The theatre of meetings

Imagine for a moment you are at a play. You’re sitting comfortably. You’ve admired the set on stage. There’s an air of expectation, then the lights dim. The action starts. You marvel at the performers and their ability to connect with you, as if you are the only person in the audience – and they can’t even see you. How do they do that? Intermission arrives. Then Act 2. At the end you applaud politely or enthusiastically, depending on your experience, and make your way back to the ‘real world’ outside the theatre.

A lot has gone on behind the scenes to provide you with this experience: investors and sponsors were found, a playwright penned the original play, directors, actors, lighting technicians, set designers, costumers, dialogue coaches, caterers, ushers – many, many people played a role in providing you with the opportunity for an evening’s entertainment. All that was left for you to do was schedule the play in your diary, pay your money, and show up.

Contrast that experience with ones you may have had at work when attending a meeting. What are the similarities and differences? At first glance they seem worlds apart – after all, one is leisure, the other work.

Scripted Play                                             Work Meeting

Theatre                                                       Meeting room

Optional to attend                                       Often mandatory

Usually enjoyable                                       Not another *%^$# meeting!

With friends                                                 With work colleagues

Lot of attention to staging                            Staging? What’s that?

Clear beginning and end                             Have we started yet? Why are we still here?

The audience is integral                              I might as well be invisible

Everybody works towards success           Who’s responsible here?

Follows a script                                           Follows an agenda

The biggest difference might be that the play is scripted, and the director and performers are simply interpreting the carefully-crafted words and bringing the story to life. Albeit they have to learn a lot of lines.

Meetings are not scripted. Of course not – well, not usually anyway. Some meetings are scripted. They turn out to be a presentation. The closest most meetings come to having a script is an agenda, and even that is a tenuous link. An agenda is an order of proceedings – hardly a well-crafted script. Often we don’t know what is going to happen, and what people are going to say, in a meeting. Some people might turn up with their own agenda too, hidden or otherwise.

There would be a lot more in common between a meeting and a play if there was no script. That’s closer. There’s usually no script for a meeting. So let’s revisit the theatre. Same theatre, but this time there’s no set – the stage is pretty bare. The performers come on stage. There’s the same feeling of expectation, but this time it has an element of danger. Maybe danger is too strong, at least uncertainty. There is no script for this performance. No script. The performers have no lines to learn because they have no idea what they will be saying, or doing. These are improvisors. They will spontaneously make up the story, the dialogue and the action – often based on audience suggestions – in the moment. It’s not rehearsed. Maybe the performers are exceptional people, with talents the rest of us can only dream about. Not so. The skills that improvisors bring to the stage, we can all develop – and bring to our workplaces.

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I wrote the above in a notebook in mid 2007, even before I started this blog, and found it today while searching for something else. Fair to say I’m still exploring these links. And there’s still a long way to go. And I think it’s worth it. Funny that I had to wait this long to find a group of people willing to explore these edges of work with me. Funnier still that I’ve yet to meet two of them. That’s being on the edge!

What is your learning edge?

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can’t see from the center.

Kurt Vonnegut

We now know it’s not enough to just bring our brains to work. The difficult issues we’re asked to explore require us to access and apply our whole intelligence to problem-solving, creativity and innovation, especially in the face of global and local social and environmental issues.

And it can be hard work. Which is why I spend a lot of time just trying to keep up, and developing my own skills and capacities. These days, it’s not so much learning new processes – that I can do easily, by talking with colleagues and chasing up information on line. What I can’t learn so easily is how to be responsive, compassionate, and to take risks. This takes something else – presence, awareness and a willingness to go to my edge.

I’ve started a little business with three colleagues in the UK called Edges of Work and we’ve been exploring what it means to go to our edge - or to encourage others to their edge. There seems to be three parts to this:

First, people will go to their edge more willingly if they feel they’re in the right company – with people who can support as well as provoke them.

Second, we think there is a sweet spot. It’s when there is enough challenge to create excitement and curiosity – but not so much that people lose control of their bladders or feel dragged somewhere they don’t want to go.

Third, it’s about being adventurous  and creative in the activities used. A lot of our work is inspired by art, theatre, improvisation and other ways of working that get beyond just talking and thinking.

The thing is, it’s hard to go to your edge alone. Which is part of the thinking behind convening a gathering of people willing to explore our learning edge together. If you’d like to join me and about 35 others from diverse backgrounds exploring our edges, better register now (especially as early bird registration closes on May 1st).

