a special celebration or an amazing opportunity.
  • Anticipation of completion of a hard-won goal, like earning a university degree or successfully launching a start-up, is linked to the exhilaration of the compellingly-unknown and positively-imagined future ahead. That is, the future may hold graduation followed by a great career or ramped-up business growth and acclaim.
  • Anticipation associated with the exhilarating uncertainty of each individual’s path from childhood to adulthood—growing up—is the joie de vive, the thrill of living.
  • Anticipation of a better way, a better life, a better outcome…is at the heart of optimism, enthusiasm, and hope.

Before the virus and tariffs, the future that lay ahead full of positive contemplation, dreams, and hopes. Now??

Uncertainty, where we fear the outcome, is hard to live with. Consciously, accurately, and constructively redefining destructive uncertainty to reveal related and less-stressful constructive uncertainty opens thinking to neutral or positive alternative outcomes.

Use your professional communication skills and expertise to assist prospects and clients. Help them adopt new perspectives and take constructive action, even if that action is as simple as staying separated during the Pandemic.

As a professional, how do you make your constructive point to clients coping with uncertainty?

Hollow “it’ll turn out alright” statements, groundless optimism, platitudes, aspirations, and parroted phrases may sound good to you, but without practical substance you lose credibility quickly and may be annoying. This saccharin, patronizing “just think positive” approach is like a mental sugar high which may be followed by a mental crash that could intensify desperation.

Dig into your professional expertise and, armed with facts, share the range of opportunity and possibilities visible to you and relevant to clients as their future relates to your offerings, experience, and analysis.

Five Starting Points for the Transformation to Constructive Uncertainty

1. Call on proven, effective communication tools—yours, newly-acquired skills, hired expertise—to provide personalized, clear explanations to consistently make your point with clients.
For instance, using a relevant metaphor that clients can easily relate to, can put the uncertainty in perspective. Make clear how the uncertainty can or will be reduced to enable them to begin to see the choices they have. These can be built on by increasing clients’ awareness of the actual issues at hand. For instance, you are not a powerless leaf blowing in the wind without control or intention. You are a rational, decisive person who can make choices about how to react, what you’ll fight for, and what you let go of as merely a distraction. Hope will grow out of despair if you open your mind to possibilities. That describes your clients, too.

2. Everybody seems touched by Economic Uncertainty, but learn exactly what each of your clients really fear.
Unidentified, unspecified fear is overwhelming. What exactly is each individual afraid of? A common fear, will materialize very differently for each individual. Fear of which process, outcome, or consequences keeps them awake at night, intrudes on decision making, or paralyzes them with worry? Your expertise may not cover any of those issues, but you know how to locate credible individuals who can raise awareness and reduce unfounded fear. After respectfully listening to clients explain what fears they have, decide what you can do to increase awareness and choice or arrange for another professional to do so. Online communication makes this easier than ever before.

3. Help clients clarify exactly what they might lose.
This may also involve other professionals whose expertise covers important issues raised by clients, but which are outside your expertise. Your experience may involve problem solving to arrive at financial solutions to minimize loss and stress. Or you may help alleviate the distraction of holding on to negative experiences and repeatedly dredging up emotional pain instead of letting go and moving on. Stick to what you know and find the best qualified people to explain other issues. Use humor with caution.

4. Normal was always the wrong word.
In the midst of the Pandemic, people often said, ” I want things to return to normal.” The illusion that normal is best for everybody persists. What others label as normal represents their standard, not yours, nor necessarily the best for anybody. Normal has often been based in the past, driven by bias, grounded in opinion, laden with agendas, or merely a gross generalization with little real value, however:

  • Liberation from “normal” leaves us all free to find a new purpose, standard, perspective, belief…whatever your target clients prefer to ground their lives or businesses on.
  • Instead of feeling society must dictate to you what’s right to do or not do, we may be free to set aside standards like “normal” and decide for ourselves what we want to do and why.
  • Our very diverse, multigeneration populations may finally shake off dated, even old-fashioned, limitations placed on many aspects of life, many of them carry-overs from the 19th- and 20th centuries.

