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Author: George Pitagorsky

George Pitagorsky, integrates core disciplines and applies people centric systems and process thinking to achieve sustainable optimal performance. He is a coach, teacher and consultant. George authored The Zen Approach to Project Management, Managing Conflict and Managing Expectations and IIL’s PM Fundamentals™. He taught meditation at NY Insight Meditation Center for twenty-plus years and created the Conscious Living/Conscious Working and Wisdom in Relationships courses. Until recently, he worked as a CIO at the NYC Department of Education.

Plan for the End Game

All too often project managers fail to plan adequately for the end of the project. Not planning for what happens when a product is released leads to problems and makes a successfully developed product look as though it is a failure. Worse, it puts business continuity and customer confidence at risk.

While IT applications are one example, the same principle applies to any product. When the product is a commercial product, consider the needs of the sales force in addition to the users, trainers, and support staff.

Change is Unpredictable

The main principle is that the implementation of a product is a change event, and that change is predictably unpredictable. When a new product is implemented and deployed it impacts its users and support staff. The first users of the product will have questions. Users will report errors. The questions must be addressed, and the reported errors investigated, responded to with work around solutions, or other information. If there are product defects, they must be addressed. Defects may be in the core product itself or in its documentation or training materials (which are part of the product).

When rolling out computer applications, the concept of hyper-care is applied. Hyper-care recognizes that any time a new application or major change is released, there is need to plan for a high incidence of support requirements. Support will be needed by the users and also by the normal support staff. The product is new to both of them. The users will turn to the customer support staff for support, and the support staff will turn to technical support. Technical support, if they are not the developers, will turn the developers, who may be busy developing other products.

Planning Requires Consideration

Addressing deployment issues requires clever planning. Clever planning takes managing the end game into consideration and allocates the time, resources, and money to make the new product release a success. This seems so obvious that writing about it seems unnecessary; yet, I have run across a number of recent incidents in which experienced project managers and their managers and clients have found themselves in unfortunate situations. They failed to plan adequately for hyper-care and have failed to adequately prepare users and support staff.

In one case, a firm contracted an organization to develop a product but left out of the contract any mention of knowledge transfer to the in-house IT staff that would support the product. The vendor’s staff was to be finished with their work upon acceptance of the product. Acceptance of the product was achieved when the product testing was completed. Full deployment of the product was planned for a fixed date that kept getting closer as the testing progressed.

Related Article: Agile Chartering: Beginning With the End in Mind

The outcome was that the in-house IT team had to scramble to learn the product, without formal support from the vendor. They needed to be able to address bugs and answer questions and issues that the customer support help desk staff could not answer. Since there was little training for the customer support staff, there were many such questions and issues. Customer support was also supporting other products and became overwhelmed with calls. To make things worse, the in-house technicians were scheduled to work on other “priority” projects and had no time formally allocated to the “hyper-care” activity. This, of course, led to high-pressure and a choice between delaying the other projects (even with overtime work) and not supporting the new product. With high-pressure came stress and that resulted in arguments, finger pointing, and dissatisfied users.

This scenario is not limited to vendor based engagements. The same thing happens when the product is developed in-house, and there is poor end game planning.
The cause of this scenario was short-sightedness. Project managers that focus on the development of the product and fail to consider how that product will be deployed and supported are not addressing the entire project. This is often the case because the project manager is a technical person who is expecting someone else to take care of things once the product is delivered. There is a hand-off implied. Development is complete; deployment is someone else’s job

If there is someone else accountable to hand the product over to, then they will make sure that users are trained, and customer support staff is adequately prepared. They will make sure that the end game is part of the overall project plan.

But who will make sure that the developers pass on their in-depth technical knowledge of the product to the technical team that will maintain it and troubleshoot? Even if the development team retains the technical support role, will they have the time to do it or will they be thrashing between new development and technical support activities, particularly during the early life of a product? Will the technical knowledge holders be there forever? Will technical product development people be motivated and capable of transferring their knowledge or will they need an intermediary to debrief them and pass the knowledge on in a structured training? Will there be a clear understanding of the need for support and the number of hours it might require by customer support and technical support people?

Don’t Be Shortsighted – Plan for the End

Don’t be shortsighted. These and other questions should be asked and answered when initially planning the project. The hyper-care effort, documentation, training, and knowledge transfer are part of the project, not something that gets dumped on the business and operational groups that support the product.

