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.

Meetings or Meetups? is a post from: vivmcwaters.com.au

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When facilitating workshops with many different groups and organisations, there is sometimes a disconnect between what people want to do and how it is expected to be done. Approaches that were once just fine are now struggling in the face of complexity, unpredictability and demands for creativity, innovation and agility.

To find out what has traction I’ve come up with a series of short, free workshops that explore some of these edges. I’m pretty excited about this. You might be interested in taking part? If so, check out the offerings over on my dedicated web site, Transforming the way we work.

Exploring the edges of the way we work is a post from: vivmcwaters.com.au

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A couple of things stood out: we learn words, then phrases and then grammar that eventually enables us to recombine them all to communicate our thoughts. That’s language. And we can learn notes, cords, and progressions that eventually enables us to recombine them all to express musical ideas. That’s music. This is how we learn different forms of literacy.

So far, so good.

Then there’s the Road to Improvisation. Part of the journey is learning new skills with a combination of exposure, a toolbox and practice. If improvisation is part of the journey, then an improvisor’s MINDSET is needed for the next phase. However, the budding improvisor is prone to rely on a safety net, just in case spontaneity lets them down at a crucial moment. At some point (and here’s where it gets fuzzy for me) there’s a decision to CHOOSE improvisation – a conscious choice? – and the necessity to LET GO (I’m reminded here of a trapeze artist letting go of the bar or a skier letting go of fear and leaning down the mountain) which culminates in what Aaron Berkowitz calls the ‘creator/witness phenomenon’.

“At this level of musical cognition, the improviser often achieves a seamless trade-off between his conscious and subconscious knowledge. He knows he’s creating the music and feels very much in control, yet he also feels as if he’s watching himself play, a paradox that Berkowitz calls the creator/witness phenomenon. “They’ll be playing and something happens that they didn’t quite expect,” Berkowitz said. “Then they react to that and it kind of starts this dialogue where the improviser is steering the ship, but is also being steered by the ship.”

Which brings me back to the question of improvisational facilitation. I think one of the greatest skills a facilitator can develop is to be spontaneous – to notice what’s happening and respond in the moment. In other words, to improvise. This is not the same as being unprepared. There’s a solid background of exposure to various forms of facilitation, a toolbox full of methods and techniques, and practice. Lots of practice.

I think just about anyone can learn to be a competent facilitator. My interest is in what does it take to develop an improvisor’s mindset as a facilitator, how to ditch the safety net (the plan, for example) and be always in choice when facilitating to become truly improvisational.

Due to a solid grounding in traditional facilitation plus exposure to improvisation, I’ve developed my own capacity as an improvisational facilitator. The hardest part has been learning to let go. It doesn’t always work, but when it does – wow! My challenge is to unpack how that happens so as I can help others learn how to improvise when facilitating. This is edgy, exciting work that I have a real passion for.

The road to improvisation is a post from: vivmcwaters.com.au

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Why be more playful? I think it opens opportunity. I think it’s fun and when I’m having fun I’m more likely to try something new or adventurous and who knows where it might lead? I also think it helps others to relax too. I was chatting with a friend the other day who played an improv game with a group of his colleagues. He said he learnt more about them in that few minutes than in years of regular meetings. He saw who jumped straight in, who opted out. He saw a different side to his colleagues. I wondered if it was a ‘different’ side, or whether he was seeing the ‘real’ person, rather than the work persona?

A few weeks ago I ran a workshop with a group of people using improv games for much of the time. Later, the feedback I received was that people felt “challenged, inspired, confused, excited and energised”. All from being playful! I’m reminded of the 80s when the management mantra was to leave your personal life at home and not bring your personal self and problems to the work place. Always seemed bizarre to me as to how I was supposed to split myself into the ‘work Viv and the ‘home’ Viv. Seems some people have taken this to heart though and still see work as ‘serious’ and play as well, something else that’s not really appropriate in the world of work. Thankfully this is changing, and there are lots of commentators who talk about the benefits of play and of having fun, yes, even at work!: Keith Sawyer, Alex Kjerulf. And it’s not a new theme for me either. I’ve written about it before here and here.

So, how to be more playful? As well as the usual paraphenalia I carry with me, I’m going to try and find ways of actually being playful more often. Maybe I should dig those juggling balls out of the cupboard and have them in my bag? Which brings me to the question of whether I need things to be playful? Or other people to play with? Or whether playfulness is a state of mind? I guess it’s all of the above.

