Being provocative

When Andrew Rixon and I were working together recently we were talking about clients who say they want something different in facilitation, but all of their subsequent behaviour (and anxieties) point to something else altogether.

Andrew shared with me this tool he uses to engage clients in a more meaningful conversation about what they are really willing to commit to. When I first saw it, it didn’t look this pretty and was missing a third question. Together we nutted out the final question about failure. Andrew calls this provocative facilitation, and I call it disruptive facilitation. Whatever you call it, it’s about shaking things up rather than making things easy.

I think this is a great way to open up the conversation. I also think the three questions are nested, with the easiest one first. By the time you get to talking about trying something quite different where outcomes may be nothing like those expected and that failure is a real possibility, you have reached quite a different client/facilitator relationship than one where you suggest you can predict and control the outcomes – which IMHO is nonsense.

Is D & M making a comeback over DM?

Is all this micro-blogging, direct messaging, status updating and skimming the web making us crave something else? Do we want to have deeper, longer and more meaningful conversations? Sarah Wilson writes about this in her latest column/blog. Here’s a few snippets:

Everyone I know is glued to TED.com…And when they’re not they’re going to “in conversation evenings”  on a Tuesday at their local pub. Indeed, thinkers have become sexy.

You can’t go deep on the fly or with 2010-style distractions. And deep needn’t be dark and morose. The point is to penetrate, to peel off layers. To keep asking why, and then why again. And to develop your own opinions. Talking deeply extends you. It sees you reaching other people in ways you might not with a casual chat. [And] you’re careful and mindful of what you say and give, which creates intimacy.

A deep and meaningful conversation provides something else as well. It’s satisfying. Many of my friends who still work in organisations and go to an office at least a few days a week, seem to spend a lot of time in meetings. I don’t think a meeting is a place for a deep and meaningful conversation. And often one meeting runs into another, lunch is eaten on the fly. So when are there times for any sort of conversation, let alone deep and meaningful?

Sometimes when facilitating a workshop I deliberately slow down the pace. Some people might ask how long they have to discuss such-and-such a topic. The answer is irrelevant. We don’t have conversations by the clock. There is, rather, some internal and natural cadence to conversations, an ebb and flow, a slowing down, stopping, reflecting and restarting that is difficult to notice in a 10-minute conversation. Or in one that is continually interrupted.

Some people hate this. They check the time. Glance up to see if I’m about to move on. Get fidgetty and disgruntled. I think this happens because sometimes we forget how to pay attention to others. I can draw on my own experiences here. When I’m anxious to get out of a conversation, it’s because I’m not sure where it’s heading and I’m not prepered to invest in either the time or myself or the others to make the most of it. And, hey, it may go no-where. There are no guarantees. Yet often it is surprising where focus, attention, generosity and perseverence will lead. I think that’s true of conversations. I think it’s true of workshops.

And let’s be clear, not every conversation needs to be deep and meaningful. There are good reasons and lots of instances where a quick, superficial or transactional conversation is all that’s needed. Just look at how annoying it is when one of those pesky telemarketers tries to engage in ‘normal’ conversation by inquiring after your day. Yuk! And it’s pretty hard to have deep and interesting conversations if you’ve got nothing to talk about – so you have to live your life too.

Maybe we’re all searching for ways to live our life, get on with things and have time and space to talk about what’s important with who’s important to us. I know I am.

Disruptive facilitation #6 – Lessons from maths

I really enjoyed  this talk by Dan Meyer. I was attracted to it because I used to like maths, the problem solving and the patterns – until I got a teacher who sucked all the enthusiasm out of me. I didn’t expect this talk to reveal parallels with disruptive facilitation.

At about 2.50 minutes in Dan introduces ‘impatience with irresolution’ where we come to expect a sitcom-style 22 minute resolution to all of our problems. I really sat up and took notice then. He talks about ‘patient problem solving’ and his role of using compelling questions and student intuition to arrive at compelling answers. He argues that existing maths text books provide a smooth, or easy, route, whereas patient problem solving involves conversation. Now I’m really interested.

How does he do this? At about 6.55 in he explains. It’s all about taking away. I’m reminded of one of my major frustrations with facilitating. While issues may develop over months or years, there’s often an expectation that a single facilitated workshop will resolve everything and come up with action plans a la a sitcom resolution.

Finally, Dan recounts his five steps to better maths engagement. Could just as easily be applied to facilitation, especially disruptive facilitation.

1. Use multimedia

2. Encourage intuition

3. Ask the shortest question you can

4. Let (participants) build the problem

5. Be less helpful

What is a conversation?