End game planning requires that the following are addressed and included in the project plan:

  • Formal allocation of “level 3” support by the development team to the technical support team
  • Formal allocation of “level 2” support by the technical support team to the customer support team
  • Formal allocation of additional “level 1” customer support staff for the hyper-care period
  • Structured training to transfer knowledge to technical support, training and customer support teams
  • Technical and user documentation that reflects the true nature of the product
  • Structured training for the users
  • Pilot rollouts to make sure that the product and its training and support work in the real world
  • A contingency plan for the possibility that the product fails to perform adequately and must be pulled from production
  • Expectation management to prepare everyone for the real world of implementing a new product. No matter how well people have been trained and how well the product has been tested, there will be bugs, problems, and misunderstandings, all of which can be handled if you are ready for them.

Mindfulness, Risk Management, and Proactive Responsiveness

Project Managers must respond quickly and effectively to resolve problems. Projects rarely run smoothly from initiation through closing. There are always challenging situations. 

This article is a reminder of the need to be responsive rather than reactive and to highlight the need for risk management as a means for being proactive. Since there are always going to be events that are out of your control, it is necessary to get really good at responding to each situation in the most skillful, effective way. That is where mindfulness, experience, and risk management come in handy.

Definitions

Let’s begin with some definitions. When we look in the dictionaries, the words reactivity and responsiveness are not clearly differentiated from one another. For our purposes, reactivity implies action without thought while responsiveness implies a mindfully measured action to address a situation.

Being reactive is like being caught in a riptide and trying to break free of it by swimming against the current, a perfectly natural but completely ineffective response. Responsiveness is having the presence of mind to take a more intelligent approach. You will save your life, in this case, by letting the current carry you out as you swim across the current rather than against it. Either way you are not in charge, the events are in the driver’s seat.

To be proactive is to think ahead. Proactive thinking anticipates the future, it responds to events before they occur. In the example of the riptide, proactive thinking might drive the decision to stay out of the water on a day when riptides are strong or to studying up on how best to handle rip tides if you are caught in one.

Mindfulness is the mental quality of objectively observing whatever is occurring in or around you. It enables both responsiveness and proactivity. It gives you the power to recognize the compelling feelings that come up when faced with a stressful situation. It also gives you the opportunity to step back from the feelings to choose what to do. Without the ability to choose, you are completely driven by your feelings, which are driven by external events.

Cultivating mindfulness is simple. You dedicate some time to practice, say, anywhere from five minutes to an hour at a time. The practice is to focus on the sensations of your breath, notice any thoughts, feelings sensations, sounds, sights or smells that come up and to bring your attention back to your breath. If you become distracted, lost in thought, you just go back to the breath and continue. That’s it. Then, you can add moment-to-moment practice that is integrated into your daily activities. For example, when the phone rings, count three breaths before you answer.

The more you practice, the more mindful you become. The more mindful you become, the less reactive.

Risk management is an integral part of planning. One takes a hard look at uncertainties and consciously decides ways to avoid, reduce the occurrence of, or mitigate the effects of negative events while maximizing the opportunities associated with positive events. Risk management is proactive responsiveness.

Driven by Events

Planning turns things around from being driven by events to driving events through consciously planned action, to the degree that is possible.

Uncertainty is one of the few certainties. In projects, unplanned things happen. For example, a critical resource wins the lottery and gives one day notice of leaving; a fire breaks out in a warehouse where you store the computers you will be using to deploy your system; or a client decides, because of changing market conditions, to make a requirements change that will set you back months.

In the end, you are never in complete control.

Risk Management

Being proactive means taking control by predicting what may happen, knowing what you would like and not like to happen and taking action to prevent it, promote it and respond to it. In project work, risk management is the process that exemplifies proactivity. Being proactive means seeing the big picture and not being surprised by what may occur.

You can be proactive when responding to an immediate event by taking the time and effort to step back, assess what is going on and then deciding what to do to address the situation. In the case of the rip tide, mindfulness will allow the calm thinking required to not panic. A quick assessment of the risk will bring to light the danger of swimming against the tide, and the combination of training, experience, and clear thinking will come together to drive the decision to act skillfully.

