21-Day Intention Program

presents

The 21-Day Intention Program

ISIS: Integrated Strategic Intention System

21-Day ISIS Workbook

No part of this document may be used, transmitted, stored, copied, referred to or referenced without specific written permission to do so.

Program Contents:

(In MS Word: Press Ctrl + Click on the blue hyperlinks to jump to the section you want).

Day1:Overview...... 3

PART I - IDENTITY

Day 2:SWOT: Strengths & Weaknesses...... 5

Day 3:SWOT: Opportunities & Threats...... 8

Day4:Choosing Your ISIS Level...... 11

Day 5:Assumptions & Beliefs...... 13

Day 6:Vision: Now, Near, & Far...... 16

Day 7:Keywords:Values: Final Four Game...... 17

Day 8:Principles...... 24

PART II - INTENTION

Day 9:Valued Action: Strategic Values: Internal...... 26

Day 10:Strategic Direction: External...... 27

Day 11:Strategic Direction: Financial ...... 28

Day 12:Strategic Direction: Developmental ...... 29

Day 13: Linking:Identity and Intention through purpose...... 30

Day 14: Key Success Factors:Internal/External...... 31

Day 15: Key Success Factors: Financial/Developmental...... 33

Day 16: Make it real with Effective Goal Setting...... 34

Day 17:...... Goals: What By When 38

Day 18:Standards: Min limits for Routine & Recurring Events...... 40

PART III - PURPOSE

Day 19: Crafting a Purpose Statement...... 42

Day 20: Refining Purpose Statements...... 44

Day 21: Wrap-up...... 45

Completion survey...... 49

Example Maps...... 51

Day 1: Overview

Welcome to Integral Mapping with the Integrated Strategic Intention System – ISIS

Visit this page for the accompanying audios and additional online information:

  • ISIS is an integral mapping system for any situation you encounter.
  • You can use it at its lowest level of differentiation [identity, purpose and intention] or its highest level of differentiation: [Identity: Assumptions/beliefs, vision, values, principles; Purpose; Intention: Strategic Objectives, Key Success Factors, Goals, Standards].
  • Once you go through this process, you can self-coach yourself using this process in the future.
  • Development will be going on throughout your life and career and you will be able to use ISIS to guide others through a developmental process, either overtly as this system does or covertly as you use it to guide your coaching/leadership interactions.

Mike Jay intentionally chose the acronym “ISIS” from Greek mythology – ISIS is the Greek Goddess of Magic and Fertility!

When our intention becomes clear, magical things happen.

The ISIS mapping process forces you to make objective what you’re doing anyway, then look at the strategy of that. Most of us don’t take time to actually analyze our maps. Everybody has a number of maps of reality that gathered over time that are running subjectively. Instead of being EMBEDDED in the map, we want to have a relationship with the map.

Before you get started, choose a ROLE to map.

You couldMap as president of your company, marketing director, coach, wife/husband, parent, person mapping their life, etc.

Note, it can take 3-5 passes/iterations to create an effective map.

IMPORTANT: you actually need THREE maps when first doing the ISIS process. Start with Capability on the first pass.

Capability – exactly who and where you are right now (not who/what you want to be, do, have, become in the future).

Requirements – those things/attributes you need in order to create what you want to be, do, have and become.

Design – the design for getting you from A-B.

Capability is needs based. If you start to mix in what you want in the future, your map will become muddied and ineffective.

Here is a flowchart to illustrate the various components of the ISIS map:

ISIS is like an hourglass; it’s a converging system designed to take Identity, flow that through Purpose into strategic Intent. Then strategic Intent flows out at the bottom to become broad-based as Standards, and that’s where we start paying attention to RightACTION™.

The whole idea behind the mapping system is that it forces you to make objective what you’re doing anyway and then to look at the strategy of that.

"If you don't know where you're going, all roads lead there."

Alice - Alice in Wonderland

Day 2: SWOT: Strengths & Weaknesses

Strengths:

Write down all of your Strengths as viewed through your life or business, depending on your context or role perspective.

Refer to your Assessments.

Also, take the free Signature Strengths assessment at: (240 questions; allow ~30 mins).

Best you can, keep your responses to one or two word answers. Here are some questions that may help:

  • What are your advantages?
  • What do you do well?
  • What would someone else say you do well?
  • What would you do all day long if you could?
  • What can you do better than anyone else?
  • What is natural for you?
  • What comes easy for you?
  • What are your preferences?
  • What would people hire you to do because you're so good at it?

Potential Internal Strengths- list at least 10:

Weaknesses:

Weaknesses is often construed as a pejorative term – you may wish to think of weaknesses more as “limitations.”

Write down all of your Weaknessesas viewed through your life or business, depending on your context or role perspective.

