#066 DFQ

QRH Styleware

QUALITY RECOGNITION HUMOUR
QUALITY RECOGNITION HUMOUR
QUALITY RECOGNITION HUMOUR
QUALITY RECOGNITION HUMOUR
QUALITY RECOGNITION HUMOUR
QUALITY RECOGNITION HUMOUR
QUALITY RECOGNITION HUMOUR
QUALITY RECOGNITION HUMOUR

What is Styleware?

“Fashion passes. Style remains.”
– Coco Chanel.

Styleware is new. It’s a software package devoted specifically to helping the brainuser choose a world-class style that is compatible with being a PTV-free thinker. When it comes to thinking and behaviour, what can be more important than style?

Style A Strategy for Behaviour

A style is a strategy for behaviour. A person’s style determines not only what that person will allow himself or herself to do, but also the way he or she will do it. “It’s nice to be important,” says Roger Federer, Tennis Champion of the World, “but it’s more important to be nice.” And, it is.

Style is that intangible quality about behaviour that leaves a more lasting impression than the behaviour itself. Leaders, like Coco Chanel, Julius Caesar, Pope John XXIII, Eva Peron and Nelson Mandela are remembered as much for their personal style as for their specific actions.

Your Personal Style

Style provides a framework for daily thinking and daily behaviour. Your personal style shows the way you have positioned yourself in life, reflects your personal life strategy, and makes it quite possible to predict the way you are likely to behave in situations.

A loving gentle woman who treats herself and others with respect is unlikely to begin suddenly and inexplicably behaving like a Salome. A Scrooge is unlikely to start suddenly playing ball with the kids or to join Big Brothers — but, even a Scrooge can change!

Changing Your Style

You can’t hide your personal style. A single action may or may not go unnoticed but your behaviour patterns are impossible to hide. Repetition attracts attention. Your pattern of behaviour is an exhibition of your personal style just as the pattern of your personal opinions is a loud advertisement of the state of your mind.

But, if you’re not happy with your personal style, there is no law that says you have to live with it. You can simply change it. People are doing this every day. Style is a matter of personal choice, once you come of age. It is independent of background, education, or income; it has much to do with thinkingthe way you choose to deal with information–in order to deal with situations.

You can choose the personal idiom within which to live your life, just as you can choose the TV programs you wish to watch, the friends you wish to mix with, the clothes you wish to wear, the attitudes you wish to adopt or the Web sites you wish to visit and the things you choose to say on your blog.

Changing is simple once you make the decision. Yet making the decision could take 20 years! It requires an act of will. Not changing, of course, is the decision to keep the style you currently have.

The style of the Clever Brainuser can most readily be described by QRH which stands for the balance among these characteristics: Quality, Recognition, Humour.

The QRH style is contemporary and cool but has a taste of what used to be called noblesse oblige.

Your Virtual Board of Directors

When it comes to changing your style, it is very useful to have a clear view of the changes you wish to make and just how you’d like to see yourself. Changing is easier if you have a model or a picture or a coach – someone to give you guidance. For my own guidance, I use my personal group of virtual mentors, my Virtual Board of Directors.

To my Virtual Board (which is happy to meet in my mind whenever I want them to meet) I am free to appoint, as a non-paid Director, anyone I choose. I’ve had members from the present or from the past or from a future not yet a reality. I choose board members for different reasons.

I’ve had them for speech coaching, for dress, for conversation, for decision-making, for wit, for compassion, for looks, for stimulation, for provocation, for encouragement or compassion, for sentimental reasons and for inspiration.

For example, at different times over the years, seats on my Virtual Board have been held by Cicero, Nastasia Kinski, Jean de la Valette, Major Terry Hayes DFC, Grace Ellsworth, Julius Caesar, Saki, Audrey Hepburn, R G Menzies, PJ Keating, Dr George Gallup, W.C. Fields, my father, the Prince of Wales, Dame Elizabeth Murdoch, Fra Martin Luther, Tom Jobim, my grandmother, Prince Talleyrand, Pope John XXIII, Pope Francis, Brian Ferry, Clint Eastwood, Albert Einstein, Oscar Wilde, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, George Costanza, Professor Richard Dawkins FRS, Musashi, Rodriguez, Roger Federer, Pannonica Rothschild and many others whose names I needn’t mention.

I’ve even had to do the occasional excommunication.

These have been some of my personal favourites and from whom I have received much advice, support and guidance – free of charge and on-call anytime, any place. You can operate your Virtual Board along the lines of a thought experiment.

Appointing Your Directors

The point, of course, is to choose your own Directors because you admire some aspect of their style and you want to emulate that aspect, in your own way, so you need their advice to do so. Other people have told me they use similar strategies and have chosen mental advisers for their own development.

If you wish, you can simply read a good biography of your potential style directors and if it satisfies you can appoint them to your board. It’s also great fun to do!

Q-Quality

When it comes to the subject of style, the clever brainuser is one who always tries to positively upgrade a situation from its current state to a better state. In other words, you are making a deliberate effort to improve the quality of the situation, the quality of the way in which the information is arranged.

Quality is Adding Value

Quality is important. As a clever brainuser you’re concerned with adding value to the situation. The point is not whether at any particular moment in time you are successful. What is far more important is the overall style, that is, the deliberate policy of always being concerned with improving the value of the situationthe quest for quality.

Contrast this with the dumb ‘whatever-I-can-get-away-with’ attitude. Quality is a matter of choice, a matter of style. Only by understanding the process of adding value will we be able to understand the key to productivity and solve what appear to be ‘economic’ problems.

The Habit of Quality

Quality is better. Quality is improvement. Quality is general excellence. The habit of quality is the habit of finding a better way, a better possibility, a better view, a better choice, a better alternative, a better outcome, a better attitude, a better opinion, a better life.

If you cannot find a better alternative in a situation then you cannot add value to the situation. That’s why CVSTOBVS, the switch to a better way of looking at a situation, is a skill or strategy that is central to the habit of quality.

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DFQ#066:

Your Famous Quote

If you were to be quoted on the subject of Quality what would be your Famous Quote?

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