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Adaptive capacity refers to the ability of any system to respond to change and return to a state of balance. I first heard of this concept in relation to the nonprofit sector in the United States. However, it can be applied to ecological systems, any type of organization, and even individuals.

An example of adaptive capacity in an ecological system would be of a river valley experiencing heavy rainfall. For a time the water level in the river will be much higher than normal. Most of the time the river basin will absorb the water fairly quickly and the water level will return to normal within a day or two. However, if the volume of rain exceeds the river basin’s capacity, the river will flood.

Change Fatigue
When an organization or an individual has an excessive amount of change in a short period of time, something has to give. To build on my previous analogy, the system will “flood” or break down in some way. For an organization the “flood” may take the form of communication breakdowns, high turnover, and low productivity. For an individual it could be extreme stress, relationship problems, or even physical and mental health issues.

These symptoms of change fatigue occur because the system isn’t strong and flexible enough to adapt.

Building Adaptive Capacity
It is possible to build adaptive capacity in and organization in much the same way as it is possible to build muscles in a human body - through regular, sustained exercise. When an organization is proactively engaged in steady, small changes, it will be much better positioned to handle external changes when they come up.

Here is just a small sampling of exercises that can build adaptive capacity.

1. Scenario Planning. An in-depth look at scenario planning requires its own post. For the time being it is enough to know that the process involves a team envisioning possible futures and detailing plans for those futures. The idea is to have possible actions for many situations, so that the organization is prepared for as many outcomes as possible.
2. Cross Training. Many organizations are running so lean now that they don’t have adequate “bench strength” in the case of a team member absence. Cross training is definitely helpful during times like flu season. However, it’s also an advantage to have cross-trained members so that the organization has multiple perspectives to adapt and improve processes. One person performing the same job for years can become inflexible or run out of ideas for making changes. Multiple perspectives of the same job can build the capacity for adaptation and continuous improvements.
3. “State of the Industry” Meetings. Many fields, such as real estate, have annual, local forecast meetings. These meetings allow members of that profession to get together and discuss expert projections and their own hunches of the coming year. If you don’t work in one of these fields, you can still have your own information exchange sessions with other members of your organization. Assign everyone a sub-topic to research and discuss the findings among your team or the whole organization. In rapidly changing fields, a quarterly meeting might be even better.

Change is Easier When You Know What’s Coming
In many ways, building adaptive capacity is a lot like building your crystal ball gazing skills. It’s pretty hard to adapt to circumstances that you just couldn’t see coming. In fact, we usually call those events “crises” or sometimes “acts of terrorism!” The good news is that most change follows fairly predictable patterns. Through careful study and information exchange, most organizations in most fields will be able to get the big things right.

These are ideas that I’ve picked up through my studies and experiences within a few types of organizations. If you’ve had different experiences, or tips for building adaptive capacity, please share those in the comments below.

Photo courtesy of mwookie.

Every day we each make hundreds, maybe even thousands of decisions. Most of our decisions are tiny, almost unnoticeable moments that pass by without notice. We decide whether to get out of bed or hit the ‘Snooze’ button on the alarm. We choose khakis or blue trousers to wear to work. We select the donut with pink sprinkles over the plain glazed. Most of the time we aren’t even aware that we have made a choice.

That may be okay for small choices, but decision making is a vital part of the change process. Unless we plan to just hang around while life happens to us and our organizations, at some point we will have to make decisions about out future actions

When I sat down to really dissect what decision making looks like, I realized that it is much more complex than it seems I went looking around the ‘net and in business management books and found many tools and techniques for making decisions. This suggests that making decisions is actually quite difficult for most people, despite it being a common activity.

Definition
There are many, many definitions of decision making. The common elements that make up a decision among the definitions I have seen seem to be:

• Conscious Thought. Decision making has to include conscious thought. This rules out actions done through habit or instinct. Breathing isn’t really a choice. In some cases, taking addictive drugs is no longer a choice.
• Two or More Possible Actions. If you only have one option, you can’t actually make a decision. Ford offered the Model T in “any color you want, as long as it’s black.” There were no other options, so the buyer had no real choice of color.
• Moment of Selection. For a real decision to be made, you have to select from the possible options. Note that this selection may mean doing nothing or choosing not to decide. However, the absence of action is still a choice. For example, I can choose to ignore my phone – that is a decision in which I make a choice to not take action.