Best you can, keep your responses to one or two word answers. Here are some questions that may help:

  • What could be improved?
  • What don’t you do very well, in your opinion?
  • What should be avoided (“don’t make me do that!”)?
  • What would someone who knows you well say is a weakness/limitation of yours?
  • What’s not easy for you?
  • What don’t like you to do?
  • What takes a lot of energy/effort for you to do?
  • What are you subject to?

Potential Internal Weakness/Limitations- list at least 10:

Note: Every strength has a limitation embedded in it. It’s the yin/yang. E.g. Skepticism is a very powerful strength – it could also be framed in Threats, and/or Assumptions, and/or Beliefs.

"Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they're yours."

Richard Bach

Day 3: SWOT: Opportunities & Threats

Opportunities

Write down all of your Opportunitiesas viewed through your life or business, depending on your context or role perspective.

Here are some questions that may help:

  • Where is leverage to be found?
  • Where are the good chances facing you?
  • What are things you want to accomplish?
  • If you were successful, what would that success bring?

Useful opportunities can come from such things as:

  • New skill development.
  • New associations and actions taken.
  • Better relationships.
  • More effectiveness.
  • Promotability.

Potential External Opportunities - List at least 15:

Threats (or Blocks)

Write down all of your Threatsas viewed through your life or business, depending on your context or role perspective.

Here are some questions that may help:

  • What obstacles do you face?
  • What is your competition doing?
  • Are the required specifications for your job, products or services changing?
  • Is changing technology threatening your position?
  • Do you have issues?
  • What do you find yourself constantly up against?
  • What if you don't do anything?
  • What if you fail in your current actions?

Potential External Threats - List at least 15:

If you create your ISIS map through only one perspective, it won’t be as broad, deep or effective. That is, you basically just write down your answers in response to the questions looking through one lens – your own filters/viewpoint/perspective.

None of us are naturally integral – we don’t consider multiple perspectives, or domains. We mostly focus on what’s important to us, and what we think needs to get done which aggravates blind spots.

So, we recommend you utilize the RCAP methodology and do the mapping process through a multiple lens approach in order to emerge any possible blind spots or gaps. Here’s the RCAP diagram:

RCAP is an acronym that stands for “Rubics Cube Analogy Protocol.” Remember the Rubics Cube? A nifty toy with a 4x4 matrix on each of three sides of the cube.

Using this RCAP model, there are:

Four DOMAINS of effect: Personal, Professional, Business, Network

Four PERSPECTIVES*: Internal, External, Financial, Developmental

Four views of TIME: Past, Now, Near, Far

For further clarity, here’s an explanation of the four Perspectives:

INTERNAL: what people can’t see (inside you as an individual; inside the organization as a business).

EXTERNAL: touch points; how people access you. External is always touched by other people.

FINANCIAL: anything to do with the transaction of value in any way.

DEVELOPMENTAL: learning, growth and innovation.

Now that you’ve completed the initial part of your ISIS map – the SWOT analysis – next, go through what you’ve written down the following next to each entry:

i,e,f,d

pers, prof, bus, n/w;

past, now, near, far

It is possible to utilize the RCAP model for both your personal life and/or your business life.

However, if you prefer, instead of applying RCAP, you may approach your ISIS map through the following seven Life Domains:

  1. Family
  2. Spiritual
  3. Social
  4. Financial
  5. Physical
  6. Learning
  7. Career

NOTE: throughout this workbook, we will refer to the RCAP model as explained above. If you choose to use the seven Life Domains instead, just swap that out to make sense for your map.

Day 4: Choosing Your ISIS Level

Now it’s time to identify and declare the level you’re going to map at from here on in.

Mapping at the right level is keybecause – as you’re going through the mapping process – you want to deal with the appropriate identity, the appropriate boundaries and the appropriate attractors. These are key aspects to understand in knowledge management.

Otherwise, if you begin to confuse an issue with prime, instead of looking at the issue through prime (or looking at prime through the issue) your map will expand the scope and scale so much it will likely bog you down.

Our lives and businesses are so complex. If we take too big a chunk of reality and try to map it, it becomes so confusing that we don’t reach a level of clarity – all we realize is how confused we really are and then we’re no further forward.

ISISPrime / Highest level of mapping with an ongoing time perspective.
ISISInitiative / Translate the overall strategic intention into the basics of operationalizing the Prime intention; Initiative could occur at operations, marketing, finance, order fulfillment, customer service. Opportunity to focus in on a particular area of expertise that you want to take initiative with and be more specific than Prime. Time perspective typically recalibrated between 18 months to 3 or 4 years.
ISISObjective / Often distilled from the Initiative level into a more specific set of action steps. Could be a particular division, strategic objective with product development or design a special program. Shorter time period, within 18 months.
ISISProject / Shorter time perspective that starts and has a finishing point with some milestones in-between
ISISiMAP / The “issue map” or “integral map” or developmental plan; focused on a single issue.