My challenge is to be true to my own convictions: I know that play, and laughter, releases endorphins. I know that play triggers different parts of the brain. I know that the way we act when playing games is a window to how we act in other situations. I know that I’m more open when playing games. I know I have more ideas, and even if I don’t, I have more fun anyway. And I also know that I stress over what people will think of me when I suggest a game in lieu of a more serious, more conventional, approach.

It’s certainly easier, and maybe even safer, to be conventional, to be unexceptional. Challenging the status quo has always been an uncomfortable place to be. I have enough experience of facilitation now that I know how to be predictable, and I know how to use a whole range of processes to deliver perceived outcomes for the client. I know how to use management speak, how to play the corporate game. Problem is, I don’t want to. I prefer to challenge, to disrupt and to take people to their learning edge where something might actually shift as a result of what we do together. It’s unpredictable. It’s sometimes scary (yep, for me too!). It’s one of the reasons I have this blog – to capture these thoughts, to share them, and to find playmates (wanna play?).

For me, and my clients, some of whom do some of the most serious work imaginable, playfulness is a way to seriously explore what they do and how they do it – to innovate even. Guess that’s why my business is called Beyond the Edge.

This, I think, is the work I’ve been waiting to do.

HT to my playmates. You know who you are.

Trying too hard is a post from: vivmcwaters.com.au

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HT – Rob Paterson

A different way of working is a post from: vivmcwaters.com.au

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I’m not one to get too excited about many conferences these days. That’s because many conferences follow a predictable pattern of ‘high profile’ keynote speakers, panels, Q & A, workshops that were selected months in advance by a steering committee and are too expensive to attend.

I remember a turning point for me and conferences. It was an international conference on community engagement, in Sydney or Brisbane – I can’t quite remember the specifics. I paid my own way as is always the case when you have your own business. It wasn’t cheap. More than $1000 for three days plus accommodation and travel. There were lots of speakers. So many that they were jam packed three at a time into one hour slots. You do the arithmetic. There was lots of very slick organisation. And lots of very boring powerpoint. There was no engagement. I kid you not. It was a classic case of the only engagement happened in the breaks, and there were so many people spread over a very large, soulless venue, that it was just about impossible to find the people you wanted to speak to. I also discovered a number of people who turned up for their session and then disappeared. So much for connection. But I can’t blame them really, because the form was not at all conducive to anything other than reinforcing traditional patterns of hierarchy and status.

Is it a risk to depart from this traditional approach? I guess it depends on your perspective. And seeing as Show Me The Change is about evaluation, I guess it depends how you measure success. So is success at conferences measured by the number of bums on seats? By profit? By the ‘VIPs’ it attracts? By the keynote speakers? Or by some less tangible measures? The ideas shared? The connections made? The collaborations that ensue?

What makes a successful conference for you?

What makes a successful conference? is a post from: vivmcwaters.com.au

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Matt has invited us to Sydney to offer Crumbs! on May 13.

It’s about the tyrannies that oppress us and limit our capacity to be creative and innovative.

These tyrannies are the Tyranny of the Explicit, or the fear of not knowing; the Tyranny of Excellence, or the fear of not being good enough; and the Tyranny of Effort, or the fear of failure.

It’s going to be fun to explore these with Johnnie, and even more fun to explore how to bust them. We’d love you to come and play.

Crumbs! is a post from: vivmcwaters.com.au

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This is the premise of Seth Godin’s latest book, Linchpin. We have a choice to stay stuck, or we can embrace the fear and create some momentum. That’s the good news. The bad news is that our conditioning, and that damn lizard brain, might stop us. We’re conditioned to fit in, not stand out. We’re conditioned to deny our own genius, our art – whatever it is – because we might fail and then the lizard brain can say ‘told you so!’. We fear failure to the point where we don’t even try. Prototyping is all about trying and discarding. Accepting failure. Our lizard brain doesn’t like failure. It once meant we were probably dead, a tasty meal for some predator.

The predators today are no less fearful – it’s just that they are harder to recognise. Security, compensation for our labour, following the rules. These are the things that prevent us from embracing our art and sharing it with the world. Not because we want to get paid, but because there’s nothing else we CAN do, but share our art. Share our passion. We have to accept that it might not work and do it anyway.

Generosity is at the heart of Linchpin, gifting our art to others, not for something in return, not for a later transaction, but for the human to human connection. And for movement. If you’re stuck there’s no movement. It’s hard to be generous if you’re stuck.