To sum all of these elements up, it seems that Decision Making = Thought + Possible Actions + Active Selection.

Rock, Paper, Scissors
One of the obstacles to making good decisions seems to be the overabundance of information and possible choices currently available to us. Other people have written extensively about the tyranny of choice – the concept that we have so many choices available to us now that we get overwhelmed just buying dishwasher soap. In many cases we seek out much more information than is needed to make an “informed” choice and we end up paralyzed.

For those of us who tend to suffer from analysis paralysis, I have good news. As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, in many cases it doesn’t really matter what you decide.

The key to being happy with a decision is to remain committed to the decision that you’ve made and realize that it leads down a road that is just as good as any other. This is easier said than done, especially in business where you might meet resistance at the slightest hint that a decision isn’t working. However, movement in any direction will lead to more and better feedback than just standing still and “planning to plan.”

Key to Change
As you can see, making decisions is one of the key steps in a change process. In fact, it’s so powerful that well-know self improvement and personal development teachers recommend practicing decision making as a first step in changing your life.

My assignment to you is to take one day this week to practice making as many conscious decisions as possible. When you finish you day, make sure to come back and tell us all about it in the comments!

*Photo by Jill Greenseth

The Personal Development Blog recently posted a group writing project asking other bloggers to define personal development. If you’ve spent any time at all in the personal development blogosphere, you know that this term is very loosely defined. It can encompass things like productivity, personal finance, relationship advice, and physical health. All of these topics are great and very important for living a happy and fulfilling life. However, in my post, I really want to get at the heart of the issue.

Over the course of several days of noodling and struggling with a frame for this post, I realized that real framing question for me is…

What is the Purpose of Personal Development?
It seems to me that personal development is a means to an end. I’m not all that interested in developing myself just for giggles. In fact, I often find personal development painful and difficult. I realized that I persist at it because I have an underlying motivation. It should come as no surprise, given the topic of this blog, that, for me, personal development is…

A collection of tools, philosophies and disciplines designed to help individuals respond proactively to change.

What IS Personal Development
The underlying premise of this blog is that rapid change is widespread and persistent in our current society, and that it can wreak havoc on individuals and organizations that are not centered and focused. For me, personal development is all about helping individuals discover their true selves, or whatever Truth has relevance for them, and helping them gain the strength and insight needed to hold onto that unchanging center, even in times of chaos.

This isn’t a new concept at all. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus wrote that human being don’t have any control over their external circumstances. All that we can do is control our reactions to those circumstances. The Buddha taught his followers to maintain perfect equanimity – balance – regardless of external circumstances. For these teachers and other, True Happiness lies in honoring the True Self.

Personal development is just another way to find what is Real.

If you are interested in reading more definitions of personal development, check out the Personal Development page at the Million Dollar Wiki. Also, be sure to visit Gleb Reys’ great Personal Development Blog.

So, lately I’ve been feeling kind of hyper, unfocused and generally kind of bored with life. These feelings are mostly because I have issues with Fall. I hate Fall, with a passion.

I can’t stop the seasons from changing (which is probably a good thing), so I needed to find a good way to relax and focus.

I’ve mentioned in a couple of places on this blog that I’m a fairly frequent meditator. I started a regular meditation practice about a year and a half ago and got fairly serious about it last fall when I took an actual meditation course at my health club.

In that time, I’ve experimented with several different types of meditation including everything from good ol’ breath counting to complicated affirmations. I soon realized that I needed to begin with the end in mind when it comes to my meditation practice. Since I strongly identified a need to relax and focus, I decided to make that the goal of my meditation.

Naturally, I immediately started scouring the internet for meditation tools that could help me with that goal.

