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So how do we develop the skill of thinking simultaneously about a number of issues connected to performance? Well there are a number of ways. This is not something that you would find on a standard NLP training. In fact, it is part of a model that is utilised in DBM (developmental behavioural modelling),developed by Sensory Systems in Glasgow.

Let’s take some territory using  simultaneous thinking  that would be considered standard across a broad range of organisations. Here are some factors to be considered in managing this organisation:-

Safety

Quality

Cost / Productivity

Delivery

Employee Morale

Now each one of these factors could contain a number elements within an organisation, but for now if you build a sense of each one in that sequence.

If you think about something you make internal representations in your experience, you make internal images and generate internal dialogue.

So a safety manager might go about a work place with increased sensitivity to all safety issues such as risks and also behaviours that increases risk. A good safety manager might make the current safety legislation come alive in its application. What makes this environment safe?  Typical attention by a safety manager would not put place the same value on quality, cost, delivery and employee morale. That would be treated as background information.

 A second perspective is that of time, being able to attend to the short term and long term simultaneously. Some people naturally process events and predictions through time, connecting up actions and the potential consequences. Other simply process in terms of snapshots in time without always connecting up the consequences.

So, if we consider elements simultaneously, we need to bring them into mind at the same moment.  This can be done through visual processing, where the manager is attending to a multifaceted visual representation.  And easier and more objective way of doing this is to use a balanced checklist in the moment.  This entails self checking and then considering this, this and this and so on.

The benefit of this is unlike so many programs that are directed purely for one element such as quality.  The other factors are then considered at a later date, which often discounts or unravels the previous initiative.  We improved quality, but we failed to take into account, productivity and employee morale. or for instance, an organisation that focuses on cash and improving liquidity and then neglects the impact of cost and processes and products.

So you can practice taking a particular situation, and considering it from all aspects in the moment.  The first thing to do is to understand the key factors from the overall management and direction of the organisation.  Once these are established and identified, these are balanced against each other in the moment.

 So for instance, if we take a hospital ward, the key factors would be quality of care, patients' and employees' safety, cost and productivity, and employee morale.  Within each of these there would be identifiable aspects such as within safety, patient infection rates.  But once the major factors are identified, it makes it much easier to go into the detail. These are the kind of issues that the productive ward in the NHS should address in total, rather than a piecemeal basis.