Author: nlpnow

Answering the telephone to enquiries of my courses, I am often asked “how many days is the course”?

The same question was asked of a young man in America who had developed a new methodology, and who with a group of people were developing it, playing with it, experimenting more with it, and were finding that you can get some surprising results with it, quicker than results than anyone would have expected.

News got out about this person and his work, and there started to become interest shown from the East Coast to the West Coast. What was this new exciting methodology to help people to achieve excellence?

A group of doctors eager to help their patients to regain their true health and well being decided to contact this young man, and asked if he would teach him and his fellow doctors how to do what he does so well. Of cause he said yes, but he had a problem. He had not given a formal publicly structured course before. What would be the content? How long would the course be?

He asked the doctor how long he would like the course to be. He said that in every year to keep their license to be a practicing doctor, they had to do twenty-one (21) days training.

Our trainer friend thought long and hard about what to do, and then said:-
 
“I have a course which is 21 days”.

A course was made and successfully delivered in 21 days. Others saw the great work, learnt from it and thought, “wow I can do this”, and copied the content and structure to deliver the same, a 21 daze course.

Some years later this originator was invited to travel the world to deliver his work, and people gathered around him to learn. On one of these courses someone said to our friend, the originator:-
 
“Tell me, if there is one thing you would like to do with your courses that you have not done yet, what would it be?”

Our friend thought long and hard about what was said and said :-

“Teach the course with what I am teaching in the course”.

And so, the course was restructured, and from 21 days it was reduced to seven (7) days. The results were the same in fact better.

Life evolves, change with it too. Do not be like those others still stuck in a 21 daze course, change now.

KudoSurf Me!

For more than 35 years, I had been in a profession that perhaps was not the perfect one for me. I had worked with computer manufacturers, NCR, Sperry Univac, Texas Instruments, in a presales postsales role. This meant going into a potential customer, advising what the requirements are, recommending a solution, then creating or programming that solution, installing the computer hardware and software, training the customer, and looking after them after the installation.

I also worked for end users on their computers systems, redesigning and implementing new changes in software and hardware. Companies such as Associated Tyre Specialists (ATS), Peter Pan Playthings, The National Coal Board.

What ever needed to be done, I would do it.

It occurred to me that as I was designing the computer system, I was emulating what human being was doing. As they would write down an invoice amount in the ledger books, so I would have to do the same. I would follow a process, the strategy/s of the company’s employee, how they thought, how they processed information in their brain, how they worked.

On 15th February 1971, (is Phillip 94?), the UK went decimalised, they introduced decimalisation. Prior to this date, the UK had a very logical currency system. There were:-

      Pounds, Shillings and Pence
         
            12 Pennies equaled a Shilling
            20 Shillings equaled a Pound

      so there where 240 Pennies in a Pound.

The British understood the system, the same as we understand feet, inches and miles, pounds and ounces, and we drive on the correct side of the road.

In these early days of computers, there were no packages to run an application such as MS Word, Excel, Explorer, accounting, payrolls, etc. Each individual computer had its’ own programs written for it specific to the requirements, the way the individual company did things, their strategy. It was my job to do the writing of the programs. There were only a few people in the world, like me, who had the capability and knowledge.

The changeover on 15th February 1971, decimalisation, meant that each and every computer program had to be modified to:-

      100 New Pence to the Pound 

Not only that, but the existing values, balances held, would have to be converted :-

      £1.10.6d     equals      £1. 52.5 New Pence

and we had to be correct, any errors could bring a company down, finish them.

My fellow programmers at the computer manufacturer NCR, worked like Trojans, 48 hours a day.
 
At midnight of Saturday the 14th February, the converstion programs were run, and companies tested and ran their new programs.

All Sunday, we stood by our telephones, waiting for calls asking for help. But, nothing. We had done it.

To be continued.