An information sheet for a local community group arrived in my letterbox today. Here’s a few exerpts:

The [group] requires your input and support in order to maintain its vigour and effectiveness and to ensure that it is accurately representing your views.

and

Please provide us with an up-to-date email address as this facilitates communication and assists us in keeping costs to a minimum. If you do not wish to provide an email address, we ask that you regularly check our website to keep yourself informed of our activities.

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m unlikely to become involved with this group. The tone of their information sheet is demanding. I’d prefer an invitation. The group came together to tackle a particular issue and has extrapolated that they need to continue to tackle further community issues as they arise. So now they have a President and a committee and regular meetings and membership fees and voting rights. Yawn.

Oh, but look, there’s a website and a blog. Maybe all’s not lost. I can contribute on-line. Sadly no. I can send an email and the blog page comes up as not found. Oh well.

Just after receiving this I watched Clay Shirky’s video on TED about the generosity economy and the uses of the vast amounts of cognitive surplus made accessible because of technology. I wrote down a few key points: we like to create and we want share; design for generosity; social constraints make us more generous than contractual constraints; add community value and civic value. You can watch it here.

Back to my local community group. I’d follow them on Twitter. I might even join a Facebook Group or maybe a private group site. I’d contribute to blog discussions. In fact there are many ways in which I’d like to be involved. And I could do so from wherever in the world I happen to be. I’d happily sit around and talk about issues over a coffee or a glass of wine – real or virtual (skype is such a boon). Attending a monthly meeting and sitting through an agenda with items submitted to the Secretary seven days in advance? I don’t think so.

What a lost opportunity for engagement and participation – and to tap in to the cognitive surplus that no doubt exists around here.

A couple of weeks ago the husband of a friend of mine was killed in an accident. This has left her to raise their four children on her own. Except she’s not completely on her own, of course. She lives and works in a small rural community and within days of the news spreading amongst the locals a roster for the next six months had been set up to provide meals, house cleaning and transport for the kids to sports and other activities.

This ‘hastily formed network’ and its very practical activities was achieved without plans, workshops, proposals, or performance indicators. Some people saw a need, came together, worked out how to proceed, and got to work. How hard is that?

Maybe we should take that sort of concern, initiative and responsibility to work too.

Post Script: Checking out a few of my favourite blogs this windy and rainy Sunday evening, I stumbled onto Hugh MacLeod’s latest post where he says:

The work people do is all driven by different things- money, ambition, intellect, sex, whatever. The work I do, and the work for a lot of people who read my blog and buy my cartoons, seems to be largely driven by the need to “connect”.

We like doing stuff that connects with people. We’re “Connectors”.

Spooky. I don’t think I read Hugh’s post before I wrote my own. Not today anyway. Maybe I read it yesterday, and just like Keith Sawyer writes in his book Group Genius, most ideas build upon others, are generated incrementally rather than as a blast of creative insight. Maybe this is an example. Or maybe it’s just a coincidence!

Your body knows before your brain
I catch myself over thinking. I can see others thinking too, coming up with an idea or a plan before doing anything. Hesitating. Rejecting the first idea because it’s not ‘good’ enough. Trust. It comes back to trusting that the movement in your body will spark something in your mind. I can’t tell you how often I have proven this to be true. Not knowing what I’ll say or do, just moving into the performance space, whether that be on the stage or in a workshop, and trusting that whatever I need will surface when I need it. Would I do this all the time, or in every situation? No. But I can train myself to do it on those occasions when that’s what’s needed. When more thinking, or more planning, will not add an iota of value.

Start anywhere, and just start!
When faced with not knowing, complexity and no right answer, where is the best place to start? That question has no answer. It’s nonsensical. Start anywhere and see where it leads. If it leads to a dead-end, try something else. The trick is to just start, and to start anywhere.

Strong offers are worth their weight
A strong offer is clear, it’s robust, it’s obvious, it’s easy to respond to. A weak offer, like a hint, doesn’t support your partner or others, and it’s ambiguous. Support each other by making and responding to strong offers.

We learn, and connect,  from doing and watching
We learn different things from doing – being in the work – and from watching others do the work. This is true of Playback. The perspective of a player (the actor) is quite different from the perspective of the teller (of a moment or story), and is even different to each and every audience member. Yet we remain connected – the players, the teller, and the audience – through our common experiences, our empathy and our differences.