There appears to be a resurgence in conversation. I’ve heard this a few times lately: “We need to have a community conversation about this [issue]“.

That’s a nice shift from debate. “We need a national debate” has been a cry long heard in Australia on issues ranging from indigenous health to water allocation. Debate presumes an argument, with winners and losers. Conversation presumes a sharing of perspectives and exploration of options. Sometimes it’s simply tossing around thoughts and ideas to see where it leads us.

Conversations are often the cultural glue that binds people, or opens minds, or surfaces our differences. Instead of trying to win you over to my way of thinking, a conversation is about understanding – ourself and others.

So I’m in favour of conversations.

Why then, when conversations are organised they often include a single person, with a microphone, talking to many who passively listen? I’m pretty sure the audience is intelligent, and would have a lot to offer in such a ‘conversation’. So let’s keep the conversations going AND open them up.

Do your ideas matter?

Leif Hansen writes this in a newsletter: “Are you like me in feeling that life is just too precious to waste time going to events where we’re talked at as if we’re merely disembodied information-processing machines?  I think most of us would rather just download those experiences and listen to them while driving, thank you very much!”

Johnnie Moore writes of  his “frustration with rooms of smart people listening politely to long winded keynotes and dire panels, as if they’re not actually capable of intelligent thought or dissent.”

He’s referring to a post by Jeff Jarvis which starts like this: “This is bullshit. Why should you be sitting there listening to me? To paraphrase Dan Gillmor, you know more than I do…But right now, you’re the audience and I’m lecturing. That’s bullshit.”

Are you seeing a theme here?

I think it’s time we recognised speeches, key note presentations, Q & A sessions for what they are – an anachronism from a past era. An era where the verb google didn’t exist, and where the media determined who and what we listened to. We are living in a different era – one that isn’t served by one-to-many ‘expert’ presentations, no matter how they are dressed up.

We need engagement, interaction, curiosity and as Seth Godin writes in Linchpin, to “solve interesting problems”, where ‘interesting’ is the key word.” These are the questions that google can’t answer.

Or as Tim Brown says in Change by Design – let’s ask questions that begin with ‘How might we…?’

Why make a big deal out of speeches, presentations, Q & A sessions? Surely if people want to listen, they can? Problem is, when captured, in person, at an event there’s no choice. Someone else has decided that everyone in the room should hear what so-and-so has to say. And maybe what they have to say is indeed interesting and relevant. The issue is around the paternalistic notion of someone else knowing what’s so important that everyone in the room should be held captive. If it’s a TED talk, that will only last about 20 minutes. However, I can download every TED talk and listen while I’m exercising, driving or sitting under a tree.

I’ve never been to a TED event but I can bet that the room would be buzzing after listening to a number of presentations – buzzing with people interacting with each other. I’m also betting many people would find the interaction stimulating.

So, how might we make best use of the amazing brain power of a group of people together in the same room?

And why does it matter? Let’s explore this question first. It matters because if we can’t engage a captive audience and encourage them to share their knowledge and ideas, how are we going to engage them in many of the wicked problems that beset us? We might be losing valuable opportunities to tap into the broader intelligence.

I’d like to further explore the notion of ‘keynote listeners’ and encourage greater use of processes like Open Space and World Cafe that enable conversations on which to springboard ideas. That means everyone in the room has to take some responsibility, and maybe that’s the real issue.

Threads

Two things I’ve been neglecting lately – listening to podcasts and exercising. Lucky for me they’re not incompatible. So today, as I was becoming reacquainted with bikes, treadmills, pulleys and weights, I also turned to my trusty iPod, crammed full of music and podcasts. I had to turn it up really loud so as I could hear what I wanted to listen to over the LOUD MUSIC and day-time television programs.

I haven’t yet got around to loading more podcasts on to my iPod, so I revisited a couple. What’s Love Got To Do With It? is a Hugh and the Rabbi Podcast on Johnnie Moore’s website. It features Hugh MacLeod, Pinny Gniwisch, Johnnie Moore and Euan Semple and rambles around the topic of love and organisations.

Here’s a few take-aways:

• the importance of intimacy, the ordinary smallness of relationships compared with trying too hard to connect

• it’s the small stuff, companionship, for example, that holds everything together – and that’s why Twitter works, people nattering about nothing – that what makes it valuable

• transactions fall out of conversations, they’re not planned

• the role of authority is changing – once it was conferred and  meant throwing your weight around, now it’s more about having a compelling argument or idea that attracts people

• “authority is the power to be the author of your own experience”, not in terms of just getting what you want, but so that you create the experience, your voice has value, and you don’t need to take authority from an outside source

• And on being brave: acknowledge your own authority, say what you think, don’t devalue what you have to say or your ideas, don’t dismiss it, don’t argue against yourself. Start up a blog (or whatever it is you want to do). Just do it your way.

