I reckon one of the next up and coming in-demand professional skills will have to be: the ability to help businesses (or individuals) make choices.
This would involve understanding the business’ or person’s needs, knowing who they are and what they stand for, identifying and shortlisting the most appropriate set of choices, presenting the most relevant choices, and guiding the selection of the best one. This requires a combination of different skills: understanding and empathy, research and analysis, strategy and planning, imagination, teaching and enlightening, coaching and mentoring. Behold the rise of the Decision Facilitator…
I am testing posterous as a means to channel frogpond stuff into this blog, plus adding snippets like the one above too
Hi folks:
you may not be aware of this, but i’ve been writing books about, designing technology around, teaching programs around, etc. decision facilitation.
and i take it a step further: i’ve actually coded the route that decisions take within the buyer’s system (or the coachee, or the patient – it’s about facilitating the decision making for anyone). and i’ve developed a new form of question (Facilitative Question) that teaches the brain how to lump together all of the criteria that it needs to collect in order to make a new decision that meets its values.
it’s so far bigger than ‘understanding needs’. if i understand that you need to lose weight, or go to the gym more, etc. will that help you make a decision to go on a diet or go work out? it assumes that i’ll be able to persuade you better than you can persuade yourself.
i assume that if you know all of your appropriate (personal) criteria, and i can lead you through the sequences your brain takes to make new decisions, that you can figure out how to change yourself.
until or unless people decide to make these new choices for themselves,they will take no action, regardless of HOW MUCH another person ‘understands’.
as i said, i’ve developed a whole model on this. you may want to speak, or check out my work. the sales model of this i’ve named Buying Facilitation(R).