5. There’s no going back, just forward! Onward & Upward are the directions that really matter!
Across the globe, we share societal and economic despair at what is lost and disrupted, but the intensity and critical details vary with individuals and families and their context. What’s next? Your choice.
Our “normal” global society has cracked open. What is it opening up for you?

  • Have you taken the time away from Netflix to think, genuinely think, about what aspects of your life you really miss and which you’re enjoying a break from?
  • What work were you doing because you made a commitment or had not taken the time to see what else was out there? What were you doing for the money and little else?

We are all certain “the impossible” has happened. What wonderful outcome did you considered impossible in your life or your future? And in your new future…?

“Perhaps you could now move to make that impossibility happen? For instance, we’ve been slow to genuinely adopt the credibility of working outside a traditional office setting. Too many—even those who “talk tech”—seem to ignore this practical application for the mind-boggling array of collaborative and other remote-access technology. Now, AI has swooped in and further changed the workplace. There is no going back!” said PJ Wade, The Catalyst

Additional resources:

1. For more ideas on the next step forward, visit these posts:

3. To explore PJ’s work as The Catalyst, visit www.TheCatalyst.com

Defy Mediocrity & Resistance

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How do you defy mediocrity to overcome resistance?

Developing the ability to unknow allows you to freshly apply your expertise in existing or new contexts to overcome resistance in yourself and others.

In times of change, this resourcefulness is the most powerful communication lesson experience teaches us.

Unknowing—that is, consciously letting go of existing patterns and behaviors to embrace change—challenges professionals and their clients. Many find it difficult to alter their immediate reactions. They overlook the need to shed and ignore the benefits of shedding related habits in behavior and decision making.

One key reason is that, although they say their intentions may have changed, context does not.

Merely saying “I’ll try to…” when stuck in the same frame of reference and with the same mind-set, means they are destined to repeat their established behavior.

Predictable or reflex reactions are frequently associated with communication errors. With experience, these often-dated mind-sets can be anticipated and counteracted before miscommunication occurs. That corrective communication process is an essential element of the established and emerging services you are paid to deliver to clients.

What have you learned by observing communication errors made by clients, colleagues, and competitors as they deal with challenges, including flawed decision making? If you do not test errors like these for cause and effect, you can drift into mediocrity.

You’ll miss opportunities to head-off repeat mistakes and misunderstanding, which often materialize as resistance, and chances to save others from the same fate.

The following are three examples of opportunities to expand a client base, increase sustainable revenue, and eliminate miscommunication that are often missed:
1. What convinced you to stop looking for someone else to blame and started you understanding the chain of events and communication flaws that cause undesired outcomes, including resistance to change?
2. Which social-media-related communication problems and solutions do you anticipate will challenge you, your target prospects, and your clients?
3. How do you minimize problems and lower resistance to make your online-delivered solutions, including products, services, and standards, easier for targets to further customize?

Successfully heading off communication mistakes for you and your clients means adapting the way you think and communicate to ensure you are always steps ahead. Instead of reacting to what happens, anticipate prospect and client reactions to minimize miscommunication, misunderstandings, and missed opportunity—all elements of resistance to change.

When this proactive skill is perfected into consciously-ingrained communication ability, opportunity is rarely overlooked or discounted.

©  Copyright   PJ Wade The Catalyst   “What’s Your Point?  Cut The Crap, Hit The Mark & Stick!” All rights reserved.

Act Your Way into a New Way of Thinking

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Professionals who do not shed out-dated thinking, bias, and flawed decision making can be just as resistant to change as clients and members of the public—and as susceptible to mediocrity.

Good intentions, even solid logic, are often not enough to overcome ingrained or unconscious resistance to change which makes unknowing difficult.

Those who aim to change unproductive habits, like repeating “you know” or procrastinating, can attest to this.

