Absolutely true!

Just as author-filmmaker-futurist Joel Arthur Barker puts it:

"A positive, inspiring vision is one thing all successful organizations have in common.

Having a positive vision of the future is the most forceful motivator for change… for success, that companies, schools, communities, nations, and individuals possess."!

I reckon, as I read and ponder, the point here is to keep moving on the forward trajectory.

From another angle, I see it as the essence of the power of vision at work. Drawing intellectual cues from author-filmmaker-futurist Joel Arthur Barker:

"... that having a positive vision of the future is the most forceful motivator for change… for success, that companies, schools, communities, nations, and individuals possess."!

The Power of Vision 

In the words of author-filmmaker-futurist Joel Arthur Barker:

"... A positive, inspiring vision is one thing all successful organizations have in common. 

Having a positive vision of the future is the most forceful motivator for change… for success, that companies, schools, communities, nations, and individuals possess."

I fully concur! 

Achieving your dreams is always a hard thing to do. And many people believe that we can predict the future. We can’t. What we can do is create it.

With a positive vision of the future, we’re able to do this with imagination and creativity. 

Exercising your imagination will help you create a better future for yourself and those around you. 

Imagination is the ability to form images in your mind or make someone else create those images in their mind about what could be possible in the future.

Believe in yourself, and you can achieve anything you want. You don’t need to rely on anyone else’s power or strength for it. You are strong enough, powerful enough, and capable of achieving anything worth achieving with all your heart. 

All you need is the right strategy and the steadfast  discipline to work on it. But what is even more important than the things mentioned is the belief in yourself! 

Dr Maxwell Maltz shared this fascinating observation back in the early sixties when he wrote Psycho-Cybernetics.

Interestingly, America's Greatest Prosperity Teacher Bob Proctor had reinforced Dr Maltz's point:

"You don't have to know how to get it. You just have to know that you can."

He added:

"Want is the only prerequisite to get what you want. Do you really want it?"

Bob's partner, Sandy Gallagher, CEO of the Proctor Gallagher Institute, went on to create a 32 minute video on YouTube, entitled Visioneering.

She shared her brilliant insights on the art of Visioneering, including a checklist which you can even download.

For the corporate and business world, author-filmmaker-futurist Joel Arthur Barker had introduced his half-hour long Power of Vision video, which demonstrated that "having a positive vision of the future is the most forceful motivater for change and success".

You can watch it for free at the StarThrower Distribution corporate website.

In a nut shell, it's fair to say, Dr Maltz was far ahead of his time.

"... your vision should be much bigger than what you can actually see.

What you envision is what you get.

Look beyond your eyes to see the possibilities!

What is your vision?"

~ Lee J Colan, founder of the L Group, a consulting firm that equips and inspires leaders at every level;

This observation has scientific basis.

Back in the late 80's or so, brilliant neuro-scientist Dr Karl Pribram of Stanford University had called this, "image of achievement", which subsequently inspired the vision modeling methodology in Sybervision Systems.

In the 90's, author-filmmaker-futurist Joel Arthur Barker had documented this phenomenon in his powerful training video, "Power of Vision", with great examples drawn from educator Benjamin Singer, sociologist Fred Pollack, psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, and consultant Jim Collins.

[In the snapshot, Lee J Colan is standing on the right, with legendary football coach Bobby Bowden on the left.] 

In my earlier post, I mentioned  a training video of author-filmmaker-futurist Joel Arthur Barker, The Power of Vision.

In the video, Barker shared an interesting anecdote about Eugene Lang:

“In 1981, businessman Eugene M. Lang returned to P.S. 121, the elementary school he had attended in East Harlem 50 years earlier, to address a class of graduating sixth graders. He intended to tell the students, “Work hard and you’ll succeed.” But on the way to the podium, the school principal told Lang that three-quarters of the school’s students would probably never finish high school, prompting Lang to make an impromptu change to his speech: he promised college tuition to every sixth grader who stayed in high school and graduated.” 

Barker stated that the most successful students think in time horizons of five to ten years out while unsuccessful students have nearly no future picture. He also shared the research of Dr Benjamin Singrer on future focused role image.