Like a Russian Doll, you could be mapping at the Project Level, which fits into a bigger Objective, which is part of an Initiative, which all fit into an overarching Prime Level.

Mapping at Prime is a good place to start if this is your first pass at using the ISIS mapping system.

The tendency is to get too detailed at the Prime level and too complex with the Issue. Don’t get paralysis by analysis. You want to end up with not necessarily a strategic plan, but a strategic MAP. A plan can then emerge from your map.

So, to help you focus, keep asking yourself:

What is the identity? (The context and the role of this particular map)

What are the boundaries I’m setting?

What are the attractors? (Those things you’re going to weave in that are strategically critical to consider as you go through the mapping process). (Examples of attractors are WHY you want what you want, what’s important to you, what’s motivating to you, what’s urgent, what’s leveraging and what’s low-hanging fruit).

Keep checking in with yourself – are you getting too detailed? Are you getting too complex? If so, this will slow down the mapping process.

You can view the full descriptors of the five ISIS™ Levels of Integral Mapping here:

Day 5: Assumptions & Beliefs

Now, its time to look at what you want to accomplish and how you intend to go about it.We have to get you to think through this process in order to help you surface all the beliefs you have that may or may not help you in this system.

In other words, what is it that has caused you to come to this point?

You'll find this material indispensable as we move through the program, so don't shortcut this portion. You don't have to spend a long time, just 15 minutes with each step will do it—trust the process!

List all of the assumptions and beliefs you have about your development needs or requirements.What must it be, do, have, accomplish, provide, not do, overcome, manage, lead, etc.

If you have trouble framing or contextualizing in the context of the role you’ve chosen, ask your coach to help you here.

Here are some generic assumptions of ours to get you started:

  • I don't have enough time to....
  • I get along with people well but don't get the results I need.
  • I get the results I need, but don't build relationships over time.
  • People said I don't have enough emotional intelligence.
  • I am not being promoted.
  • I want to get promoted.
  • Something has to change, maybe it's me.
  • Learning and growth are the way I find meaning in life.

Aimfor at least 12 assumptions, and be sure to apply the RCAP model here.

My Assumptions and Beliefs

NOTE: This first portion of the ISIS mapping process is critical to the effectiveness of your final map. Be sure to thoroughly complete your SWOT analysis and this Assumptions and Beliefs section.

Done correctly, we should be able to deconstruct your SWOT and Assumptions/Beliefs, and fill in the rest of your map.

Day 6: Vision: Now, Near, & Far

Refer to

This pivotal step may seem strange to you at this point, but if you trust this process, we will save you a lot of time and money in helping you create a system that will work much more efficiently in the end.

When writing out your vision, you can use now, near and far, all of them together or none of them. Imagine sitting in a cinema eating popcorn and describing to someone what you’re seeing on the screen – it’s your life, your vision.

Always use first person, present tense and positive language. Report out as if it’s a snapshot from the future. Beware of using future tense.

See yourself in motion as if already happened – see if your inner critic can handle it! Unless you can SEE yourself in the vision, then the assumption about the future is just a WISH and that’s not a vision. A vision is something you actually have seen.

If you wish, you can put yourself into an altered state – whatever works for you, e.g. deep breathing, music, closed-eye process, centering, sacred space.

Allow your creativity to flow as you begin to put down the words to describe your vision. Paint a picture of what you see, hear, taste, smell, touch… and try to be specific. Remember, there is no 'right' vision - only what you can imagine becoming reality and be inspiring for you.

In creating your vision statement, here are some questions to start youthinking:

Where are you headed?

What are the images/dreams you often see/sense in your head?

What do you want to be known for?

Who will your customers be? How are they behaving in your vision?

How do you see them benefiting from your products or services?

What feelings are evoked by those who come in contact with you and/or your company, both inside and out?

This is a pivotal step in your development; now is not the time to omit steps.

Again, remember to incorporate the RCAP model to fully flesh out your vision.

Some quotes about Vision to inspire you:

"Envisioning the future and taking action in the present to bring it about, are acts of the human spirit."

Warren Zigler

"A man to carry on a successful business must have imagination. He must see things as in a vision, a dream of the whole thing."

Charles M. Schwab

“A vision without a task is but a dream

A task without a vision is drudgery

A task with a vision is the hope of the world”

Inscription on a church in Sussex, England circa 1730

"Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare"
Japanese Proverb

Day 7: Keywords:Values: Final Four Game

Values often provide an insight on where to invest your time and energy. They are linked to motivation, so the more you know about and address your values, the easier and more natural it will become to create and follow through on manifesting your business or project.