Experience has taught you that trying to not do something is hard, so you’re sure failure is imminent. We get stuck in the past, because we are trying to talk (even when we call it think) our way into a new way of acting while stuck in the same place, real and mental. This inertia occurs in part because all we have to think about is the way things were done.

The reverse works: act your way into a new way of thinking.

Consciously alter behavior to the desired new pattern and the new way of thinking will gradually take hold. Begin by acting the way you want to end up behaving. Start by embracing new habits and your mindset will follow suit.

Pretend to yourself that you can and you will discover you can.

For instance, if you think you are shy about public speaking, and keep saying so to yourself and others, you’ll continue sabotaging yourself and holding back when speaking opportunities arise.

  • Start by pretending you are not shy.
  • Begin by never again saying or thinking “I’m shy.” That’s history.
  • Act as if you are comfortable speaking in public and you will be. Worked for me.
  • Gradually, take on bigger speaking challenges. You’ll discover you can communicate more effectively than you were telling yourself.
  • Regularly remind yourself that you are acting yourself into a new way of thinking to steadily move forward. Keep this commitment fresh in your mind.

[Except from What’s Your Point? Chapter 2 Defy Mediocrity & Resistance.]

©  Copyright   PJ Wade The Catalyst   “What’s Your Point?  Cut The Crap, Hit The Mark & Stick!” All rights reserved.

 

Place to Think: Where Does The Time Go?

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Do you need a Place to Think so you can ramp up and provide the best—innovative, practical, customized, successful—solutions for your clients?

A Place to Think may be a physical spot—a special chair, a room, an outdoor haven. Or, try a digital or an online place to pause the chaos and kick your brain into “innovation gear.”

You may need hours there to work out the problem or opportunity at hand—the Challenge. Or, you may flash in and out if your Place to Think in less than an hour with an innovative nugget..

It’s not time that is crucial. It’s your ability to pay attention and to concentrate on the issue at hand. That’s why saying “I don’t have the time to think” does not make any real sense. Mentally, you can use even small amounts of time very productively if you pay attention and concentrate.

This concentration taps into your conscious and unconscious knowledge reservoirs for those flashes of inspiration and clear thinking we covet. A physical or digital Place to Think may make it easier to develop productive problem solving and opportunity evaluating skills.

This post may be Your Place.

Or, it will show you where to look for or how to create a digital Place that works for your brain. A Place that helps your brain let go of the background clutter. Somewhere to shed the load of must-dos and provide context for fresh thinking. A Place to enable you to tap into “I never noticed/realized that before” awareness for innovation.

Are you great at what you’re paid to do? Is “I can’t think of any other way” linked to the speed at which you expect to be brilliant and find a solution? Does this make your problem solving the quickest possible search for a solution or do you expediently latch on to a solution you’ve used for another client? Or does solving a client’s problem genuinely involve full contemplation of the best solution for that client?

Your Experiment

Swans' Place to Think

Adult swans teach their 4 cygnets by example

While you watch the video below, consider how long you usually invest in opening your mind to “see” the client’s challenge. Do you examine its entirety—the complete problem and the full opportunity—before you apply the usual solutions or excuses?

Without music or other distractions, watch the swans. Relax into the key question of the challenge (problem or opportunity) you are confronting for a client. Repeat the key question without trying to solve it. Let your conscious and unconscious open up and let the ideas flow in…

The video is not about the swans. Nor is it about how they teach their fuzzy grey cygnets the essentials of life like preening to keep life-saving oils on their feathers. Watching the video is about how you use your time.

Give your attention to the video to “see” how much can be accomplished in a few minutes. Investing your attention and concentrate can expand time. Use a longer video if you find this approach works.

(FYI: The two adult swans repeat the precise preening movements several times a day for months to teach the cygnets. Swans must preen several times a day to stay dry while living in water, cold water.)

Rather than repeat the same solutions you automatically apply, think about the question you answer for clients. Revisit your Place to Think to practice investing full attention. Practice concentration to master innovative variations or new solutions to client challenges—problems or opportunities.

