THE WHAT AND THE HOW

When you learn something, you learn content. You learn the what of the subject which answers the question, “What are you talking about?” While you need the what regarding whatever you want to do, learning the what (the content) is not that hard. Gaining an understanding of content is just a matter of learning. If you know who to read, study, ask questions, regarding most things, you can fairly quickly learn what to do. For deep and intricate subjects, learning may take a long time—sometimes years—yet still, it is just a matter of learning.

The challenge is the how. Once you know the what, learning how to do it—that’s the hard part. What is intellectual; how is practical. What is conceptual, it is understanding. What is content; how is process. How is doing, it is action, implementation, execution. How is capability and ability which manifests itself in skills.

How is about implementation wherein you actually execute what you know. Richard Kovacevich, CEO of Wells Fargo Bank, argued that organizational culture and the ability to operate effectively, is much more important to organizational success than having the right strategy. To illustrate his point, he made a statement that sounds utterly radical to many people: “I could leave our strategic plan on a plane, and it wouldn’t make any difference. No one could execute it. Our success has nothing to do with planning. It has to do with execution.” ... p. 145 Hard Truths footnote 26.

Can you execute? That’s the ultimate question if you want to be successful. Knowing what to do in business, in sales, in tennis, in football, etc. is important. Sure. But it is not the key to success. You can know and not do. You can be intellectually smart, knowledgeable, and able to describe in detail all of the aspects of the what. You can teach it, train it, coach it, and explain it. But if you can’t do it effectively in the moment that it needs to be done, you won’t be effective.

For example, it is easy to understand the idea, “Listen to your client, meet him at his model of the world.” It is a simple strategy. No problem with comprehending the idea. The problem and challenge is in the execution. Strategies generally are like that—not all that difficult to understand. This is true for personal relationship strategies—how to get along, how to solve conflicts, how to parent, how to lead, how to save, how to budget, how to exercise, etc. What we find challenging is living the strategy—that’s the problem. That takes a lot of self-management, self-control, emotional intelligence, persistence, resilience, etc. It is at the point of implementation that the notion of being wise is more important than being smart.

Strategy can reduce peripheral vision and flexibility in adapting to uncertain and changing environments. This occurs when your strategy is too rigid or absolute. It occurs when you treat strategy as “the last word” about something or as “the truth” for all situations. For any strategy to work you will need the right attitude in applying it. If you do the right thing in the wrong way— you can create a disaster!

NLP is most essentially a how model. For expertise and for pathology, we ask, “How do you do that?” For any statement about knowledge, we ask, “How do you know that?” It is the how that puts us into the center of life and requires our commitment. Where NLP fails, however, is in neglecting the meta-levels and the all-pervasiveness of a person’s self-reflexive consciousness.

That’s why in Neuro-Semantics, we have focused on “the inner game” of what occurs in the higher levels of the mind. This means there are two dimensions of how. There is the behavioral how—how do you do X? What actions do you need to take? Then there is the mental-emotional how. How do you think so that you can get yourself to carry out the actions of X? How do you put yourself in the right emotional state in doing X?

To deal with the meta-how, you have to go meta, you have to go into the Meta Place and there you can use the 12 to 18 landmarks of the mind. When you do that, you will be able to identify the invisible structure (strategy) behind any human experience.

Want more?

Check out The Meta Place, Thinking for Humans, and NLP Going Meta. These books are in the Products section and also as PDF files in The Shop.