Successful students saw in long time horizons with multiple alternatives. They had a belief that their own behavior made a big difference in how the future would turn out.

Less successful students saw in short time horizons with no idea of what they were going to be doing. They believed their lives were in the hands of fate.

Children with vision outperformed their assets. They had a profound belief in their future and their ability to use their own efforts to shape it.

If we want to increase student success, it will take more than just a future picture. But those pictures could drive innovation within schools and communities to implement learning opportunities missing in our current structures. Lang set up support systems in addition to the offer of college tuition. What future pictures drive your school and classroom innovations?

“And Lang’s original 61 Dreamers? Of the 54 who remain in contact with the organization, more than 90% have earned their high school diplomas or GED certificates; and 60% have pursued higher education. The Dreamers have received degrees from Bard College, Barnard College, Swarthmore College, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, CUNY Hunter, and other schools. Almost all of the P.S. 121 Dreamers hold fulfilling jobs, and now their children are beginning to graduate from college.”

Drawing intellectual cues from author-filmmaker-futurist Joel Arthur Barker, also creator of the The Power of Vision training video for companies, having goals is akin to having a positive, inspiring vision, which all successful organizations have in common.

He neverthelesss demonstrates that having a positive vision of the future is the most forceful motivator for change… for success, that companies, schools, communities, nations, and even individuals possess.(*)

* [Based on the empirical research of Fred Polak, Martin Seligman, Viktor Frankl, Jim Collins, Jim Kouzes, Benjamin Singer]

SEEING IS BELIEVING: THE POWER OF VISION

[My personal musings, inspired by Page 3 of 'The Brainaissance Program of iCAPitalism Seminars with... The World's Most Powerful Learning Systems for... The Learning Economy', by Dilip Mukerjea]


Where do you see yourself?

What is the significance of the foregoing question posed by Dilip Mukerjea, against the backdrop of a beautiful imaginal brain profile created by him?

He is basically accentuating what author, futurist & film maker Joel Arthur Barker has exhorted in the proprietary 'The Power of Vision' video training program, first released during the early nineties:

'A positive vision of the future is the most powerful motivation for change'.

Citing the research done by Dutch sociologist Fred Polak, American business researcher Jim Collins, Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl & Canadian educator & psychologist Benjamin Singer, respectively on the successes of nations, companies, individuals & even school children, it has been found that, when they began their climb they did not have the right resources & they didn't even have any strategic advantage.

What they all had in common was a positive vision of their future.

The message here is that circumstances do not determine the outcome, only vision does.

Having a vision is imperative to success. Vision is an essential ingredient in living to win.

Even a child building a sand castle on the beach has some sort of picture in his or her head telling them what to do next. It’s vision.

If you want to be successful in any significant endeavor - you first need to have a 'vision of the future'.

From the neurological perspective, I always like to correlate the 'vision of the future' to the 'image of achievement' as postulated by Dr Karl Pribram, Professor Emeritus of Stanford University, one of the prime architects of our modern understanding of the brain.

According to him, all our behavioural actions are governed by our 'image of achievement', & without it, we cannot succeed in our endeavours.

A 'vision of the future' or an 'image of achievement' is a picture that is seen with the mind's eye.

It is not your present reality, but what you believe as your destiny manifest in the present.

It is more than just being able to imagine something in the future. In a nut shell, the 'vision of the future' or 'image of achievement' becomes so powerful that it cause you to step into it, & live your future each day.

I often like to use the personal example of Arnold Schwarzenegger in my training workshops to illustrate the power of vision.

As documented in the book, 'Fantastic: The Life of Arnold Schwarzenegger', by Laurence Leamer, Arnie was interviewed about what he planned to do now that he had retired from body building in 1976. He nonchalantly responded with his thick Austrian accent:

"I'm going to be the #1 box office star in all of Hollywood."

Arnie's first attempt as an actor was a box office flop, but he explained as follows that he would use the same process he had used in bodybuilding. [By the way, Arnie was five times Mr Universe & seven times Mr Europa.]