You can be proactive well before the event occurs. Risk management, applied when initially planning your project, is thinking ahead to avoid, reduce the probability and impact of a negative event or to accept the occurrence. The skilled PM considers multiple scenarios. Based on the assessment of the probabilities of occurrence and estimated impact, a “Plan A” course of action is set and executed. “Plan B” is available in case “Plan A” doesn’t turn out the way it was supposed to. “Plan B” is a set of risk responses to be taken if and when an event occurs.

However, blindly applying a predetermined risk response is reactive behavior. Bring mindfulness to the situation, step back and assess what would happen if you applied the response. Is it still the right response? Will it make things better? Knowing what you know now, are there better responses?

Apply Mindfulness, Experience, and Risk Management

Mindfulness, experience, and risk management are the three factors that promote responsiveness and proactivity. Experience (your own and the experience of others) is required because that is what gives you the knowledge of what might happen under various conditions. Mindfulness gives you the ability to stop and remember to use the experience to respond rather than react. Risk management provides the framework for applying experience to plan proactively.

Based on the experience based assessment of the scenario and risks, set in motion the action that will lead to the most desirable and realistic outcome. When things change, be ready to change course, mindfully.

Be proactive in seeing the big picture and looking into the future to make the things you want to happen, happen, to the degree that you can. Be mindfully responsive as the project unfolds to address the things you cannot control.

How Senior Executives Unconsciously Disrupt Projects

It is fairly common for project teams and operational units to have their planned work interrupted with ad hoc requests for information and emergency needs for new projects and changes.  As project managers, we know that it is difficult enough to provide a realistic plan and deliver quality results on time and budget without an uncontrolled flow of new or changed requirements from clients and sponsors.  

We have change control and keep track of the number of ad hoc requests to stabilize the environment and/or justify late and over budget projects.  Even so, ad hoc, emergency requests that must be responded to immediately are still disruptive.

In one organization (names withheld to protect the innocent and guilty) a large complex program to modernize business operations required that business unit staff attend requirements definition sessions, training events, and take part in testing.  There is a fairly constant flow of random questions from the corporate parent.  Each question requires research and response by the same subject matter experts who are also required to do their normal operational work and take part in improvement projects.  Subject matter experts (SMEs) cancel meetings, just don’t show up, and have their minds elsewhere when they do show up. 

Operational work is their highest priority, though, even that takes a back seat to responding to demands from above.  Project work is the lowest priority, even when the project is critical to the future health and growth of the organization.  Therefore, projects are delayed, project teams are frustrated with what seems to be a lack of interest, caring and discipline on the part of operational staff and management.  Operational staff are equally frustrated by being taken away from their work.  In the end, the project team takes the blame for not meeting deadlines and life goes on as usual.

This problem can be resolved with a concerted effort, courage, better planning, and persistence.  

Effort 

Track, collect metrics, analyze interruptions, and identify their causes.  Create increasingly robust inquiry and research capabilities to enable quick response by the requesters themselves, administrators or help desk people rather than operations and project people. Create or enhance the process to manage project initiation.

The effort is motivated by the understanding that 1) the requests will not go away, 2) it is unlikely that the people who make them will think ahead sufficiently to give the responders adequate time to respond in a non-disruptive way and 3) it is possible to improve the situation.  Once that is understood, then there is a need for a commitment to make a process change.  The first part of the change is to cultivate the disciplines, procedures and systems to identify, catalog, and analyze the interruptions.  Based on the results of the analysis, the action to address the situation can be planned and executed.  

That action might be the creation of an easy to use inquiry capability supported by a business data dictionary that enables access to data that has been “hidden” in operational databases and files. In many organizations, this is a heavy lift, requiring data analysis and the implementation of data management tools and procedures.  Take the effort to minimize the research and inquiry response time while getting project people out of the process.  Make the data available before it is required and give analysts and administrators, or even executives easy access to it.

Another kind of effort is also required. Create or fix the portfolio management and project initiation process so that interruptions and constant priority changes are brought to light and that their causes are known and addressed.

In other words proactively take control of the environment.

Courage

Since most interruptions come from above in the organization’s hierarchy, it takes courage to push back.   It is hard to say no to a senior executive who calls for a piece of information that they need for a meeting that is to take place in an hour.  The call sets off a scramble for data and then to the possibility that the data will be poorly presented, leading the executive in the wrong direction.  The courageous will inform the exec who does this chronically that they are disrupting operations and projects, risking misinformation and costing the organization money.  This is where metrics about the number and type of interruptions comes in handy.  

