Where Goals Become Reality
How It all Started
“Something strange happened this weekend Pete” said Dave French. “We were out walking and got lost and my mate gets the map out and said, this stream shouldnt be here” Dave paused waiting to see if Pete spotted the peculiarity of this.
“Ah, no chance then that he was looking at the map incorrectly!” said Pete
“Yep” said Dave “You have got it! Of course the stream WAS there like it had been for thousands of years so how come humans think that the impossible is possible”
“I guess he could have said the map was wrong”. Said Pete
“Yep but he didn’t, and that wouldn’t have been correct either because it wasn’t. What was wrong was that we didn’t know how to reference our map correctly”. said Dave.
“A bit like life really” said Pete
“Exactly”. said Dave
“Mm, so here we are on our journey down to Honda Chiswick, we have the map in our minds of how to get there and at each landmark we know, it reinforces the thought that we know where we are going and it feels good. Imagine if we had set off without a map or any knowledge of how to get to our destination. We would just wander around untill we bump into it! It’s a bit like life really isnt it. it’s not really suprising that after years of “wandering around” we could feel frustrated and end up somewhere we never intended”. Said Pete.
“Exactly” said Dave. “Welcome to our journey of life”
“So it looks like we need to get our maps of our futures sorted” said Pete
“Good name for a development programme” said Dave
“Good name for a way of life” said Pete.
Thus started FutureMapping!
It’s time…
Much has happened sinse that trip twenty five years ago including the passing of Dave who became my inspirational business parner. Since then Success Factor Ltd have used the principles of FutureMapping as part of their development programmes with increddible success. FutureMapping has been used with sales people, customer service people, and as part of leadership programmes, by Success Factor to change peoples perception about themselves and others.
However, Success Factors’ business model has changed from delivering services directly to clients to the training, development and accreditation of other trainers and coaches. We now also provide TTI Success Insights psychometric reports to other companies for them to use to develop people. We now feel that it’s now time to release FutureMapping for others to use.
If I have seen more than others it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
Shoulders Of Giants Indeed!
Both Pete and Dave were introduced to the science of self and behavioural assessments when they were trained to be behavioural analysts by Art Neimann in 1997. It was a life changing experience! The insight that Art gave into the AVA system and buman behaviour in general was extrordinary. Art continued to stay in contact and mentored Pete in his studies about human behaviour long after the actual training itself.
Art Neiman
In 1959 Art Neiman joined W Clement Stones company Combined Insurance (now AON) as his HR person. His brief from Mr Stone was “Make my people happy”. Later that year, Art attended a two-week workshop that would change his career and as he said, his life for the better. At that time, Walter V. Clarke was personally teaching the AVA Analyst Certification course in Florida. Art and other AVA Analysts at Combined Insurance used the concepts of AVA and PMA (Positive Mental Attitude) to achieve tremendous growth in the organization during the 1960’s and 70’s. Mr Stone claimed it assisted him to change his 100 dollar investment to a hundred million dollar business by employing people where the job fitted their natural behaviours.
In 1984 W Clement Stones company, CIA purchased Walter V Clarke and Associates.
Art started his own company in 1980 and Peter was trained and mentored by Art and this is how he gained this knowledge and many more stories.
Walter V Clarke
Walter V Clarke took his Masters as a student of William Moulton Marston at Columbia University and produced as his thesis “Physical types as bases for variations in primary emotions,”
In 1922 at Columbia University where William Moulton Marston was already a Phd and happened to be listening along with many other students to a lecture from a guest speaker Mr Prescott Leckey.
Prescott Leckey started the lecture off by asking the audience “What do you think the most important thing is to a human being?”
“This is my belief, that the most important thing to a human being is not self preservation, but the preservation of the self image”. “People act out consistently with what they hold to be true about themselves”.
Clarke realised that if that was true he could measure a persons self concept and thus be able to predict behaviour.
In 1948 Clarke started his company Walter V Clarke and Associates and was the first person to use an instrument to measure behaviour. This instrument was called AVA Activity Vector Analysis. It consisted of three graphs and followed the DISC vectors with Assertiveness, Sociability, Tranquility and Conformance.
William Moulton Marston
Sitting alongside Clarke at the Prescott lecture was William Moulton Marston and as a result he realised that this explained some of his observations such as:
- people who tell lies continue to tell lies
- any behavioural model/style is consistent
- it was a persons beliefs which drove emotions that created behaviour
In 1928 he wrote “The Emotions of Normal People” where he explained behaviour in terms of DISC, ie Dominamce, Influence, Steadyness & Compliance
He created Wonder Woman the first Female Super Hero as a role model for women and who with her “lasso of truth” (which equated to his other creation, the lie detector) could overcome all evil.
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