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?

Community building with Playback Theatre

We cannot hold a torch to light another’s path without brightening our own. Ben Sweetland

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!

Nick Owen keynote at the improv conference, Portland Oregon

Thought I’d try some live blogging. I’m at the Applied Improv Conference in Portland Oregon with about 100 other people. It’s day two – and Nick is our only keynote. The title of his session is called Touching the Heart: Exploring Core Values through Personal Storytelling.

He’s doing some introductory stuff – building rapport with the audience (that’s us). He’s doing that by telling personal stories – and he has some ppt slides that support, rather than distract. He’s now telling a fable – 17 camels – and you can hear a pin drop.

Leadership themes that emerged from the story – generosity, saving face, give it away and it comes back, noticing more, being grateful for the smallest things, imparting knowledge. Now he’s linked the fable, and the themes back to improvisation. Nice incorporation.

The more we give out the more we get back. It’s not about denying fear but facing our fear – improv provides a way to do that. A gift is loving what you do – many people don’t have this. Generally, improvisers love what they do.

In the corporate world – learning and development is mostly about skills and competency, but we know what’s really important is relationships.

Now it’s time for another story. He uses story well to punctuate the presentation and reinforce key messages. And it’s tied back to leadership.

A bit of theory now – and tied back to the story to make it more accessible – Ken Wilbur’s 4 fields of action – professional (It), personal (I), cultural (You + I = We), infrastructure (Its): inner/outer – self/others. Learning a lot about how to structure a keynote presentations by doing this live blogging. Use of metaphor and reincorporation.

Most businesses work in the professional and infrastructure realm because it’s safe and measurable. Improvisation has so much to offer because it brings in the personal and cultural. We have to start with ourselves. So now we’re doing a Bio-poem. Here’s how to do it.

First line: Your name

Second line: 3 adjectives alliterated

Third line: Who has loved…

Fourth line: Who wanted…

Fifth line: Always… (and includes) never…

Your name…

And here’s the thing – the structure gives us, well, structure. At the other end of the spectrum is chaos. There’s a tension between structure and chaos, and the tension is the field of form, action and innovation. Creative artists know this and lean towards the chaos end (too much leads to disintegration). Businesses generally want to hang on to the structure (too much leads to stuckness). Neither is good. We need a dance between structure and chaos. We all operate in the field of uncertainty.

What gives us the confidence to operate this way – how can we connect with our values and be true to ourselves, and show up authentically in the world?

Now he’s exploring Otto Scharmer’s U theory.

1. Intending: What is life calling me to do?

2. Sensing: Observe, observe, observe. Listen, really listen. Take time to notice what I know.

3. Presencing: Connect to source: From a place of deep quiet allow inner knowing to emerge.

4. Executing: Test. Apply new ideas in real contexts and notice effects.

(“Business is the only group I know that don’t know what rehearsal means.”)

5. Evolving: Embody the new in sustainable eco-system.

This is an intuitive model. Business has a huge over-reliance on the rational, says Nick. Business is stuck in rationality.

Scharma also talks about 4 types of listening:

1. Downloading – I alreday know that – closed mind

2. Scientific inquiry – how interesting , let me explore that, open-minded

3. Conversational enquiry – empathy, let me REALLy listen to what you have to say, so as I can listen with an open mind and an open heart

4. Generative – resonating with the whole field around me

Bringing it together now: I like the way Nick weaves story and models.

Now introducing spiral dynamics : 8 codes that drive development.

8. Turquoise: Deep Human Code – an integrated, systemic way

7. Yellow: Complexity Code

6. Green: Inclusion Code: everyone has a place, a contribution – awakening of understanding; paradox is that nothing gets done because we’re too busy listening to everyone, whether they have something to say or not

5. Orange: Achievement Code: Looking at now – technology, material success, but asking what life is all about

4. Blue: Obedience Code: look outside selves to give structure and order and hierarchy eg religion, organisational command and control structure

3. Red: Power Code eg teenagers, how can I get what I need in a scarce world, about me, me, me – blame outside themselves

2. Purple: Tribal code eg fighting, fleeing, fornicating

1. Beige: Survival Code eg post-disaster

We all show up in all these – and the values in each are different. Has caused a bit of frission in the group. Spiral dynamics tends to do that. Often some pushback and a sense of hierarchy. As Chris Corrigan jsut whispered in my ear: “It’s hard to do a quick overview of spiral dynamics!” True.

Now Nick is talking about the application of the model – that is, how hard it is to take people from one level to another, especially if we skip levels. I guess that’s why it’s called ’spiral dynamics’ – it’s not linear, and it’s dynamic. From my own perspective, I can slip between the codes depending on the circumstances, safety, my mood and of course, my values.