Align: Add Value By Raising Your Standards

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Add genuine professional value to your services and products by raising your standards—your measure of quality and excellence—to align with and exceed those of prospects, clients, and competitors.

When the goal is to add value for prospects or clients, too often the communication go-tos are digital marketing and hyped-up technology.

If flash and hype are what your clients value, what solves their problems, and what they’ll spend more on, go for it.

[ What’s Your Point? Book Excerpt: Chapter 10.1 Raising My Standards. © PJ Wade, TheCatalyst.com ]

Most prospects and clients want to see themselves in your services and products. That’s how they perceive value.

Pay attention to how target prospects and clients express their beliefs on quality and professionalism.

Select standards and a work ethic that reflect and exceed target expectations.

A good measure of your success with this? How you behave—your professional standards—when you believe no one is watching or would find out.

Unless your standards are crystal clear to you, how can you meet and exceed them?

It’s not how you feel about your standards. It’s whether they align with and exceed target prospect and client standards and expectations.

How would you characterize the standards of quality and excellence by which you work and live? The standards that define your brand?
Are they average?
Above average?
High?
Exemplary?
Top of the field?

Who set your standards? Did you design them to meet the expectations of your selected target market? Your standards evolve from your upbringing, education, and personal life? Your profession’s Code of Ethics and Standards of Business Practice (however they’re named) are incorporated in your professional or business standards. Your personal standards for working with and for others must be what is most valuable to prospects and clients.

The key issue is who do your levels of quality or excellence revolve around, empathize with, and focus on. You? Your target prospects and clients?

  • The professional standards you adopt to deliver services, products, and advice should meet and exceed target needs and expectations. Their standards should be reflected in your service and product provision.
  • Your application of industry standards should be well-above average.
  • Your personal standards, which evolve over your life, speak to what matters to you. For target prospects and clients to value and respect you—and you them—their standards must align with yours, and vice versa.

You can tell people your standards are high, but do your actions consistently prove this? However you label your standards, it’s the quality category targets place your standards in that matters. Do you know when prospects and clients feel your standards and, therefore, your brand need improvement?

  • Ask most professionals and business owners about their business standards and they’ll tell you their standards are high, very high. I know because I’ve interviewed hundreds and hundreds of professionals, entrepreneurs, executives, business owners, and advisors. No one identified their standards as less than “high.”
  • Ask clients with first-hand experience of your products and services what could be improved and they’ll have a lot of suggestions. Clients always insist they’d share these ideas with the professionals if they asked. I’ve interviewed hundreds and hundreds of your clients and asked them what could be done to improve the services and returns they receive. They have willingly told me about you.

The challenge lies in recognizing exactly how your standards and, therefore, your brand evolves—what you are doing, not doing…. That’s the invisibility of the box. Unless you regularly hire the right professionals to critique all aspects of your business communication, you have decided—consciously or unconsciously—to take on this evaluation yourself. Is that a wise decision?

Which standards of respect for others do you commit to?

  • Are you receptive and respectful when a prospect or client makes a suggestion to you? Or, do you, consciously or unconsciously, shift to a defensive “don’t tell me how to do my job” stance or persist with an “it’s all about me” attitude?
  • Many prospects and clients will deliberately test professionals to see how responsive and respectful they are. If they appear cold or patronizing, clients back off and may not bother sharing insight, returning, or referring. Then, both clients and professionals are losers.
  • Raising your level of excellence is essentially competing with yourself since you know you can always improve. However, if ego gets in the way and you feel you’ve already beaten the competition, complacency may override constructive curiosity and your standards may suffer as well as your clients and business.

