Do you regularly spot editing errors in movies?

Can you multitask effectively, texting while talking with your friends or watching Netflix?

Can you listen well while thinking about what you are about to say next?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, you’re not alone. And, you’re most likely wrong.

More than 50 years of research about how the brain works have come to the conclusion that our perception of the world is limited, not so much by our eyes and ears, but by our minds.

Don’t believe me?

Have a look at the following 2-minute video from David Eagleman’s excellent series on the Brain…

As far as scientists can tell, our brains are extremely good at creating simple models of what we perceive. Our brains see and hear but our minds filter out vast amounts of information.

To a large extent, we perceive only that which receives the direction of our attention.

And what controls our attention when doing change work?

Our FRAMEWORKS.

Frameworks, used blindly - can screw change up!

Which is kind of weird, right?

We’re taught that frameworks are ‘how’ we should do things, but no one talks about how your frameworks can screw up your change work.

The reality is - they should.

Regardless of whatever type of people helper you are (professional or hobbyist…

… if you don’t understand the limitations of your frameworks

… if you have been trained into thinking frameworks or change techniques ARE the answers to your client problems (if only you had the right one…)

… if you struggle to create significant behavioural change in others quickly, seamlessly and quite easily…

Then there is a high chance that you are at the effects of what I call ‘The Frameworks Problem.’

I estimate it affects 9/10 change agents.

Professional people helpers across all professions from coaches to therapists to managers and psychologists are all victims of this cunning issue.

Because their training has thought them to implicitly trust their mental models, their teachers, their mind and dismiss (or in practice overlook) how the nervous systems and brain works.

And that, in my opinion, is crazy.

For decades researchers have been publishing excellent research on a phenomenon like inattentional blindness (failure to notice an unexpected object when attention is focused on something else), yet change agents have for the most part dismissed the important implications of these realisations for change work.

How we use our awareness has a huge impact on whether we will even detect…

1. What needs to change

2. The degree of change required

3. What method we should use with our clients

That’s why the best change workers don’t attach themselves rigidly to frameworks.

In fact, the best change agents I’ve ever seen work, don’t seem to work with any framework at all.

So what do they do instead?

That’s something I’ll be covering in upcoming post, and how to upgrade your change work dramatically too.

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