The future belongs to those who can be flexible and adaptable

A special Insight report in the weekend paper is about the future of a baby born in Australia this year. Here’s what caught my eye.

“If current trends are anything to go by, today’s babies will inhabit a world in which flexibility and adaptability will be key. Their life trajectories will be whorls of activity spinning off into periods of retraining and reinvention. Their education will be interactive, ongoing, and probably much more fun than yours.“

I’d argue that flexibility and adaptability are important right now.

Also in the weekend paper, is an opinion piece by Garry Lyon, a former professional Australian Rules Football player.

“I couldn’t help but think last weekend how important it is for football clubs, and their coaches, to have the ability to improvise, and be flexible in their planning as they embark on season 2012…I hope the spirit of improvisation catches on during matches…What we do know is that football constantly surprises, throwing up new challenges at every turn. The ability to improvise has never been more important.”

This talk of the need for flexibility, or agility as it’s sometimes called, adaptability and improvisation are all very well, but how do we develop these capacities?

We all improvise – life is an improvisation, as it comes with no user’s manual. We seem to be happy to improvise the small parts of our lives – or maybe it’s that we simply don’t recognize that we’re improvising. Yet when it comes to our work, improvisation is seen as something akin to recklessness.

It is possible though to learn to improvise more and to bring this to all of the facets of our lives. Even those in the most controlled professions can improvise within  constraints. Improvisation is not a synonym of anarchy or chaos. It exists within boundaries.

In many ways I’m not surprised when a group of capable, talented, professional people, when asked if they improvise, shake their heads. “I’m not an improviser,” they declare. “It’s not for me.” Jazz musicians, and comedy improvisors are probably what come to people’s minds when asked if they improvise. They probably think of improvisation as something performers do on a stage in front of an audience. Any wonder that most of us would say no to that.

Even these ‘professional’ improvisors practice relentlessly to build their capacity to improvise.

When watching a group of people improvising on the stage, here’s what I see: a high-performing team, seamlessly working with each other, each with a specific, if changeable, function, working towards the successful completion of a specified task, sometimes making mistakes that might give them pause, but rarely stop them in their tracks.

Sound familiar? In its various forms, this is how teamwork is often described to me in businesses and organisations. It’s how people wished their teams were.

Taking a group of people for an away day or two or even three or more, or suggesting they attend a training course to learn how to improve their teamwork is ludicrous.

Would you send a child to a camp to learn how to play the piano, expecting that when they return from a few days away they would be transformed into a pianist? Would you take yourself to a retreat to learn new habits expecting to be a changed person on your return?

You might return with a new perspective, new information, insights and inspiration. You might even return with a set of skills to practice and hone and develop.

And this is the point.

We never learn anything new without practice. I’ve already written about this here.

Building our capacities to be flexible, to be more comfortable with uncertainty, to trust our abilities to adapt, and to see the possibilities around us, don’t always come easily as we struggle to shed the legacy of an era of order, control and predictability. We need to be exposed to being flexible and adaptable, we need to learn the foundations of improvising, and we need to practice.

Just as a footballer will practice in the gym to build strength, and run to build stamina, we need to train to be more spontaneous. If we want to be more flexible and adaptable and able to respond when we don’t know what to do, we need to practice so as those skills become second nature.

These ideas fascinate and excite me. And I’m looking for others who are share an interest in how to develop our capacities to thrive in an uncertain future. I don’t think there’s any easy answers, no magic bullets, no next ‘big thing’. But I do believe there’s lots of new territory to explore, new skills to learn, ideas to share and connections to make. If you are also fascinated by these ideas, you might be interested in this.

Practicing to perform

Those of us who have seen an improv group perform are sometimes in awe of the skills and teamwork a group of players can demonstrate when performing – in front of a paying audience, and with no script.  It’s no secret that they can do this because of the way they approach a performance, the rules that create a platform for what they do, and their willingness to practice together.

Most of us are also familiar with sporting teams. Whether successful or not in terms of winning, these teams also operate from a basis of rules and practice. They can at least play the game, even when pitted against a team that can play better.

Then we see groups and teams in organisations sometimes struggle to work together. There may be rules and structures and guidelines that support what they do (and sometimes hinder). The missing element may be practicing together.