Facilitation in pictures

In March I was delighted to facilitate a workshop at the Malaysian Facilitators’ Conference in Kuala Lumpur. And yesterday, “The world is getting smaller and smaller”, wrote a friend in an email. “Recently I contracted an artist for a project and saw this on her blog.”

Thanks to the amazing Wendy Wong of Welenia Studios for capturing my workshop in such a beautiful way.

 Click here to find out more.

When I was in charge of producing various forms of innovation such as new legislation, new partnerships, new community engagement approaches, new carbon management approaches, etc [at a large government agency] someone said to me we were having success because I employed talented, young people who could cope with uncertainty.

I replied that it was a bit more than “being comfortable with uncertainty”; I actually sought talented, young people who “actively looked for uncertainty because they knew that is where the biggest opportunities for positive change exist”.

Terry A’Hearn
Director, Global Regulatory Innovation, WSP Environment & Energy, UK

Once a decade conferencing

As many of you reading this blog will know, I’m sort of keen on improvisation theatre – especially on what I’ve learnt that influences my facilitation approach. Things like making your partner look good, seeing everything a group, or individuals, do or say, as an offer, and understanding status and how to shift it. I can’t imagine facilitating now without knowing this stuff.

And about once a decade, I get a rush of blood to the head and decide to convene a conference. In the 1990s it was Live and Earthy – a fantastic conference for community educators. In the 2000s (is that how you say it?) it was The Naked Facilitator, a conference for facilitators (naturally) which was to be (unknown to me at the time) an opening for all manner of opportunities. And this decade? Well, it’s Thriving In Uncertainty.

Why once a decade? It takes a lot of mental and emotional energy to host a conference. Maybe it takes me a few years to forget just how much work is involved, until I’m happy to jump on board again. And given my advanced years, this may well be the last conference I host!

So, if you want to know what all the fuss is about in relation to applied improv, maybe you’d like to come along. As well as the Applied Improvisation Network, I’ve partnered with Melbourne Playback Theatre Company to host the conference. They are a world class playback theatre company (playback is a form of improvised theatre where audience stories are brought to life). Oh, and if you’re wondering if you have to get up on stage, or act, or do anything even remotely scary, the answer is no.

You will get an opportunity to hang out with world-class improvisors and learn how they use their skills to engage groups.

It would be great to see you there.

You can check out more about the conference here (early bird registration closes on May 1st).

Rock balancing

After a particularly busy week, and with another looming, today’s glorious autumn weather and a bit of free time drew me to the beach. And a bit of rock balancing. I like being on my own when balancing rocks. I like the solid feel of the rocks. I like letting go of anything other than believing it’s possible. HT to Chris Corrigan.

Sharing the love

Looking forward to this Creative Performance Exchange Meetup: reflections of a roving facilitator, on May 3.

And this, In the Minds of Entrepeneurs; The Playful Entrepeneurs on May 10.

Would love to see you there.

Thoughts on leadership

Everybody has a view on leadership. I’m wary of anyone who says they have figured out the 5 things that great leaders do or the 7 things that great leaders never do etc. The internet is full of these sorts of posts. It seems no matter what else we say, we humans like lists, and we like them even more when someone else does the work for us. I could easily spin off on a post about lists – maybe another day.

What I really want to share are a few great insights from Phelim McDermott’s talk On Death and Doing Nothing. You should read the whole thing. It’s about his thoughts on leadership from the perspective of an artistic director. Here’s what stood out.

“Keith Johnstone has a game where people say “let’s …” then everyone says “Yes Let’s” and everyone does it.

A: Let’s.. All jump on the spot”

Everyone: “Yes let’s..” and everyone does it.

People think it’s a game about agreeing and saying yes to everything with a cheery grin.

But it’s actually much more subtle than that. What you are supposed to do in the game is notice whether you really are saying yes congruently. If you can’t really say yes then you sit down and drop out. So you are noticing whether you can say yes to the suggestions. It’s as much about finding out what people can say yes to easily, as about mindlessly agreeing. If you continue playing this game what you discover are there are some things which make lots of people sit down fast. Some things that are suggested are really easy to gleefully agree to… other things…

Over time, what you discover is that those things that are satisfyingly easy to accept are sort of already happening within the group. They are latent as ideas… “Emergent.”