It’s okay to do nothing
Sometimes, our presence is enough. We don’t need to be doing something, when others know we are there supporting them. Our presence is enough. That’s all.

Our stories reveal a lot more about us than anything else
I might tell you about what I do, where I live, my family, my work – and you will know me through that lens. Yet if I tell you my stories, if I reveal my vulnerabilities, and you can share my laughs and my tears, will you not know me a lot better? Playback Theatre embodies that sharing.

Thanks to Mike McEvoy, Ian David, Glynis Angell, Andrew Gray and Ernie Gruner – all from Melbourne Playback Theatre Company – who  conducted the workshop and contributed to my learning. And thanks too to my fellow participants, who so willingly and generously shared their stories, and themselves.

“We don’t want a bigger audience – defined as passive transactional consumers of transactional content delivered on our terms. We want to have a deep attachment with our community – defined as their active participation in news and culture in safe places created by us for them – 24/7 on their terms.”

Is anyone listening yet?

How our lives are shaped by seemingly innocuous decisions. It was just a conference for heaven’s sake!

I didn’t know a single person. I met a few. And I went back the following year for another dose. And then again. And again. I’ve now been to five Applied Improv conferences. I’ve written often enough about what I’ve learned, here and here and here; how I’ve incorporated improv into my practice as a facilitator, here and here and here; how I use improv, here and here, and, most recently, my reconnection to Playback, here.

What I haven’t explored so much is what else I’ve gained from that simple decision. This post is inspired by a coaching program I’ve just completed with Patti Digh and David Robinson. I met these remarkable people (although I didn’t realise just how remarkable) at the AIN Conference in Banff in 2007. I truly thought, as we went our separate ways, that that would be it. I’d enjoyed their company, loved their workshop on diversity and how improv was used to explore abstract concepts, and expected nothing more. David flew back to one side of the United States, Patti to the other, and I flew back to Australia.

Fast forward to earlier this year when Patti and David announced an on-line coaching course. In the meantime, Patti had published her book, Life Is A Verb. I’d followed Patti on her blog, like squillions of others. I bought her book. And I bought her book for others. Geoff Brown and I did a podcast with Patti, and mused over numerous coffees about one day working with Patti and David. I still use their workshop as a touchstone of how improv can be incorporated to explore difficult topics. I started my own blog (in June 2007), joined Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn. This helped me stay connected to people I’d only met briefly. People like Patti and David.

So I signed up for the six-month course, knowing full well that I wouldn’t be able to fully participate. Remarkably, the timing of the calls was ‘down-under’ friendly. At some stage, travel and work would get in the way. Which it did – but I was surprised that I managed to hang in there for most of the program.

I’ve just listened to the recordings of the last four calls – all of which I missed. One after the other. Five hours’ worth. It’s difficult to be precise about what I’ve gained from this experience, because it’s ongoing. As I first heard from Chris Corrigan, and was reiterated by Patti during our last call, the conversations began before we came to them, and will continue long after. It’s these conversations that I value the most.

I know this is true because of tendrils. Tendrils of thought, of ideas, of knowledge that roam in my brain and surface when I need them most. And I’ve also learnt to trust that these tendrils WILL be there when I need them. Here’s some of my favourite take-aways:

• The answer to complexity is not more complexity
• You can’t progress along a monkey bar unless you let go, and it’s in that moment of letting go that possibility emerges
• My life is made up of concentric circles. Sometimes they overlap, sometimes they don’t. Nonetheless, these concentric circles are who I am (even if you only see some of them)
• I do my best work when I am mastering my own craft, and not performing for others
• You can’t follow something that hasn’t been initiated – so I have a choice to initiate, or wait for someone else and follow their lead. Both are legitimate. What’s not legitimate is to complain when no-one else is doing something that you’d like yourself. This is an opportunity to implement the JFDI policy!
• Relationship is everything: I am who I am, and know what I know, because of relationship.
• Sometimes you see the purpose after you’ve worn the path.
• Being can’t be passive – nor can living.
• My decisions come from who I am and what I value, rather than from what other people expect.
• My list of criteria that helps me decide what I want to do, also helps me decide what NOT to do – when to say ‘no’.

How else has that simple decision to attend a conference affected my life?