"What you do is create a vision of who you want to be, & then live into that picture as if it were already true."

Closer to home, a great personal exemplar of the power of vision is Sim Wong Woo, founder, CEO & Chairman of Creative Technology. Readers can go to my earlier post in 'Optimum Performance Technologies' weblog to read about what I had learned from him.

As a successful nation, Singapore is a classic exemplar of the power of vision.

When Singapore was unfortunately kicked out of the Malaysian federation in 1965, most political analysts around the world had seriously thought that Singapore was a gone case.

It was the foresightedness & tenacity of the vision of Lee Kuan Yew & his close team of stalwarts, like Goh Keng Swee, S Rajaratnam, Toh Chin Chye, among others, & his pioneering cohort of dedicated civil servants like Hon Sui Sen, J Y Pillay, Sim Kee Boon, just to name a few, who built Singapore for what she is today.

Throughout the nineties, I had done extensive random surveys of Straits Times interview reports on students who had done remarkably well in their PSLE, 'O' Level, 'A' Level exams, as well as in the presidential scholarship nominations.

I had narrowed down their peak-performing successes to the following common characteristics, in order of priority:

- they are goal-oriented (that's vision! & correlates to Benjamin Singer's research findings);

- they apply study strategies;

- they are passionate & enthusiastic in their academic as well as extra-curricular pursuits;

- they receive parental as well as teacher support;

To end my musings, & I am very confident that Dilip will concur with me that, as long as we have a 'vision of the future' or an 'image of achievement', & we then act upon what we believe or assume will be true of the future or upon our aspirations for the future, our decisive actions in turn will create the future in which we will find ourselves.

LEADERSHIP & VISIONING THE FUTURE: Immortal Vision Statements from Matchless Leaders

[continued from the Last Post.]

“I will build a motor car for the great multitude... It will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one and enjoy with his family the blessings of hours of pleasure in God’s great open spaces...When I am through, everybody will be able to afford one, and everyone will have one.

The horse will have disappeared from our highways, the automobile will be taken for granted [and we will] give a large number of men employement at good wages.”

~ HENRY FORD

“I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day the nation will rise up and live life out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the State of Mississippi, a desert state sweltering in the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today...”

~ MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

“Hitler knows he will have to break us on this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free, and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.

But if we fail, the whole world, including the United States, including all we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister and perhaps more protracted by the lights of perverted science.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties and so bear ourselves that if the Bristish Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”

~ SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL

“The idea of Disneyland is a simple one. It will be a place for people to find happiness and knowledge. It will be a place for parents and children to spend pleasant times in one another’s company; a place for teachers and pupils to discover great ways of understanding and education.

Here the older generation can recapture the nostalgia of days gone by, and the younger generation can savour the challenge of the future.

Here will be the wonders of Nature and Man for all to see and understand.

Disneyland will be based upon and dedicated to the ideals, the dreams and hard facts that have created America. And it will be uniquely equipped to dramatise these dreams and facts and send them forth as a source of courage and inspiration to all theworld.

Disneyland will be something of a fair, an exhibition, a playground, a community center, a museum of living facts, and a showplace of beauty and magic. It will be filled with the accomplishments, the joys and hopes of the world we live in. And it will remind us and show us how to make those wonders part of our lives.”

~ WALT DISNEY

[Excerpted from the 'Lifescaping' seminar participant's manual. The 'Lifescaping' seminar is conducted by Dilip Mukerjea about four times a year under the auspices of the Singapore Institute of Management.]

LEADERSHIP & VISIONING THE FUTURE

It is impossible to agree on one definition of leadership, but all perspectives on the subject involve an element of vision.

A vision is a concept, expressed as a statement, about what you or your organization aspire to become. If it is for an organisation, the words should resonate with all its members so that they feel proud, excited, and inspired in being a part of something much bigger than themselves.

By stretching the organization’s capabilities, the vision gives shape, dimension, and direction for the organisation to transcend itself. Visions range in length from a couple of words to several pages.

Short vision statements work best: people remember their contents and act in alignment with the values, purpose, and mission embedded within them.