And there’s also individual pursuits: yoga, music, tennis, juggling, driving, karate, weights, painting – just about anything I can think of requires some sort of practice, whether that be to build skills, to build confidence, to develop muscle memory, to be able to automatically jump into the task.

Yet some work seems to be different. A one- or two- or five-day course and you’re trained in something. Back at work there may be little opportunity to practice newly-learned or even long-held skills. There’s the real work to be done, pressure to perform, meetings to attend, deadlines to meet. Where is the practice that supports work skills, especially the practice that underpins skills that are highly sought after and rewarded? Skills of leadership, of communication, of teamwork, and personal interaction. Skills of participation, of awareness, of knowledge transfer? Is there space at work to practice, to do activities that hone these skills so as when they are needed it’s innate?

Where is the equivalent of the gym or the rehearsal studio at work?

Asking for help

I quite enjoy helping others. I’m not so good at asking for help. From an improv perspective it’s like making offers – asking for help is making an offer to the world. And boy, does it pay back big time.

Those of you reading this blog recently will know I’m in foreign parts designing a biggish two-day event. Those of you who know me well will know that I’m never satisfied, always looking for new (and rediscovering forgotten) ideas. And those of you who know me even better will know I’d give my right arm to have a facilitation buddy or two to hang out with, toss about ideas, egg each other on. Sigh.

So I’ve turned to the next best thing, all you good folk in internet land. Some of you I know, some I’ve never met. I’ve no idea how many of you read my blog (I know, I know – there’s something I could do with google analytics to find out and, well, I really don’t care that much and I’ve never been that big into numbers. Are you out there Stephen?). If I’m only talking to myself, that’s quite okay – it gets my thoughts out of my head and on to the screen where at least I don’t forget them.

I try stuff. I like blogging. I like twitter. Facebook’s okay. Don’t mention google+ (makes me feel guilty), I’ve tried amplify, and instgram, I’ve lost count of my email addresses (they all go via gmail anyway), I quite like rapportive, I’ve just joined pin-somethingorother, I have a neglected flickr account, I think I have a YouTube channel, I subscribe to my favourite bloggers and thinkers, I just LOVE Skype – I could go on, obviously. What’s that? What about LinkedIn? Well, of course I’m on LinkedIn – I just don’t know how to use it that well. Then, in a little burst of activity towards the end of last year I created a LinkedIn Group. Wow! Just wow! I had no idea. It’s not a big group, less than 200 people – but what a generous and creative bunch.

And what I’ve learned from having a LinkedIn group is that it’s not about leading with answers – it’s about leading with questions. Real questions. Making big, bold offers by asking for help. Who knew?

Travelling a different road

For many years I’ve been waiting for the planets to align to do two things* – Robert McKee’s Story Seminar and a workshop or seminar with Dave Snowden. I’m still waiting to do the Story Seminar. There is a link, of course. Dave Snowden punctuates his often rambling and diverse ideas and opinions with stories. I’ve found a few days later that I can remember many of his stories. I have to refer to my notes for the other stuff. But this is not a post about stories. It is a post about unlearning,

When I first started facilitating, and considering venturing out on my own, it was in the midst of the systems thinking era. I read Peter Senge The Fifth Discipline, and bought into the whole notion of shared visions, mental models and learning organisations. Frustratingly, I was working in an organisation at the time that was anything but a learning organisation. I completed a Masters of Applied Science that was based on systems thinking. It made a lot of sense. I read Margaret Wheatley Leadership and the New Science.

Today, 15 years later, I find myself letting go of systems thinking and embracing complexity.

Now, many aspects of systems thinking that troubled me are starting to make sense in the light of complexity: the notion that it’s even possible to map systems; the fantasy that is strategic planning – that we can predict the future and prepare for it years in advance; and the resistance to uncertainty and messiness, the unwillingness to let go of control, even when all the evidence tells us that control is not possible.

Complexity has a lot more in tune with ecology, hence I’m drawn to biomimicry; social networks; narrative, stories and metaphor; playfulness; and what we can learn of organisational life from artists, actors, choreographers, musicians, directors, writers, poets, and dramaturgs. It is a rich and diverse field and requires as much unlearning as learning.