It has everything to do with the people I’ve met, the friendships formed, and the opportunities enabled.

Photo credit: Noosa Lakes Dusk by Tristan Clements

I was listening to Sir Ken Robinson on the radio today. He was asked about ‘lucky’ people – what makes some people lucky? He said it’s about seeing opportunities, rather than barriers. Whatever makes us lucky, I feel incredibly lucky – to be living right now, to be able to work in different countries and with amazing people, to have really good friends just around the corner and on the other side of the planet, to be able to use skype to pretty much talk to anyone, anywhere, any time, to have people who love me and support me, to live in a beautiful part of the world, to make enough money to be satisfied and not so much that I’m obsessed, and to have opportunities to take advantage of all that.

So I want to thank you for the part you’ve played, and to wish you a Happy Christmas or joyful holidays or just a relaxing break. And I’m looking forward to a lot more conversations, new and enduring relationships, and everything that flows from that.

I was in India. Chennai. A city of some million people. I asked one of the Indian participants the population of Chennai. To be fair, he wasn’t from there, and his answer was, “Maybe 5 million. Or it could be 10 million. Not sure.” I pointed out that that was a 5 million difference. He shrugged, and smiled. I guess that’s how you feel about population when you come from a country that has 1,140,000,000+ people.

I was facilitating a five-day workshop with numbers varying from 80+ people to around 30. Participants came from around the world. Some were fresh and enthusiastic. Others were tired and jaded. This made for some interesting dynamics! The expectations also varied widely with lots of factions and interest groups jockying for position. While this kept me busy trying to juggle all these expectations, I was also on high alert watching for offers and noticing without judging – harder than it sounds!

Even though I was surrounded by people, many of whom I had met before, it was a bit lonely. I couldn’t download all of my thoughts to anyone, so my computer and my friends that live in it became a lifeline to sanity, to laughs, to reality and to some bloody good advice. So to my friends on skype, on Facebook, on ning and on email – a heartfelt thank you.

My introduction to improvisation was via Playback Theatre. Playback is a form that uses real stories – moments and stories from the audience – as a basis for the enactment. The players use deep listening skills and metaphor to play back the stories capturing the emotion, and sometimes the sub-text. It can be funny or moving or tragic. Anything really. It’s great fun, and a privilege, to perform.

The folk from TrueStory Theatre were at the Applied Improv Conference and provided a great platform for us – newcomers and old hands alike – to explore playback.

One comment that stayed with me was from Christopher Ellinger, who said that “the purpose of playback is community building”. Improv is not usually associated with community building, so maybe this requires some exploration.

It’s described by TrueStory Theatre like this:

The mission of True Story Theater is to promote social healing by listening deeply to people’s stories and transforming them spontaneously into theater. Our events create a respectful atmosphere where every voice can be heard and any story told — however ordinary or extraordinary, difficult or joyful. True Story Theater offers audiences fresh perspectives, deeper connections, and a renewed appreciation for our common humanity.

I’m reminded of my own experiences learning playback and performing. We built community amongst our dispirate troupe of newbies grappling with the form by turning up each Tuesday evening and telling our own stories: there was the woman minister dealing with the hierarchy and expectations of the Church and her family; the daughter of social workers who had grown up in institutions; the male beautician who went on to become a regular playback performer; the young couple just starting an organic fruit and vegie business. Oh, and I was there too, just starting out on my own in business – and exploring improv for the first time.

We’d share moments from our week, and stories that grew and developed. It was like living in a real-life melodrama serial. And all the while we’d practice listening – listening for the essence of the story, a metaphor, what’s not said and how it could be restated as three sentences. We’d practice each of these in turn, and then we’d practice listening for all four at once. It was the most authentic listening training I’ve ever done. We’d practice playing back, taking on different roles and using different forms. We’d practice accepting offers, and moving the action on. We’d practice speaking up and shutting up. We’d practice making our partner look good. And we’d practice giving, because that’s what playback is all about – the teller giving their story to the players, and the players reshaping it and giving it back. That’s why I also think the essence of playback is community building – it creates shared stories. Your story becomes my story. It creates shared understanding – I can empathise with your experience. And it creates a shared experience, that bonds us and builds connection.

Playback is another manifestation of the power of conversation, telling stories and human connection. And it’s great fun!