Enter Entrainment
In the past I’ve enjoyed listening to meditation CDs. You know, those things with the spacey-sounding music and a woman’s low-pitched voice whispering sweet nothings like, “I am One with the Universe. All that I desire will come to me,” in your ear? So I started to look around for different kinds of audio to use. Over and over again, I came across products for “Brainwave Entrainment.”

The sellers of these products made wild claims like “INSTANTLY Meditate More Deeply Than a Zen Monk,” and “Overcome Any Problem In Your Sleep.”

I instantly believed everything they said and spent $750 on a set of 3,000 CDs.

Just kidding. I didn’t believe a thing, but I did notice that there were lots of freebies available, so I ordered them all, read their “reports” and tried the audio out. The “reports” had the typical information product hype, with a smattering of pseudo-scientific sounding language about how these audio tracks can actually change brainwaves to induce feelings of deep relaxation and laser-like focus.

The audio tracks I listened to all sounded pretty odd. Most entrainment products use binaural beats, which means that there are two different rhythms in the track. To listen to them properly, you have to use headphones, which direct the beats to different ears. The background noises sound like helicopters, or static, or crackling plastic wrap. Hardly what I imagine a Zen Monk’s head sounds like in deep meditation.

Is This Science?
Well, no. Actually, yes.

Maybe?

Cognitive science is a relatively young field, and so far hasn’t seemed to pay a lot of attention to the interactions between the brain and sound frequencies. However, I did find some academic material about this subject thanks to Stanford University’s Symposium on Music, Rhythm and the Brain. In particular, the paper Auditory Driving as a Ritual Technology: A Review and Analysis is quite helpful in explaining just how sounds such as drumbeats can “entrain” human brainwaves.

The author, a Stanford scholar named Gabe Turow, did a study of the use of chanting, drumming, bell chimes, and other “religious technologies” to determine if there is an scientific basis for the use of sound and music in a therapeutic setting. His findings are that sufficient exposure to repeated rhythms and tones can affect the frequency of brainwaves.

The brain operates at a wide range of frequencies, which are labeled (in order from Highest to Lowest frequency) Gamma, Beta, Alpha, Theta, and Delta. The lower the frequency, generally speaking, the more relaxed the person is. Delta, which has a frequency of 1-4Hz is generally only experienced by people in deep sleep.

What Turow found, is that the right combination of rhythm and tone can essentially slow the brain down, until it is working at the same frequency. For example, listening to a piece of music with a 4Hz beat will eventually slow the brain down to 4Hz, which is about as relaxed as a person can get without sleeping!

In reading through the study, I realized that we have probably all experienced entrainment at some point in our lives. Have you ever been to a really huge concert and noticed that everyone in the crowd will at some point sway in time to the music? Have you attended a sporting event and done “The Wave” or stomped along to “We Will Rock You?” The next time you’re in that type of situation, notice what happens to your heart rate and your mood. Chances are, it will start to match whatever the external stimulus is doing.

Does it Work?
Like everything else related to meditation, the human brain, and just being alive, your mileage definitely may vary. Everyone responds differently to sounds and tones. All I can tell you is that for me, there are some entrainment tracks that have a positive effect. In fact, as I write this, I’m listening to a track designed to increase focus.

The good news is, listening to an audio track at a reasonable volume will never hurt you. Some of the tracks I’ve tried out have made me feel annoyed or agitated, but that feeling went away almost immediately after I stopped listening. If you’re at all interested in trying entrainment out, there are a wide variety of free tracks available. You may want to check out:

• Gnaural Java. This is a free, online Binaural Beat generator. You can listen to the default track or customize it.
• SBaGen is a free, downloadable application available for Mac, PC and Linux systems. The software works much like Gnaural Java, but it comes with several sample tracks.
• CenterPointe Research Institute offers a free demo of their Holosync technology CD.
• The Quantum Mind Power System also offers a free demo of their Alpha Flight track, which is designed to relax the brain into Alpha state.

There are many, many more entrainment tracks available on the old WWW. I don’t know that any of these will change your life, but I certainly think they are worth trying out.

As always, if you have any experience with using Brainwave Entrainment, or if this post inspires you to try it out, please share you story in the comments.