Sounds like another way of saying: put down your clever and pick up your ordinary. I’ve also written about this here and here.

Go here to listen for yourself or to download the podcast.

We are social beings

“Even daydreaming is DOING something!” Yes! Yes, it is. Thanks, David Robinson, for reminding me!

And so is talking, about nothing in particular, and everything at once. Who knows what ideas are sparked, what partnerships are forged, what forks in the road are taken? The simple, yet profound, pleasure of conversation is vastly under-rated, I think.

Consider my day job – facilitation. When I’m doing my best work as a facilitator I’m enabling conversation. To some it may feel slow, unproductive, even a waste of time. Yet it is through this most basic of human interactions that everything and anything becomes possible. Our organisations, our structures, and the systems we create are often blockages to the flow of conversation.

Do I believe then that conversation is the answer? Absolutely not! I do think it is an answer, a way to navigate the complexity of our lives and this world we occupy. Sometimes we become so enamoured of doing something, of being busy, and productive we forget to stop and talk with our fellow human beings. Sometimes being busy is a way of avoiding connecting with others.

This last week I’ve had more conversations than usual – some of them flippant, some pedestrian, some profound, some challenging. I’ve noticed myself being funny, caring, inquisitive, loving, self-absorbed, curious, bored, excited, drained, quiet, loud and thoughtful. Not all at once, though!

On the surface it looks like a typical summer holiday week. A friend from London staying for a few days, coffee in town with another friend, lunch with another who is about to start a new job, a visit from a long-time friend and confidante struggling with the expectations of The Boss, dinner, G & Ts, more friends drop in, more food, more wine, more conversations.

There’s no obvious answers to our collective and separate questions, no significant decisions, no amazing revelations. Yet. What we do have are our connections, shared experiences, and relationships that enable whatever comes next.

A ‘sliding door’ moment

Funny how things turn out. Way back in the 1990s I took some Playback Theatre classes – my intro to improvisation. Then early in the last decade, in 2004, I discovered the Applied Improvisation Network (then known as Improv in Business) on the web and took myself off to their conference in San Francisco. I decided to go to that conference because it was about *applied* improv and it included a day of open space and it was to conclude with a Playback Theatre performance and it was on the west coast of the USA, making it accessible from the east coast of Australia. Now I can see that making that decision was the turning point of the last decade for me.

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

Possibility

Maybe it’s the time of the year – long days, warm evenings, sitting about with a bottle of wine, chatting with good friends. End of the year, beginning of a new one. Is it any wonder that ideas abound? That anything seems possible?

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.

A great meeting? Oxymoron?

I took part in a great meeting today. True!

And I’m not good at meetings. Usually. They drain my energy, leaving me feeling as though I’ve lost something. Just between you and me, I struggle to be ‘good’ at meetings. I have even been known to exhibit all the behaviours I most dislike in workshop participants (and maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this).

This meeting left me feeling energised.

So what made it different?

1. We threw away the agenda and had a series of questions to generate discussion.

2. We huddled (instead of making ‘camp’ – thanks to David Robinson for this description). Making ‘camp’ means that you select a seat and spread your stuff to claim your space. In this meeting, I invited (well, no, that’s not true, I just made it an instruction) to leave all of our books and ‘stuff’ behind and sit as a tighter group up one end of one of those terrible long board tables.

3. We kept a record of our discussion using flip chart paper in the centre of the table (not up on the wall that would have created a further disconnect) making mind maps. Oh, and I also played with my new toy – the LiveScribe pen that records the conversations. Makes it easy to go back to later.

4. We invited another in who wasn’t in the room, using skype and a Mac laptop with a multi-directional screen so that his face (enlarged to fill the whole screen) was visible to all participants. Not only was he not in the room, he was on another continent and in a very different time zone, but was still an integral part of the meeting. The lap top was on the table, not projected onto a screen so that we could maintain the intimacy that encourages open discussion.

5. We kept to time. We agreed on a one hour discussion, then a break and then further discussion, until 15 minutes were left to quickly discuss some ‘business’ and we finished on time. Incidently, I discovered that the LiveScribe pen facilitates this by providing a discreet way of keeping track of how long we’d been talking.

Lots of lessons here for everyday meetings. Thankfully I don’t have to do this every day, and for those that you do, maybe some ideas to make them more, well, bearable?