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244 Power Up Your Mind

Many of you will, as well as having a doctor, have access to
an independent financial adviser. In the Knowledge Age, you need
access to a learning practitioner. Of course, the LP concept is a
much looser one than these examples from health or financial ser-
vices might suggest.
The essential characteristics of the LP include the following:

They need to be focused on your needs unconditionally for the
period that they are working with you.
They need to have some basic understanding of how you can learn
to learn more effectively.
They need to be a critical friend to you, supporting you, challeng-
ing you, and giving you specific and constructive feedback.
They need to be able to listen to you and draw out your plans, help-
ing you to own these and set them in motion, as appropriate.

Given the brain’s capacity for imitation, your choice of LP is obvi-
ously an extremely important one, as is your choice of who you
spend most of your time with at work and in your private life. They
will undoubtedly be a huge influence on you, your mind, and the
way you think, feel, and believe.
It is my personal crusade for the first decade of the twenty-
first century to persuade at least one national government that this
is a good idea. In my view, such a scheme would transform the effec-
tiveness of people and help them to realize more of their hidden tal-
ents. It would be comparatively inexpensive, as much of it would be
undertaken on a voluntary basis or as part of an existing job.

Have you had an LP of any kind? What is she or he like? How do they help you? What other
characteristics would you suggest they should have?

The British Industrial Society went further in a report published in
2000 aimed at improving the quality of working life: “Employers
should give their staff more room to enjoy their work. Instead of
seeing sociability at work as the antithesis of efficiency and pro-
ductivity they should see it as crucial to the bottom line. Gossip is
the cement which holds organizations together.”