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You may have seen a programme that was shown on the BBC recently in which companies were invited to put their business up for overhaul. I didn't see the whole series just the one on Mo's corner shop. Mo's corner shop was a very typical corner shop - packed full of thousands of different product lines, many of them beyond their shelf life and many almost impossible to find easily on the cramped shelves. So Mo applied to the BBC team of experts (a new version of Changing Rooms or Changing Gardens but now transported to the business context). Mo's business was under threat from the big supermarkets nearby so not only did the BBC team want to increase the efficiency of the shop but they also wanted to find ways to differentiate Mo's shop from these bigger competitors. The expert team set about reorganising and relabelling the products on the shelves. They installed bread ovens to supply daily fresh bread. These ovens were self-clean and needed virtually no maintenance. They introduced a new stock control system and eliminated the 80% of products that had not sold for years. And then they went into Mo's office where they found that his method of personal organisation was to use 3-year-old diaries (or older), cross out the days and overwrite them with this year's days and dates. So the office came under the experts' scrutiny and revision too. So after all of this and much much more Mo was left with a completely overhauled shop. The time to find and buy items had been cut by at least 50% and his customers were delighted with the changes. But just a minute - what about Mo? Well he was delighted too although he appeared at times to be a little bemused. Not surprising really when you start to deduce what must have been going on in Mo's head or more to the point how was it going on in Mo's head! Mo's shop was an expression of his internal structuring. His shop and everything about him was a mirror to his internal experience and who was going to do something about that? Well the methods used by the BBC team (and the results were wonderful - in the short term) are the methods used by so many businesses wanting to update and bring about a culture change. The remedy so often seized upon is to change the environment. How many businesses and shops have you seen go about a face lift in just this way. And yet the face-lift that would really make the difference is the inner face-lift. This is what modelling is all about. By modelling what was going on in Mo's inner experience we can deduce not only how he has got what he has got but also - to take it one step further what he might need to really make a difference. If ever there was a case for NLP then this was it. I wonder how Mo is doing now and how he is using that wonderful new computer system that the BBC installed for him.

And if you need any more examples for why modelling matters then you might have checked out yet another TV programme. This time the programme had documented the effects of a new selection procedure for college applicants in the US. At long last the selection IQ tests had been recognised as being discriminating against parts of the population - African youths in particular. This section of the population invariably failed the selection test and to use the words of one of the boys interviewed on the programme - "that leaves no option for us but to go on the streets and make our money through drug dealing". The new test that had been introduced scored a different kind of intelligence - more along the lines of emotional intelligence. The results had been dramatic and to quote yet another of the boys - "Now we have a chance - we believe that this can lead to a radical change in our way of life and our hope" So if the replacement of one traditional IQ test can lead to such optimism how much more might we achieve when NLP modelling becomes the norm. Instead of extending the range of who is 'acceptable' to our colleges and places of work we can begin to recognise the unique excellence of everyone. By learning how to recognise and mark out the structure of excellence in each of us we create a chance for all. Surely it is this way of thinking and working that holds the hope for worldwide community of acceptance and recognition?

This for me is why modelling is such a vital way of thinking in the world today. This is the stuff of culture change. So how are you doing? How are you going about restructuring your inner world to get the results that you want in your life and that are a WIN/WIN for everyone around you? How much attention are you giving to your thought life compared with the superficial face lifts? And how accepting are you of the excellence in everyone in your life? The best way and the only way in which we can promote what NLP is all about is by modelling - you guessed it - YOU.