A leader (or group of leaders) must have a vision of the future, perhaps influenced by those of the past or of the present, and must succeed in communicating such a vision to followers.

The language of a Vision Statement might include narratives, metaphors, symbolism, cases of leading by example, and incentives.

In order to be effective, such a vision, should:

• be simple, yet vibrant

• act as a bridge between the current reality and a future desired state

• inspire, in order to energize followers

Leaders must not just see the vision themselves, they must be capable of getting others to see it too.

Today, vision statements are in danger of rapid decay brought on by the disease of cliches proliferating within the marketspace.

Copycat crafting of vision statements create comatose contingents of ‘followers’. The Third Millennium leader must not be embarrassed to show love, be a servant, and inspire a vision for the greater good of life of our planet.

Today’s leader has transitioned from being a strategist to a visionary, from commander to storyteller, and from systems architect to serving as an agent of transformation. Such an entity must be able to craft a vision statement that is imbued with an element of noble purpose and sublime values.

In 'Leadership and the New Science', Margaret Wheatley likens a vision to an intentional force field that permeates the organisation like a wave of energy.

Vision staments can range from just a few words to several paragraphs. Generally, in order to absorb the full power of a compelling vision, the words have to emerge from a deep understanding of the leader’s values, needs, expectations, hopes, and dreams.

The vision statement must start with the leader. Warren Bennis comments that “just as no great painting has ever been created by a committee, no great vision has ever emerged from the herd.”

Impelled by the energy within an impassioned force field, leaders must transcend themselves, from being strategists, to visionaries: traditional strategists define and confine, demand and command, predict and control; visionary leaders enthuse, excite, and entice; they embrace, ennoble, and elevate...through the symphony of their spirits.

Leaders who can communicate their visions are masters of the tools of rhetoric: they are able to cut through the cacophony of commerce and convey their messages via anecdotes, metaphors, and speech patterns that incorporate rhyme, rhythm, and reason, with balance and panache, to ignite emotions and catalyse passions.

On the next two pages, there are some examples of immortal Vision Statements; may they inspire you to become legendary leaders!

[To be continued in the Next Post. Excerpted from the 'Lifescaping' seminar participant's manual. The 'Lifescaping' seminar is conducted by Dilip Mukerjea about four times a year under the auspices of the Singapore Institute of Management.]

YOUR VISION TO WIN!

Dilip Mukerjea penned the following pertinent phrase as he began his foregoing brief essay, in the 'Ideas on Ideas' edition of The Braindancer Series of bookazines:

Dare to venture towards your vision, for only when you get there, will you realise your infinite capabilities.

"There are no traffic jams when you go the extra mile."

~ Anonymous;

"All mankind is divided into three classes: those who are immovable; those who are movable; and those who move."

~ Benjamin Franklin (1706-90), American statesman, inventor, and philosopher;

"Great men are meteors designed to burn so that the earth may be lighted."

~ Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), emperor of France;

"A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits."

~ Richard Nixon (1913-1996), 37th president of the United States;

Creativity is inborn; it is the quality we bring to the activities we perform. It is an attitude, an approach that is inside-out, not outside-in. Do not confine creativity to anything in particular.

In expressing ourselves, no matter what we do, even in mere walking, there is creativity.

When we sit silently, in contemplation, doing nothing, it is the non-doing that can be a creative act. Buddha sitting under the Bodhi Tree, doing nothing, is one of the greatest creators the world has ever known. Recognise that creativity is within; then consciously let it loose . . . and enjoy its flow.

We come into this world with a specific destiny - something to fulfill, some message to deliver, some work to be completed. We are not here accidentally - we are here meaningfully.

There is a creative purpose within us. The Whole intends to do something through us.

[All the images in this post are the intellectual property of Dilip Mukerjea.]

Say Keng's personal comments:

For me, the essence of Dilip Mukerjea's principal premise in the foregoing essay is best captured by now Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger, who once said [in his book, 'Arnold: Education of a Body Builder' (1977)]:

"For me, life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer."

"I knew I was a winner back in the late sixties. I knew I was destined for great things. People will say that kind of thinking is totally immodest. I agree. Modesty is not a word that applies to me in any way - I hope it never will."

