Natural Excellence
The Van Geijn Taxonomy of Natural Excellence was developed by Robert van Geijn 1, based on his observations of peoples’ behavior over a ten-year period and aims to improve performance in everyday tasks both in business and personal life by understanding the nature of the individual, team and the task. There has been considerable discussion over the years about the relative impacts of Nature (characteristics inherited from our parents) and Nurture (characteristics learned during growth). Natural Excellence includes the basic Universal law, the elements that make us what we are (our genetic make-up and our environment during the formative years) our experience and training as well as the nature of the activity.
A comprehensive set of fundamentals have been researched by the Institute of Natural Excellence that optimize performance in all areas of human functioning, as an individual and as part of a team. They take account of lower-level laws, the functioning of the human brain, personal attributes and the interaction with other human beings plus the environment. These are the Natural Excellence Fundamentals.
Robert van Geijn has established the Institute of Natural Excellence 2 to promote research into the subject and the development of training methods to help companies and individuals use the van Geijn Taxonomy for Natural Excellence to improve both their actions and the environment.
In order to reach maximum performance, the fundamentals can be combined with every-day areas of application in business and personal life. In business people can be taught to incorporate the Natural Excellence Fundamentals within a specific discipline, like Sales, Project Management, Buying, etc., for maximum performance. These are the final level within the Van Geijn Taxonomy and are known as Natural Excellence Methods. They are at the highest level of obtaining true excellence and, since they use the Natural Excellence Fundamentals as a core foundation, they inherit the attributes of complying with Universal, Nature’s and Naurture’s laws, maximizing personal capabilities while having sincere human relationships and respecting the environment.
Natural Excellence in Project Management
Natural Excellence is an holistic approach to project management, developed over the last ten years and already used to successfully implement more than fifty projects in Asia and Europe. Traditional project management methodologies such as PMP, PRINCE2 and the more recent Critical Chain Project Management and Agile Project Management all focus on the activities involved - the project management triangle of scope, time and cost but Natural Excellence, while acknowledging these important elements also addresses the issue that the people involved in the project are a major contributing factor to failure and ensures that the Project Manager understands the team members, how they will interact and how they will work on tasks assigned. It is common knowledge that some people get involved in the fine details while others work with the 'big picture' - assigning a detailed task to a 'big picture' person will probably result in failure, but how does the project manager know?
Process or Content?
Natural Excellence divides people into two groups - Process and Content. This comes from the concept that the human brain has two halves left brain/right brain and dominance in one or the other will control our actions, coming from original work by Roger W. Sperry the 1981 Nobel Prize winner and others.
LEFT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
- uses logic
- detail oriented
- facts rule
- words and language
- present and past
- math and science
- can comprehend
- knowing
- acknowledges
- order/pattern perception
- knows object name
- reality based
- forms strategies
- practical
- safe
RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
- uses feeling
- "big picture" oriented
- imagination rules
- symbols and images
- present and future
- philosophy & religion
- can "get it" (i.e. meaning)
- believes
- appreciates
- spatial perception
- knows object function
- fantasy based
- presents possibilities
- impetuous
- risk taking
Someone with a dominant left-brain will be a Content person and someone with right-brain dominance will be a Process person. Natural Excellence fundamentals help identify a person's type and assign them to the correct type of task, ensuring a higher probability of success. Project tasks can also be defined as process or content and managed separately, even to the point of separate meetings for process-related and content-related issues to maximize the impact and minimize time wasted.