My plant, as part of it's plan to take over the world of "NLP coaching resources, produced by plants" (admittedly a rather small category) has a web page and a twitter account. There is now a plant test.


When I developed the idea of "Your Inner Consultant" one of my main questions was "If my business were a plant, what could I do to make it grow strongly and help protect it from changes in the environment"? It turned out to be a great way to get myself thinking creatively.


I have recently turned the whole concept upside down and considered how would it be to look at things from the plant's point of view. It resulted in an interesting thought experiment.
If you have a plant in the place where you work (if you don't then you might enjoy getting one) imagine it is a really smart plant. One that knows all there is to know about running your business. It sits there observing everything you do and all your interactions throughout the day. It is on your side and wants things to improve. Unfortunately like most plants it can't communicate so you will have to imagine what it would notice. If you don't have a business then apply it to your career or any part of your life that you want to grow and change.
Today's Plant Test
Today imagine your plant is watching each thing you do and placing each activity into one of four categories.
1. Things that will build your business and make the whole experience better for you and your customers.
2. Getting things done that contribute to running your business.
3. Stuff that has no real value to the business but it keeps you entertained.
4.Stuff that has no value to the business, you don't find it that entertaining and you only do it in order to put off something that you should do but don't want to.
Most of my time is spent in 2, but a lot more than I would like is in 3 and 4. I have decided as an experiment that whenever I find myself in 3 or 4 I will think of activities in category 1. It is taking a bit of persistence but when I look at it this way I start moving in a better direction.




Your Inner Consultant will help your business get unstuck

Love this Nick,

Great thought provoking questions about where we spend our time usefully.

Will book mark and get this one ingrained.

Thanks again for your inspiration, passion and creativity

Nina
x

Does Spidey have a blog yet?

John

Thank you Nina. There are just so many things that I have started to notice since I started playing with the metaphors of the inner consultant and the plant.

Not every idea will work for everyone, but when they hit the spot then they really hit the spot.

I think I need to change the format to a blog as hand coding it onto the website takes a while. I love the look of jamie's site, but I don't want to use wordpress, as I want something that will run on the ASP servers that I have at the moment and allow me to do a bit of coding when I want to.

Does anyone know a good blog engine for ASP (preferably not .NET).

I'll be adding some more Plant Tests soon.

z8000783 wrote:

Does Spidy have a blog yet?

John

I don't think Spidey will get one for a while.

There is a lot of folk wisdom based around nature and growth. Spidey tweeting about conversations with Wisteria and Rosemary gives room to find western folklore from Rosemary's Grandmother and eastern wisdom from Wisteria's ancestors.

I think Spidey works best in the short form whilst I build a blog based around the inner consultant and plant metaphors. Spidy can then point people at the blogs.

I am still experimenting but I think as long as I keep doing something different I will have fun.

I did consider having a twitter account myself but who wants to know I went to see a preview screening of "Sunshine cleaning" this morning and made organic carrot and coconut soup for lunch?
I'll do the blog and Spidey can tweet.

what I like about Spidey is that he has lots of off-springs. I know when I owned one I could make a cutting and create another successful plant - to pass on the knowledge of the Parent plant.......

and with spidey there is no limit to the amount of off spring he can nurture at once..... maybe millions and millions...... and with your blog you can be sure of many successful cuttings and propogations that will end in a veritable plantation of ideas, metaphors and messages...... very exciting to play these games ..... wonderful.

Also Spidey does not really need that much looking after..... he's sooo robust.

Nina

Nina, Spidey has more lives than a cat.

I have now set up a blog for your inner consultant.

Please read my latest post

Your Inner Consultant

This one is another plant test where the plant gets to read your mind.