Clearly, this journey is not about discarding that which is old and grasping for the shiny new thing. It’s an evolution. I have relied on my somewhat unreliable brain to get me this far, and I hope my brain will continue to serve me. Yet now I understand that my brain is embodied. Parts of it never get activated unless the body is activated. I recognise the importance of trust and how social media can help build and maintain trust. How values are devalued by the very act of making them explicit. How culture is often used as an excuse to not do something, because people are people, no matter where they live and what they do. We should take more notice of mavericks and outliers. Disrupting entrenched patterns is part of the work, and how fundamental rituals are to disrupting patterns. And we need to experience before we process and analyse.

I still have much to explore and much to learn from Dave’s seminar. I am confident though, that although it’s a different road that I’m travelling, it’s one worth exploring.

Fundamental to my journey and exploration is how to apply the principles of improvisation. So here’s a story about another sort of journey and how these improv principles came into their own.

The picture in this post is of the Annapurna Sanctuary region of the Himalaya in Nepal.  My partner and I were on a nine-day trek, a trek that we had put off for 30 years. The opportunity arose so we decided to take it. When this photo was taken we’d been walking for five days – through isolated villages, across rivers, over mountains, down one side and up the other. It was clear every morning, hazy, raining or snowing by the afternoon. I was slow, taking one step at a time, especially on the stone steps that seemed to go on forever. Going up was bad, coming down was worse. As we approached Machapuchare Base Camp I was in awe of the scenery. I’d also had enough walking. I wanted to stop, to drink in the scenery, to rest my legs. So the rest of my walking party left for Annapurna Base Camp where they would spend the night and I would stay put, rejoining them the next morning. Wrapped in a yak wool blanket, I sat on a bench in the communal dining area of the teahouse where I was staying. It was the only warm place. The snow came down lightly at first and then it completely obscured my view. I read for a while, finished my book. Had a cup of chai. Sat, and watched others come and go. No-one else spoke English. A group of Japanese women were playing cards. They invited me to join them. I had no idea what game they were playing so the only thing to do was to jump in and have a go. If I played an incorrect card they would all laugh and shake their heads, explaining in sign language what I should do. They also had some rituals about who got to play the first card and when you won. It was a lot of fun. I eventually worked out the game, won a couple even. It was a great example of what happens when we show up, let go, and jump in: being present to what is, letting go of expectations and needs, and accepting offers. That’s been my mantra ever since I returned from that extraordinary walk in Nepal, and it’s paying off in spades.

*I’ve actually been waiting for the planets to align to do many, many things, but for the purpose of this post, two will do.

The Casuarina Project: Community Leadership 10 years on

It’s 10 years this month since the first group of local Surf Coast Shire residents finished the inaugural Casuarina Project. The final session was on September 15th, 2001 and I remember it vividly. We’d booked out a local restaurant for us to gather to reminisce on the journey we’d shared over the previous seven months. Our conversation, of course, was not as planned (whenever is it?): we sat together and shared our shock and bewilderment at the week’s events in the US and the implications for us here on the other side of the world. And we shared some laughs, and some tears, some food and some wine. And excitedly left to develop our community projects.

The brief for the Casuarina Project was to design and facilitate a community leadership program to bring together people from across the Surf Coast Shire – those in the coastal towns, where surfing and tourism reigns, with those from the hinterland where agriculture is king. It was targeted at people already active in community groups, but not yet in leadership roles. We decided not to call it a leadership program to avoid the inevitable problem of only attracting those who already saw themselves as community leaders. It was a bold and exciting approach. We wanted it to focus on developing people, their understanding of themselves and each other, and their potential in the community. We didn’t want it to be a simple skills training, duplicating what was already available.

Year one was devoted to the face-to-face sessions. We moved around to various community halls and venues – a great way for me (as a newcomer to the area) to get to know my new home. We explored such topics as the dynamics of change, understanding group roles, designing and staging events, conflict, controversy and negotiation, and planning for a community project to be implemented in the second year. In the third year, participants would be invited to mentor and support new participants just starting out.

My intention from the very beginning was to reduce dependence on me and my involvement. On reflection, maybe I did that too well! (just kidding) When Geoff Brown (a participant from that very first intake) took over the facilitating of the program after a few years, I felt quite chuffed that I’d hand-balled it on to someone so capable and enthusiastic, not to mention local as well.