There’s no ‘how to’ in this book. It’s a description of what the world needs, and Godin suggests each of us needs to find our own way, create our own map, forge our own future, share our own art, find others who will share the passion and momentum rather than hold us back with the threat of ‘not safe, not secure, not wise’. It’s not  a bad description of how to navigate a complex world where even if there was a manual, it would be out of date before you finished reading it.

There is no manual is a post from: vivmcwaters.com.au

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And while this was an extreme case, EVERY facilitation job requires us to draw on these capacities to a greater or lesser extent. I believe my time is better spent building my own capacity rather than trying to predict what the group may or may not do and how I may or may not respond. The key, I think is trust. Trusting yourself that you WILL know what to do when a situation emerges.

Yes, it’s stressful at times. Who wouldn’t prefer to know what’s going to happen next? My experience of facilitating, and life, is that it’s somewhat tricky to try and predict what’s going to happen. I learnt at the Applied Improv Conference earlier this year in Portland about amygdala hijacks (which someone wittily described as *not* a cocktail). When threatened with uncertainty or unfairness or any other dodgy situation, the higher functioning parts of the brain shut down and the primitive brain takes over. This is not so good because the options are limited to flight or fright. Not a good look for a facilitator! The interesting thing for me is that we can TRAIN OURSELVES TO AVOID amygdala hijacks. Improv does this by putting us into situations that could cause an amygdala hijack – and we train our brain to stay functioning at a higher level. I also think trusting oneself and allowing process to emerge while facilitating is another form of brain training. It certainly has got easier for me over time.

And another thing that helps [me] is frameworks. Not everyone likes frameworks. I find them useful as a compass to help me understand what’s going on. The week before flying to India to facilitate a five-day event I decided to immerse myself in Theory U. I spoke with many wonderful people who helped me understand the theory, and to others who helped me explore how to apply it. While I didn’t consciously apply Theory U, it was there in the background and one aspect became critical on the last day.

While researching Theory U the following resonated:

• What does it mean to act in the world and not on the world?
• Leading from the future as it emerges
• The shadow side of the process

Theory U describes (in brief) a process of moving from sensing, to presencing, and finally realising. there’s lots more, of course, but that’s the essence.  So while I watched the group move thorough cycles of sensing, presencing and realising I also observed the shadow: judgment, cynicism and fear. Naming this on the final day was something I could contribute that I certainly hadn’t planned on. There were many nods of recognition as I described these shadows that thwart our best efforts to learn and improve. This is just one example of drawing on one framework to help a group move through the ‘groan zone’.

I’d be interested to hear what capacities you draw on when faced with not knowing, a potential amygdala hijack and high stakes to ‘perform’.

PS: Something else – the single most important thing I was reminded of was to do nothing. To not react, to simply observe, to allow whatever has to play out to, well, play out. And believe me, this is way harder than doing something!

What to do when you don’t know what to do? is a post from: vivmcwaters.com.au

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Consensus means everyone agrees. That’s essentially the same as unanimous agreement. Hmmm.

Consensus means the majority agree. So in a group of 30, is 16 a majority? Eeeek!

There’s no ‘real’ disagreement. As opposed to ‘unreal’ disagreement, I guess. Yikes!

So you can see the dilemma. Discussions often start off civil, and quickly descend into  ’yes, but…’ (I’m pretending to listen to you BUT I’m really just waiting for an opportunity to tell you why your idea sucks and my idea is SO MUCH BETTER). Sigh.

Sam Kaner, in his excellent book, A Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision Making, describes a seven-scale gradients of agreement. I’ve used this in the past and it’s useful because it gets away from black and white decision making. It’s rarely that any of us COMPLETELY agree or disagree on a particular point.

The brilliant Nicole Hunter (pictured) has come up with an adaptation to the gradients of agreement that I used today for the first time. It won’t be the last time. It’s basically a sociometric scale. It’s done ‘in action’. That means, people are invited to physically go and stand by their choice. This is important. Sitting at your seat and making a choice is a cognitive act. Moving to your choice is a cognitive AND physical act. Often your body knows before your brain does!

Here’s Nic’s Scale (henceforth that’s what I’ll call it – to remind me who provided me with this simple and elegant tool).

NIC’S SCALE

Love It!          Like It.          Live With It.          Lament It.          Loathe it!

Gradients of agreement is a post from: vivmcwaters.com.au

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