Page 57 - CAO 25th Ann Coffee Table Book

people say that something should be done or someone should do something without considering that they might be that someone and that they can make a difference. But I want to propose that instead of thinking about some of the challenges that exist in the entire world, let’s focus on the focused challenges the CEO has outlined in his speech.
There are two possible responses. In boxing, there are two types of postures. When you are on what’s known as the back foot, you are kind of defeated, you let the enemy bring everything and just want to survive. You take all the punches. Or, you can take what is called the front foot position and say, I am going to take the fight to them. I want to propose that, when you feel overwhelmed by the challenges you face as a person, an organisation, or an applications practitioner you look out the window or in the mirror and say “What are the few things that I can do to make a difference?”
The problem is that many of us don’t like the mirror; it is much easier to say it is them, it’s the system.
For example, I want to lose a little bit of weight, nothing hectic. There are two things I can do. I can explain why I am not losing it and give plausible reasons, like for example, my father and his father, all of us in the Moyo clan are big boned and have slow metabolisms. Or I can ask myself, “Siphiwe, what did you eat this morning? Could you take a walk?” Even that act of taking a walk means that I am looking in the mirror and asking myself if there are a few things I can do. Already I’m experiencing a difference. When I was living in Orange Farm I had to walk, now that I have moved up in the world I take a walk.
It’s like when you are sitting at home on a Saturday on your favorite couch; you have your remote and favorite drink, and you are about to watch Orlando Pirates beat that terrible team called Kaizer Chiefs. You are ready to watch the game and then your partner stands in front of you, and she’s like “Baby, do you think these jeans make
me look fat?” You panic because deep down, you want to say “uh, uh baby, it is not the jeans”, but you can’t say that. You must act shocked that she even asked and say, “You? Never. You are the epitome of beauty my baby.” How many of us know that sometimes it is not the jean. Sometimes when we think about the problems of the world, we blame something else instead of saying “Maybe I have a contribution to make.” You can increase your effectiveness if you stop obsessing about the things that you can’t control and focus on those that you can.
Research models can help us to take a little bit of responsibility and cultivate our own hopes. It is important that we transition from the pandemic and embrace change as applications practitioners, or we will be left behind. If you don’t embrace change you end up like that phone called Nokia. Do you know anyone who owns a Nokia? How many of us would have had a Nokia about 15 years ago? Almost all of us because Nokia was massive then. I think that they had a global market share of 42%. One in every two phones was a Nokia. But they relaxed, they chilled, until they were overtaken by that phone called Blackberry. Do you remember? Remember the bbm pin? R59 p/m, what was it called, BIS? Blackberry also relaxed, and were overtaken by the Samsungs of the world, the iPhones, and now the new rising star we don’t even know how to pronounce, it’s like Huawei, but it just shows that we have to embrace change.
The great Jack Welch put it like this: If the rate of change outside the organisation is faster than the rate of change inside, then the end is near, and if the rate of change outside your profession is faster than the rate of change inside it, then the profession itself will not survive. So, we have to think about how we energise ourselves back into the workplace and back into giving energy and understanding the impact that we have.
Dr Martin Seligman developed a powerful organisational model called PERMA. ‘P’ stands for
Positive Emotion. People who are successful at work and those who give energy and make a difference are those that are able to cultivate their own positive emotion. There are times when we feel down and merely go through the motions. There is a phenomenon that psychologists call the hedonic treadmill that sometimes causes one not to feel energised and experience positive emotion. On a treadmill, you are always running but you don’t get anywhere. Many of us enter a state of negative emotions because we are chasing happiness.
No matter what you do, you never experience the happiness you desire. So the first way to cultivate positive emotion is to know and understand the hedonic treadmill and get off. The way to do this is through a process called ‘Savouring’. You can gulp a cup of coffee because you want caffeine, or you can savour and enjoy it and experience positive emotion.
The best way to explain this is through the positive emotion called ‘Awe’. Some of you might take this for granted, but the first time I experienced an ‘Awe” moment was in Umhlanga when I stood next to that lighthouse with the promenade and the two expensive hotels behind me, the Oyster Box and Beverly Hills. They were too expensive for me so I stayed in the Protea Hotel up the road, but I hung around the Oyster Box for Instagram. But familiarity robs us of that positive emotion called awe. Once you are familiar with something you no longer see it. Some people in Durban no longer see what we Jo’burg people see when we come here. For you it is just the ocean, but we are taking it in.
There are six steps to cultivate our positive emotion through savouring:
The first step is gratitude. One of the reasons we become so depressed and negative about our job is because we have forgotten how much we wanted it in the first place.
When you go to a psychologist and you are feeling
55