There’s so much more I could write about the Casuarina Project. How I delivered it for a few years in Gippsland as well, the celebrations – especially when we invited Melbourne Playback Theatre Company to help us reflect on the experience (with hilarious results) – the friends made, the projects started, the excellent support from the CEO and the Councillors, the freezing cold halls (with dubious heating) in winter, the dreaded smoke in summer when we all raced home to make sure our houses were safe from bush fires, the laughs, the frustrations, the tears and most importantly, everyone’s generosity. And don’t even start me on the time I returned from Vietnam with bronchitis and was quarantined because it might have been SARS, hence unable to facilitate the important opening weekend.

The Casuarina Project is alive and well, with the first ever Youth Casuarina Program scheduled for October. What a great way to celebrate 10 years!

It’s evolved, as it should.

Haven’t we all?

Happy Anniversary Casuarina Project.

Spend a day exploring the edges of work

About 16 years ago, I made the leap from full-time employment and started my own business. I agonised over a business name. I wanted something that would last the distance, and not lock me in to some sort of work that I’d outgrow. I eventually settled on Beyond the Edge Pty Ltd. I was initially attracted to the word beyond. It spoke to me of reaching beyond my own knowledge and experience, and  the unknowns that lay ahead. I chose the edge because imagination was already taken.

Fast forward to 2011. The name has not only sustained me and my business for all those years, it has finally come into its own. Maybe I intuitively knew something?

I’ve been conducting a little experiment recently around the edges of work – exploring some of the approaches that can help us deal with complexity and the demands of our modern-day work.

I’ve written about my experiences of Bodystorming here, and a participant in a workshop where we looked at the tyrannies that sometimes trap us said this:

“I found [your workshop] extremely beneficial for my personal development. I learnt a lot, particularly about my own inhibitions, and how I’ve created rules that are completely artificial, unproductive and unnecessary. After some reflection, I’ve developed some simple steps to overcome my fears of failure – concentrate less on my fears, focus on doing something, embrace being average and just have a crack – be present.”

As a result, Johnnie Moore (UK) and I have begun a venture called, not unsurprisingly, The Edges of Work (web site coming soon).  Johnnie and I have been working together quite a bit lately and pushing each other to our respective edges (where it seems the most potent learning happens). For those of you who don’t know Johnnie, he is incredibly astute at seeing what others miss, likes to playfully explore serious issues and puts a lot of the organisational BS into perspective. We share an interest in complexity, ideas, connections, spontaneity and not playing by the rules!

We’re offering a one-day workshop at this year’s Story Conference in Melbourne, where the theme is Widening the World of Work. We’re going to share some of our experiences and insights around some of the challenges we face in dealing with complexity, unpredictability and demands for creativity, innovation and agility.

The workshop is on Wednesday, October 5 and there’s more information about registering here.

Our understanding is that change happens at the edge: we see it in systems and in our own lives. At the edge, we are away from the routine and familiar: it’s exciting but scary territory, but it’s where new patterns and routines can emerge. How can we, as leaders, managers, and facilitators support people in staying in the space at least long enough for useful change? We’ll share ideas for navigating edge territory, overcoming habitual patterns that give us a kind of safety but prevent us from making real change.

And we’ll share a series of activities we’ve found powerful in getting organisations and people out of stuck places, rigid arguments and unquestioned rituals and into territory where it’s possible for new work to emerge.

We’d love for you to join us. Drop me an email if you’d like more information.

Exploring the Edges of Work II

Anyone visiting recently will probably know that I’m exploring the edges of work – offering a series of short workshops to explore how we might move beyond the rigidity of existing systems and processes to open up workplace creativity, innovation and agility – especially when the currency of much of today’s work is ideas.

So I’m delighted to announce a full-day workshop with Johnnie Moore as part of this year’s Story Conference; Widening the World of Work in Melbourne. Here’s a little about what to expect:

If you’d like to register go here (and if you register before 31 August, you’ll get that cool early-bird rate)

It wouldn’t work…

Many years ago I worked in agricultural extension. That means I used to organise field days for farmers to explore ways they could improve or adapt their farming. Farmers from across a geographic area would gather on one property and we’d walk around, kicking the dirt and learning how this farmer had done something different, why, and what the impact had been. Often I’d hear the comment that went something like this: “Well that’s okay here, but on my place the soil is different so it probably wouldn’t work.”