Applying this to AIN, Yael is talking about where we are at as an organisation – the green code, inclusion? Mostly. There’s also a bit of blue and green in there too, I think. Lots of implications.

Now we’re returning to leadership strategies. POA: Politeness, Openness and Accountabily…connect with all levels.

And finishing with an activity. Sharing personal stories – the same story but with different people. My story went deeper and the other person’s response influenced the story. Our lives are so full of so many stories – many that we have lost track of. Our stories are inside of us, when we tell each other’s stories we reconnect with each other.

Telling personal stories reveal our vulnerabilities. When I share my vulnerability with you, and you with me – we open up to possibility.

Nick’s description of mid-life: “When you stop counting the time since you were born, and start wondering how long it will be till you need an exit strategy.”

Courage – to embody and live our values.

Further reading:

Nick Owen, More Magic of Metaphor, Crownhouse, UK, 2004 and The Salmon of Knowledge, Crownhouse, UK 2009.

Chan Kim W, Blue Ocean Strategy, Harvard Business School Press, USA 2005

Jim Collins, Good to Great, London, Random House, 2001

and more at www.presencing.com

What’s catching my attention

Performance Reviews

I’d  had a discussion with a friend earlier this week about performance reviews. I haven’t heard many good comments about them. And luckily I don’t have to partake – my performance is reviewed, well, every time I perform! Alex Kjerulf posted this update on Facebook today:

The link he refers to – why performance reviews are a waste of time –  is well worth a look.

Also from Alex, this Dilbert cartoon

Visual, back-of-the-napkin explanation

Dan Roam, author of Back of the Napkin has created this explanation of the US health care system. As well as being informative, it’s a good example of visual story telling of a complicated issue.

More about the US health care system and town hall meetings

Chris Corrigan writes about what we can learn from disrupted meetings and about ‘chaordic confidence’

Opening Space for Conversations

In my last post I said, “If I have done my job well I will have set up the preconditions for whatever transactions need to take place to emerge as a result of the workshop. And the best way I’ve found to do that is to open space for conversations, and to get out of the way!”

I want to explore the concept of ‘opening space for conversations’.

And while my favoured way to do this is by using Open Space Technology, it’s not the only way.

Sometimes, a full-blown open space event, even a short one, is not possible. Although I have been known to re-arrange the room during a break, quickly prepare a matrix and a blank agenda wall, and move right on into open space when the room returns. I know, it breaks all the rules about preparing the group and the sponsor etc etc. But sometimes, it’s just good to open space and see what happens. Usually good things happen – which is why I do it.

World Cafe is another way of opening space for conversations. I like to use what I call World Cafe Lite.

And then there’s the breaks. Long breaks are good for conversations. And if the workshop is highly structured (and I’m unable to influence this) I try to at least encourage long breaks.

Break-out sessions. I prefer to give people a broad topic and let them do their own exploration and sense-making. I also give them as long as I possibly can for them to simply have conversations.

Oh, and I find conversations happen best without tables.

It may sound, to some, a waste of time. Wouldn’t it be better to get on and DO something, AGREE on something, MAKE A DECISION? Maybe. Actions, agreements and decisions emerge from conversations. They become unworkable, I think, when the conversation part is skipped. If it’s not necessary for a conversation, then it’s probably not necessary to have a workshop and a facilitator.

What presses your buttons?

The term ‘change management’ presses my buttons. So instead of responding straight away with a rant, I thought I’d explore what the term means to me.

First ‘change’ – there’s two types of change: change that I initiate, like changing jobs or moving house, or taking a vacation. Then there’s change that is imposed on me by someone else: a new train timetable, a restructure at work, a new way of acting that someone else has decided is necessary (aka behaviour change). Okay, so there’s more than two types of change. There’s incremental change, and there’s catastrophic change.

Now ‘management’ – able to influence, direct, control. Some things really do need management: building a house, or any other complicated project; running a household – paying bills, putting the garbage out, organising maintenance, taking the dog to the vet – all manner of things need to be managed. Good thing too.

It’s when change and management are lumped together that I get a bit antsy. What does change management mean, I wonder? I guess it may be possible, and necessary, when moving office locations for example. Change management could be handy. But it often relates to cultural change – and I’m not sure it’s possible, or even desirable to manage cultural change.

I was once asked how to ‘ensure a controlled and managed change process’? I have no idea! I don’t think it IS possible. So instead of ‘change management’ I offer the following alternative: ‘change awareness’ – a process of creating an environment in which change (read cultural change) can be explored, played with, and adopted in an organic way that makes sense to people.

How to do that? Open space, enable conversations, build relationships and trust that people will do what’s necessary, based on their passions and the responsibility they’re willing to take. Yep – it’s about using open space as a means of being together in community and organisations to build connections and culture.