Emergency projects and changes are a bit easier to handle than requests for information, simply because the need is not as immediate and because they are more disruptive and more costly.  Here the courage and ability to provide quick feedback about just how disruptive and costly the change will be is important.  Often these requests come down from the executive’s staff.  Maybe, the exec’s request is nothing more than a nice-to-have misconstrued as an immediate need. It is important to get validation.  How?  By being clear about the impact making the change will have on existing projects, its cost, and the real duration.  Make sure the message actually gets to the executive.

Make the cost of unbridled inquiries and ad hoc changes clear to the executives and their staff.  Replace knee jerk reaction with a measured response in a reasonable amount of time.  Have the courage to push back.

Planning

The more you plan, the less courage you need.  The more effort you take to capture and analyze metrics, the easier planning is.

Skillful planning considers past performance.  Consider interruption time when scheduling.  It should be obvious by now to all project managers that when there has been a history of regular interruptions that they will probably continue.  It is quite possible to estimate the resource requirements for handling interruptions and take that into account when scheduling.  If twenty percent of the resources per month have been called upon to handle interruptions in the past, if nothing has been done to change that, then only schedule for eighty percent availability.  If, by some miracle, there are fewer interruptions than normal, you will come in ahead of schedule, which is much better in the eyes of just about everyone than coming in late.

If people complain about the lengthy schedule, explain why you are expecting the project to take longer than it should.  Be ready to show your metrics to back up your explanation.

Persistence

Don’t give up.  Keep pushing back, using your metrics to highlight the cost of interruptions and continue to recommend the projects that will reduce the burden on project and operational staff. The requests for information and the new ideas and needs for new projects will not go away.  But, through persistence, the effort to make them less disruptive can be authorized, planned and executed.

Accountability A Contributor to Optimal Performance

Accountability is one of those interesting things that everyone knows is a critical success factor for effective performance but is avoided like the plague.

According to the Business Dictionary, accountability is “The obligation for an individual or organization to account for its activities, accept responsibility for them, and to disclose the results in a transparent manner.”1 It is the obligation to report and explain about what one does and does not do and to take responsibility for the consequences – “being called to account for one’s actions.”2

With accountability there is a relationship in which one individual or organization is in an account-giving relationship with another, e.g. “A is accountable to B when A is obliged to inform B about A’s (past or future) actions and decisions, to justify them, and to suffer punishment in the case of eventual misconduct”.3

Accountability requires a systematic method for accounting. Without the method, there is no accountability.

Resistance – Accountability Avoidance

Accountability seems simple:

  • assign responsibility
  • make sure there is a meeting of the minds regarding expectations (for example what is to be delivered, how long it will take and how much it will cost to deliver a quality outcome)
  • get to work
  • communicate regarding progress and completion
  • be open about issues and risks
  • appreciate feedback from others
  • accept the blame or fame associated with the outcome

If it’s so simple and it contributes to optimal performance, why is there resistance to accountability?

Dependencies and Accountability

The principle cause of resistance is related to dependencies on the work of others, particularly if they are not accountable for their performance.

In projects as well as operational activities, there is a need to get a clean relationship between performance and the performer, particularly regarding on-time completion, budget compliance, and quality. When a task requires input, including approval, from others, the task performer relies on the quality and timing of the input. If the input is late or of poor quality, the one who delivered it must be accountable. The expected outcome of the performer of the dependent task must be changed.

If you are accountable for delivering a result at a specific time and you cannot rely on those responsible for your task’s predecessors to account for their performance, how can you be comfortable being accountable for your task? Since your task is probably a predecessor to someone else’s task, there is a ripple effect.

Of course the obvious recourse is to report on progress and the progress, or lack thereof, of the predecessor task. But this can also cause problems.

Quite often, publicizing the performance shortfalls of others is a cultural no-no. Often, there is a lack of effective accountability system to highlight slippage and its impact on subsequent tasks. When it comes to the impact of quality shortfalls, it is even harder to establish a systematic approach for accountability.

So you are stuck. If you report the reality, you’re a bad guy. If you don’t, you take the blame for being late or delivering a substandard deliverable.