Jump forward a couple of decades to facilitation training. After introducing an activity that’s a bit left of field (which really depends where you’re standing – for me it’s often fairly central, but for others can be way out there on the edge) – things like sociometry, or improv games for surfacing behaviours, or using gibberish to level the playing field in a multi-language group, or even something as basic as removing the tables – I’d start hearing this:

“That’s okay here, but it wouldn’t work with / in (insert group / country / situation).”

Bollocks.

When that voice in my head says that to me I now recognise it as my own fear, or reluctance to take a risk, which I have externalised on to the group. When I don’t listen to that voice and do it anyway, it works out just fine.

That’s not to say everything works every time, or anything will do. Mistakes are a part of facilitating, and learning. And mistakes, and taking risks, are about stretching and developing as a facilitator. Playing it safe means you probably won’t get into trouble. You probably won’t learn anything either. Your choice.

Using who and what’s in the room

This week I’m working with a group of people who have come together to learn some new skills. Skills they will be expected, by their employer, to use to design and implement a quite complicated, multi-layered, multi-day event.

Participants have been given a comprehensive manual outlining all the steps and procedures. They have a 60-minute video explaining the same. They have access (face-to-face and electronic) to colleagues with knowledge and experience.

There is lots of information about the content.

The challenge for this training is to take advantage of having people in the room. That means going beyond the information that the participants already have access to, and to move from hub-and-spoke (one-to-many) approaches. For example, PowerPoint presentations, case studies presented by a single person, in fact, any sort of presentation is what I call a one-to-many approach. The assumption behind a one-to-many approach is that everyone *needs* or *wants* to hear what someone else has decided. All done with good intention, of course. But it misses the point that the others in the room may have different knowledge or perspectives that can be shared and explored. And if you’re quick to remind me that there is often important information that people *need* to know for their own safety etc (insert any other reason) then I’ll be quick to remind you that telling people something doesn’t mean they then know it (sometimes you can’t even be sure they have heard it) and in this case, they already have access to all that background information.

Which brings us right back to how to take advantage of having living, breathing bodies in the room. Which brings me back to thinking that we have to create conditions in which the participants can have a visceral experience of learning to complement the more usual, and safer, cerebral experience of learning. More to come.

In the midst of facilitation training

Tomorrow we start week two of three weeks of facilitation training. It’s a long time since I’ve done so much training in such a short time. Three diverse groups. I’ve been thinking about how this training is quite different from the sort of training I did when I first started facilitating way back in the dark ages (before the internet). Bringing people together for five days from across the planet is a huge investment. And so it’s important, I think,  to do more than simply share information – to do more than what can be gleaned from web sites, blogs, books and YouTube.

That *something* that we did last week – and will do again this week, and next – is to try and provide a series of experiences that mimic the real world of facilitating. Not a theoretical exploration, but a real, visceral experience of what it feels like to facilitate. And not just practice. Experiencing the effects of this approach or that. Knowing what it feels like to be faced with anger or cynicism or confusion or impatience or gazumping. And to actually live the principles of facilitation, experience them first hand so as we know, really know, not just theorise, that the group can generate knowledge, that being in the midst of confusion is a normal state, that paying attention to the human needs of the group and enabling connection can move a group into surprising territory. Experiencing the effects of laughter and of playfully exploring even the most serious of issues, and the impact of avoiding one-to-many processes or of simply removing the tables.

This work is exciting and invigorating, at the same time as being draining and stressful. Going beyond the expected norms, challenging the way things are done, encouraging people to their edges – it’s a responsibility and a privilege. Not to be done alone, so I’m glad to be working with Johnnie Moore who brings complementary skills to my own and pushes me to my edge – often. Together we have created something far more exciting than I think either of us could have done alone. It’s the value of true collaboration and models to the participants the power of co-facilitating, where the improv principle of ‘making your partner look good’ is embodied.

It’s a radical shift from a traditional training model – one that we hope has reverberations well beyond the people in the room.