“Good ideas” that people have or “wacky” suggestions are not so easy to say yes to partly because you find yourself asking…

“Is that a good idea?” by then it’s too late and your out of the moment… Sit down.

This is a touchstone for good group creativity.. The ideas have emerged from a group mind or process. Someone naming this before your conscious mind is even aware of it is as satisfying as laying an egg. As enjoyable as a great film ending that feels right because a bit of you knew it all along.. but didn’t know it knew it yet.”

I love the way Phelim unpacks this seemingly simple game and what it can reveal if you stick with it long enough. This is something that Johnnie and I have been exploring too. The capacity to know when to stick with something or when to abandon it seems to me to be fundamental to leadership. Yet impossible to learn in any traditional sense – it’s a way of knowing that is emergent rather than predictable.

Phelim has more to say about the illusion of control too:

“We love the security of the illusion that someone is in control. Even more than the discomfort of a potentially more creative process. That’s how we want our leaders: ”Reassuringly blameable.”

Now that’s a different spin on leadership – ‘reassuringly blameable’ – and oh, so common. We seem to be riddled with the need to have someone to blame when things go wrong, or not as we expected more likely. I’ve been in this position a few times when facilitating groups where the need to be comfortable over-rides any need for emergence or discovery, and the absence of comfort is blamed on the facilitator, and not necessarily the topic being explored – which may be inherently uncomfortable and messy. Hence my reluctance to buy into the oft-quoted facilitator mantra of creating a ‘safe’ space for uncomfortable topics. Uncomfrtable is uncomfortable. Messy is messy. Unknown is unknown. No amount of massaging from me, or anyone else, including leaders, will change that.

“If your job as a leader is not to tell people what to do. What is it?

Well I think I would say it’s to model being comfortable with being uncomfortable. To be comfortable not knowing.

To model holding a space where we recognise how the world really is. Which is that it is all self organising and none of us is in control.

However we can notice what is happening, what season our creativity, or organisation, or our self is in and not fight it but wake up to the reality of it and ride it, be totally present to this life process so it can unfold.

To become what Harrison Owen calls a “wave rider”.

To recognise that none of us is in control.

As leaders we can create inviting environments in which people can connect to and be aware of their own impulses.. Awake enough to follow them. To notice that the leadership role could actually belong to anyone in the room at any time.”

Amen to that.

Meetings or Meetups?

After September 11 in 2001 in New York strangers started saying hello to each other. There was a yearning for community, says Matt Meeker, co-founder of Meetup. Today meetup.com facilitates off-line group meetings on any imaginable topic, now in 101 countries.

I’m new to Meetups. I participate in two Meetup Groups in Melbourne: The Creative Performance Exchange and The Collaboratory Melbourne. I have met the most amazing, talented and inspirational people, and learnt so much from them. It’s fair to say I’m a huge fan of Meetups.

Generally, I’m not a joiner of groups, especially if there’s even a sniff of agendas, minutes, and traditional meeting procedure. Nor am I a fan of meetings per se. They tend to be a way for people in organisations to legitimately gather together, and looking in from the outside, seem to be out of control. I know people whose days are just full of meetings, and their email full of meeting notifications. They complain about these meetings. A lot.

Compare that with a Meetup. There’s an invitation, a host, and one or more featured presenters of a particular topic that is described in quite a bit of detail. The ones I attend start and finish on time. I can see how many other people are attending and who they are. There’s often a follow-up post with pictures and further information. There might also be an accompanying Yammer discussion leading up to and after the Meetup.

Imagine if organisations created internal Meetups instead of meetings.

Hi. Why do you do what you do?

Imagine if this is what we said to each other when we met for the first time? Imagine if we were able to answer the why, instead of defaulting to what?

My friend Andrew Suttar has been exploring this and sharing it around The Hub in Melbourne. I’m thankful to him for challenging my thinking. And to John Baxter too, for catching and sharing some of these thoughts.

There’s also a TED Talk by Simon Sinek about how great leaders inspire action. Typically, we all talk about what we do and how we do it. Guilty. Rarely do we even get to why we do what we do.

Simon Sinek suggests we turn that around – and this is what inspiring leaders do, they talk about the why first, then the how, and finally the what.

I wanted to explore this for myself. And it’s harder than it seems. So I went searching for more of Simon Sinek’s work and found this video about the value of human experiences to build trust. Yes, I recognise the irony of posting this on-line.

I completely agree with his conclusion that we need more human interaction and more conversations.