A small thing to you, can be a symptom of a below-standard attitude to others. You may be unaware of this, but it is probably evident to prospects, clients, and competitors:

  • If you don’t listen to a client, why should they listen to you? Even if they stay with you, will they follow your suggestions, give you all their business, or refer you?
  • If you don’t respect a client’s opinion, why should they respect yours? Clients who don’t believe that their hired professionals also respect them, may not be as open about their concerns, the extent of their needs, and their commitment to you.
  • If service, advice, and product standards are based on you at your best, what happens when stress, illness, family issues, or time pressures interfere and you are not at your best?
  • If you are not from the same generation as your target market, ageism or prejudice against or toward age, may be a disrupting factor. The “too young to know” and “too old to know” cross-generation reactions associated with ageism can accentuate differences of opinion and value systems. These reactions may be compounded by cultural differences and language challenges:
    • Not listening to an idea may be an ageist brush-off or may be perceived as such even if it is not.
    • Offering suggestions may be ageist criticism or may be perceived as such.

Mediocrity creeps in through insecurity, sloppiness, poor time management, bad habits, sensitivity to criticism, inflated ego, stress, weak powers of observation, and in too many other ways.

Without constructive persistence guiding you toward the best path forward, you will always slip back into old habits and follow established ruts or ingrained patterns of behavior. That is, you may slide backwards or go nowhere in spite of good intentions unless you continually and deliberately renew your determination to move forward and raise your standards.

How do I know my standards of quality and excellence are aligned with and exceed those of my chosen target markets?

For more on improving professional value: Disruption: Get Out of Your Own Way!

© Copyright PJ Wade, TheCatalyst.com. All rights reserved.

Stalled Thinking Stifles Innovation

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What’s Your Point?—as blog and book—is a whisper in the ear, a tap on the shoulder, a pat on the back, and a mental kick in the pants for those with years of hands-on experience thinking, analyzing, creating, improvising…and deciding for others—their clients. No dummies here, but there is Room for Improvement and there is need for INNOVATION.

Experience can be valuable to the success of everything and anything, including communication, but not always. The professional wisdom, knowledge, creativity, and decisiveness that experience generates are frequently the driving force behind improvement and innovation. Ironically, these two essentials can be forestalled, particularly in times of dramatic shifts, by resistance to change and other distractions originating from past experience.

Merely saying, “I’m thinking outside the box,” or even making an effort to do so—alone or in a group—does not guarantee Continue reading →

What’s My Point?

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My Point?…Social media and 21st-Century business both demand you are always prepared to MAKE YOUR POINT—online and off—because communication results matter every time in business and in life!

“WHAT’S YOUR POINT?”—this blog and my business book of the same title—are intended as a whisper in the ear, a tap on the shoulder, a pat on the back, and a mental ’kick in the pants’ for those with years of hands-on business experience who may not have received as much formal training in communication as they have in their chosen field.

Experienced business leaders, including advisors, executives, business owners, and professionals, face additional challenges as technology speeds everything up and there’s LESS TIME TO THINK!

Back to HOME … The Catalyst.com

One Tiny Word, A Range of Powerful Choices

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IF is a tiny word with great communication power…

When IF is used properly to improve communication effectiveness!

But IF is not always the best word to use, however, we use it a lot.

For some people, IF is a sloppy habit like saying “yu know?” or “umm.”

To make your point, IF can be the wrong word to include.

Making your point demands certainty about what your point is. There’s no IFs about that. There may be the positivity of a “when” involved, but there’s no room for IFs. “If we can…” has no power, but “When we can…” is powerful commitment.

And yet, when you use IF with deliberate intent to reveal the choices involved in your point, it is the only word to use.

In 1895, British Nobel-Prize-Winning writer Rudyard Kipling wrote the astonishing and thought-provoking poem, If. There’s no better example of how powerful IF can be in the right context WHEN you think…

 

If

by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men [sic] doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

(Visionary Readability: The Google-AI response to this poem is “The text contains 3 instances where 3 or more consecutive sentences start with the same word [If}. Try to mix things up!”)