Organizational Dynamics

Another cause of accountability avoidance relates to the effects of organizational dynamics. If there are silos and competition or contention between groups, then members of one group resist accountability to others. We often hear “I don’t report to you” when we ask for a status report or accounting of someone’s performance. People feel that their performance shortfalls are no one else’s business. In fact, there are instances in which members of one group object to getting even positive feedback from members of other groups.

In many organizations, it is very difficult if not impossible to isolate accountability to a single individual. Often a point person who might be an account representative or a help desk operator represents the organization to its customers. The customer evaluates the organization’s performance. When bad advice is given or an estimate is blown, is it the representative’s fault? Do we shoot the messenger?

The organization is accountable to its customers for the organization’s performance. At the same time, it is not sufficient to hold an organization accountable. People in organizations need to be specifically assigned to tasks and be accountable for their individual performance.

Who is Responsible – Everyone or No One?

When an organization is accountable either everyone in the organization or no one is accountable. Often, it is no one. Therefore, we must go out of our way to bring accountability down to the individual. When we say that an organization is accountable, the buck has to stop somewhere. It is the organization’s top management that is personally accountable for the organization’s performance.

Who is accountable for setting the stage for failure or sub-optimal performance?

Individuals, project managers, PM Office managers, functional managers, or senior executives should be accountable for designing a healthy and optimally performing project or organization. A project’s or organization’s environment, its policies, tools, and procedures contribute to performance. Those responsible for creating and sustaining policies and procedures should be accountable for the performance that flows from them. If an individual fails to deliver, how much of the failure is attributed to environmental conditions and how much to individual performance?

Consequences

Accountability without consequences does not go far enough to contribute to optimal performance. In some accountability systems, people are unfairly punished for the delivery of poor products or services. In others, accountable parties get a free ride. It is a game. Someone takes responsibility and is accountable, but there are no consequences.

It is important to recognize that while not the best motivators, rewards and negative consequences motivate performance. The consequences can range from simply having to redo work, apologize take retraining, to being fired. They can also include the embarrassment that comes from having poor performance brought to light.

Accountability Without Blaming and Excuses

While there is a need for accountability and consequences, it does not mean that we propose management by fear. For example, if someone makes an error that causes rework, accountability requires that they make their error known and perform the rework to rectify the situation. Should they be fired or penalized? Not unless they make the same error repeatedly or have acted negligently or illegally.

Everyone makes errors. If there is learning and remediation, then accountability has done its job.

If there is a true understanding of accountability, there is no need for excuses. There is, however, a need for cause analysis to enable the learning process and the process improvement that follows.

How does one establish a healthy Accountability System?

  • Create strong sponsorship, values, policies and tool supported procedures that promote and institutionalize accountability as a normal and accepted part of the environment.
  • Develop clear and meaningful performance agreements (what is to be delivered, by whom, when, for how much, at what level of quality, under what conditions).
  • Use metrics that make performance evaluation as objective as possible.
  • Use cause and effect analysis to identify the root causes of performance levels (positive and negative) and set the stage for performance improvement.
  • Clearly acknowledge the relationships between tasks – use a dynamic project plan or process flow that identifies accountable parties at each step
  • Use impact analysis to identify and acknowledge the ripple effect of performance shortfalls.
  • Create clear reporting requirements, baselines, and templates that support accountability.
  • Use reviews that make use of performance metrics to enable consequences for positive and negative performance.
  • Use continuous communication to reinforce the value of accountability.

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

References
1{www.businessdictionary.com/definition/accountability.htm}
2Sinclair, Amanda (1995). “The Chameleon of Accountability: Forms and Discourses”. Accounting, Organizations and Society20 (2/3): 219–237. doi:10.1016/0361-3682(93)E0003-Y }
3Schedler, Andreas (1999). “Conceptualizing Accountability”. In Andreas Schedler, Larry Diamond, Marc F. Plattner. The Self-Restraining State: Power and Accountability in New Democracies. London: Lynne Rienner Publishers. pp. 13–28. ISBN 1-55587-773-7.

Focused Attention – A Critical Success Factor

No matter what your role is, it is critical that you focus your attention on the right things, at the right times, and in the right way to achieve your goals.

If your attention is scattered, lost in a blizzard of interruptions like emails, text messages, attractive passersby, or a thousand juicy thoughts and mental images, you are not likely to be all that effective. If your attention is focused on the wrong thing for the situation at hand, for example on your personal objective as opposed to how a co-worker may be feeling or on the way your objective might affect the project or organization as a whole, then you are not likely to be all that effective.