"We all have great inner power. The power is self-faith. There's really an attitude to winning. You have to see yourself winning before you win. And you have to be hungry. You have to want to conquer."

da vincian PRINCIPLES: PERSONAL PERSPECTIVES II

[continue from the Last Post.] In his wonderful book, entitled 'Building Brainpower: Turning Grey Matter into Gold', Dilip Mukerjea has dedicated 28 pages of elaboration, plus 5 hand-crafted mind-maps on 'Our Amazing Senses', namely, & in order of their appearance in the book, 'Sense of Touch', 'Sense of Taste', 'Sense of Smell', 'Sense of Hearing', & lastly, 'Sense of Sight'. Among the da vincian Principles, as mentioned in my earlier post, our amazing senses constitute an important part of having a complete mind. Why is that so? Our amazing senses are the sensory pathways to what we see, what we hear, what we taste, what we touch, what we smell & in fact what we feel & do in the world out there. The sensory information that we receive through our amazing senses go into a 'combinatory play' - drawing my cues from Albert Einstein - from which we draw our first insights, which lead to our productive thoughts. Using our ingenuity, imagination & creativity, we then turn these thoughts gradually into our ideas. Today, we live in a visual society. Marketers & purveyors certainly know how to exploit our visual culture in order to get to our personal attention. Interestingly, vision happens to be our primary sense. In fact, from birth to death, or womb to tomb as my good friend Dilip Mukerjea likes to put it, we interpret the world through images. Our brains are stimulated more by visual cues than any other senses. As a matter of fact, neuro-scientists have confirmed that, more than three-quarters of our brain structures, especially the occipital cortex & its associated elements, work in tandem to process all the incoming visual information. Particularly for the male species, sexual attraction relies greatly on vision. More importantly, as much as 90% of the learning in our lifetime enters through our eyes. So, Leonardo da vinci was absolutely right when he advocated - remember, more than 500 years ago: "Develop your senses, especially learning how to see." In fact, this was his principal premise: “The eye, which is called the window of the soul, is the principal means by which the central sense can most completely & abundantly appreciate the infinite works of nature.” If you look through all the success literature that has been published over the years, the power of vision is always mentioned as an important attribute to successful living. A case in point: productivity guru Stephen Covey has summarised his brilliant synthesis & accurate analysis of the success literature stretching across more than 200 years of American history in his '7 Habits', especially with #2: Begin with the end in mind! Change & innovation strategist/futurist Joel Arthur Barker has touched on this subject in his wonderful training video production, 'The Power of Vision'. [He talked about the great work of & the influences from Fred Polak, Viktor Frankl, James Collins, Benjamin Singer & Martin Seligman, pertaining to the power of having a positive image of the future, irrespective of nations, societies, children, companies & individuals.] For me, enhancing perceptual sensitivity is always a prerequisite to creativity & innovation. Leonardo da vinci put it best: "If you wish to gain knowledge of the form of problems, begin with learning how to see it in many different ways." So, how does one develop this capability? First, adopt a mindful attitude towards the world we live in. Here are some other practical suggestions: - recognise patterns; - make new connections; - think possibilities or unusual combinations; - challenge assumptions; - break ingrained habits; - seek out novelty; - adopt new perspectives; - develop wide angle vision; - use peripheral vision; - be playful (i.e. be child-like, but don't be childish!); - play with metaphors & analogies; - generate lots of ideas as well as alternatives; - ask naive as well as intentional questions; - take some risks; - learn to notice & respect uncertainty; - embrace ambiguity & paradox; - look at what's not there (& also listen to what's not said); - focus on relationships; - regard for process; In concluding this post, I like to quote from the book, 'Mindfulness', by Dr Ellen Langer of Harvard University: "Learning to see the same old world from different perspectives is the first step toward mindfulness or a mindful attitude. Changing requires two things: learning to think about old situations in new ways, & opening up & enlarging our frames of reference." [To be continued in the Next Post. All the images in this post are the intellectual property of Dilip Mukerjea.]