Here’s an example of how to fit thoughts from long ago, like the poem If, into today’s first-time-in-history, high-pressure goings-on to make your point. The following 2021 post still rings true to demonstrate how even though we live in a vortex of change, not a lot changes:

“IF” Buyers Can Keep Their Heads…

Inclusion Extends to Accessibility: “Me & We”

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Is the progress of inclusion slowed by overlooking the obvious?

Inclusive workplaces, organizations, communities, and other cultures of belonging cannot be sustained in spaces, buildings, and environments which are not “inclusive” for everyone—fully accessible and barrier-free in their access, design, and construction.

Accessibility to public and private spaces and buildings should be an inclusive, universal design goal—“Me & We”—that extends intention to remove social and cultural prejudice and bias to include everyone determined to remove physical limitations and barriers.

The point is we say we welcome diversity and inclusion and that we want the full spectrum of people to come together socially, culturally, and without prejudice—inclusively. This push for inclusion means little if interior and building design and construction deliberately favor able-bodied adults and present a varying degree of obstruction to everyone, including even that privileged group.

“Accessible” is a concept directed at those with disabilities and not inclusive of the able-bodied.

Is it time to disrupt “accessibility?”

Instead of this concept concentrating on dictating disability-specific concessions to interior and building design, isn’t it time to begin with design that intends, from the beginning, to ensure everything is accessible to everyone—every age, size, ability, capacity…?

The ubiquitous barriers are there: stairs, insufficient or unreliable elevators, poor lighting, heavy doors, slippery flooring, lack of railings, threshold steps, badly-designed bathrooms, lack of seating….

The point is it’s easier for able-bodied adults to overcome, ignore, or avoid these and other access interruptions, but they are still barriers that don’t need to be designed into buildings undergoing renovations or new buildings in the first place.

This is the same “stuck in the past” thinking which gives strength to prejudice and bias which the inclusive movement must dispel. Technology continues to give us the false impression that digital capacity alone modernizes thinking and automatically overwrites destructive elements from the past.

Electrical wall outlet

Electrical wall outlet

For instance, many aspects of non-accessible building design have historic roots that are not in sync with today’s standards or norms. The height of electrical outlets is a good example. That height off the floor was not set by user needs, but the height of a hammer handle. This was the widespread measurement standard used by construction workers to quickly, easily, and consistently place electrical outlets. No tape measure needed; no reading or math knowledge required.

Trace back why hammer handles were a standard length and you’ll discover how far back and to what degree of current irrelevancy the foundation of inaccessible buildings and spaces was laid. Easy to install, but not ideal for users of any age or physical state today:

  • Small children are at comfort level with these dangerous outlets, so sticking fingers and metal objects in is tempting
  • Adults on hands and knees digging behind the couch to plug in anything, complain loudly about the inconvenience. Those with disabilities may be completely shut out.
  • Easy for workers, but perpetuated barriers for everyone else.

How do we end up with buildings that present barriers to many people, children included? Is it the definition of “people” that needs work? Is it the non-inclusive definition of “people” that causes buildings and spaces to be non-inclusive?

automatic ADA door opener

Automatic ADA door opener

Have you noticed how many people push the automatic ADA door opener buttons to have a heavy door effortlessly open for them? In most buildings I frequent, the majority of people push the button instead of struggling with heavy or germ-laden doors. This means apparently-able adults, whether or not they are carrying small children, pets, or packages, use the accessibility devise. In a number of cases, landlords and business owners have discovered that the automatic door mechanism, intended for low-volume, disabled-only use, breaks down or wears out from almost constant use. Does this mean we’re all ready for barrier-free access?

Accessibility is part of “Me & We” inclusion and vice versa. We can’t bring one into the twenty-first century without moving the other forward, too:

  • In that transformative process, there’s room for many trend-setting start-ups, applications, social media communities…. Can you see a starting point?
  • What’s next? Rename it? Brand it? Crowd source it?
  • Will the expansion of the Inclusive Accessibility Movement create the next disruption frontier?
  • Could this mark a new dividing line between the past and the truly-modern future?

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