What is Being Focused?

What does it mean to focus or to be focused? Focus is directing attention in a chosen way at a chosen object. We can focus with a lens to home in on a minuscule particle or a wide expanse or anywhere in between.

When we focus our mind, we can concentrate on a single object, word, sound or idea, bringing our awareness to that one thing and filtering out distractions. Alternatively, we can open our attention to a sequence of events in a process or a process within a system of processes as expansive as the universe. In all cases, we are filtering out distractions that might take the mind off on a little journey to a place that we have not consciously chosen to go.

Distraction

Everyone gets distracted. The ability to focus hinges on the ease at which one identifies distractions and attention returned to focus on what you choose.

If you are at a meeting, ideally you would be focused on the meeting’s content. A thought might arise, triggered by something someone said, that reminds you of the time you encountered a problem in the past. You might note the thought, maybe even jot down a reminder about it, and return your attention to the proceedings.

Alternatively, you might begin thinking about that experience, how you responded then, the result, and how you wish you had responded. Your mind may go off on tangent after tangent as thoughts trigger new thoughts and lead you down a meandering path until something brings you back to the meeting. Your remembrances have taken your attention from what is happening at the meeting.

Taking it a step further, you might bring up your past experience as a point in the conversation. If it is not relevant to the meeting, it can take the entire meeting off on a tangent, and depending on the quality of the facilitation, off on multiple tangents.

Sometimes you just lose attention and space out, not thinking about anything in particular. An idle mind, at the right time and in the right place, can be quite healthy and useful, but not in the middle of a meeting or when you are performing a task that requires full attention.

Where and When to Focus Awareness

According to Daniel Goleman, “Every leader needs to cultivate a triad of awareness – an inward focus, a focus on others and an outward focus.” Focusing inward and focusing on others helps cultivate the awareness needed to be responsive rather than reactive. For example when focusing inward, there is a greater likelihood that you will notice the cues to your negative emotions like anger and fear and have an opportunity to accept them and not react impulsively. Focusing on others allows you to notice that someone may be having a negative or positive reaction to something you have said or done. Your awareness of others gives you the opportunity to inquire and adapt so you can cultivate collaboration as opposed to unhealthy conflict.

Focusing outward enables both local action and the ability to see the big picture, think strategically, and assess the consequences of local decisions on the organization or project as a whole. Outward focus is action oriented. It consists of the focus on exploiting current circumstances and systems thinking, the ability to see world as a system of systems in which any change anywhere can affect the system anywhere. Systems thinking is oriented towards strategy while the narrower focus is tactical. A critical success factor for effective performance is the ability to shift between a tactical outward focus directed to the job at hand, to a broader one that supports innovation and the ability to explore the results of local action.

Andrew Smart, the author of Autopilot: The Art & Science of Doing Nothing, might suggest adding a fourth awareness – doing nothing or spacing out. Concentration inhibits blood flow to certain parts of the brain that become active when not focusing on a specific task in what is referred to as the Default Mode or Resting State Network. This mode is instrumental in the AHA moments that occur when the brain “is turned off”. The reality is that the brain is not really turned off, it is just operating in a different way. This resting state enables the smooth movement between more directed focus whether inward, towards others or outward.

Being focused is a dynamic process that involves making a conscious effort to stay with a chosen object of attention. There is a natural moment-to-moment interplay among the modes of attention. The mind naturally shifts inward, to others and outwards, with the resting state providing the background capability to let the process unfold without unnecessary effort.

How do you get better at focusing?

The ability to focus requires rest and relaxation, healthy diet, and the management of stress.

The practice of mindfulness meditation enhances the natural capacity to focus on the right things at the right time. It is a technique that requires some instruction to get the basics and then the applied effort to regularly practice. Instruction is best obtained in a class from a qualified instructor. If you are in or around New York City you can contact NY Insight Meditation Center (NYIMC.org), otherwise check the web for mindfulness or insight meditation centers in your area.

Meditation sharpens the powers of concentration that enables you to stay on a chosen object, whether it be inward, on others or outwards. Mindfulness is enhanced so you are able to discern more clearly and objectively what is happening in and around you. The combination of concentration and mindfulness gives you the ability to choose your focus and actions; to be intentionally responsive rather than reactive.

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.