Showing up to relationships

Bruce Lewin has taken up blogging and I see he is now issuing challenges!

John Moore has written a great piece on employee dissatisfaction "Uninspired, disengaged...". While I agree with this, I would publicly encourage John to spend some time introjecting and have a look at some of the great methodologies that can be used to approach such problems, particularly from a branding perspective!

I don't suppose Bruce really meant introjection, which is largely about taking on board parental ideas unconsciously. If he did, I'm sure I already do too much of it! Still, what methodologies do I recommend?

Bruce is being deliberately provocative since he knows that I am sceptical of complicated methodologies for managing human relationships. These are too often driven by a consultant's need to look clever than by a real desire to create connection. He's also being constructive, and encouraging me talk more about positive ways forward rather than dwelling on things that aren't working. Good prompt!

Now, I don't honestly think that the way to engage in relationships can ever be captured in written words; authenticity and emotional intelligence can be talked about in blogs but it's all a poor substitute for a real experience.

Also, my mantra is "relationships before ideas"; methodologies can often get in the way of spontaneity and insight.

I don't think human relationships are simple; I think they are complex. Paradoxically I think that the best principles to follow are simple but also fuzzy and fallible. But much better approximately right than precisely wrong.

So with those caveats, Bruce, here are some simple, fuzzy, perhaps blindingly obvious "methodologies" for engaging employees. If you're like me, as soon as you read them you'll think of execptions and that's fine... just resist the urge to legislate when inspiration, or at least provocation, may actually be more productive.

Actually, they're exactly the same ones for any human relationship; many organisations strip the humanity out of processes in pursuit of control and certainty. I spend my time encouraging them to put some of it back to control a little less and inspire a little more.

I could could go on for days, but this is a blog entry not a book chapter. So I'm going to start with one theme and see how it goes. Comments welcome.

Today, I'd say that the number one "technology" available to all of us is showing up to relationships. (Woody Allen famously said "90% of life is just showing up"). Here are some observations about what I mean by showing up... and what I don't.

1. I don't just mean move your body into the same room, I mean show up in spirit too. Charles Handy coined the wonderful term presenteeism to describe the pervasive habit of coming to work and not really paying attention or sharing anything.

2. Showing up is partly about listening attentively. Listening with the whole body is how some people describe it... try imagining what that might be like. Listening attentively is not, by the way, about immediately topping the speaker's story with one of your own that's even better.

3. It's also, of course, about speaking authentically. That might well start with an acknowledgement of what others have said even if you don't necessarily agree with them. But it would also mean sharing partly what you think, but also what you feel about what's being said. Including - sometimes - feelings that some people class as negative such as anger, sadness etc. Indeed, it's when people feel able to give space to such expression that things get really interesting. Call it "naming the elephant in the corner" or saying "I've got a brick in my pocket".

3b (A special bonus for marketing types)Personalising a letter usually means putting in stuff about the recipient - like their address for instance. But what would help would be putting in something personal about the sender. Something about their interest and motivation, rather than the customer-speak of most mailshots.

4. It's about making some effort to acknowledge and manage our personal vulnerability. Organisations tend to discourage people from showing vulnerability yet at some level if we can't show some, how are we to get our needs met? That's not to see you just go let it all hang out either.

5. Own the process. If you're already thinking, yes, but how can I mass produce this for 2,000 people, you may be asking the wrong question. I believe that the essential first step to creating an organisation the communicates effectively is for individuals to do so. Very often, long rambling debates about methodologies turn into conversations about other people and other people's problems. Not always a bad thing, but often a means of avoiding sharing our own experience... and thus completely endorsing a climate of non-enagement.

6. Play Improv exercises. (See the Improvinbiz website for a ton of material on this. Better still, get me to show you how to play them. They are - done right - a quite brilliant way to rekindle the spirit of conversation and connection in organisations. And frankly, it's better to spend 30 minutes experiencing them than me talking about them.

7. Organise yourself first. (This may be 5 recycled, sorry). Don't resort to the defence of "Yes, I would do all that but how can I deal with these other people?" Find the people who are willing to engage and try to organise your time to expose yourself more to them.

There are books on this stuff, some with catchy titles like Fierce Conversations. I've got that one on my bookshelf... but the best thing about it is the title. We don't really need more or new technology for creating engaging conversations. What we do need - I assert shamelessly - are more people who are willing to engage.

That's the pact I'm offering as a consultant. I won't try to impress clients with clever methodologies, if they're willing to hire me for my presence and ability to show up full-heartedly. In return, I'd like them not to reduce what I do to a set of rules and objectives... otherwise, why not just read a book?

Come to that, even this blog entry is already too long and wordy. So I'll stop for now.

Christmas presence

Yesterday I got an email from Loren Ekroth of Conversation Matters. It touches on a favourite theme of mine and here it is, verbatim.

"Christmas Presence and the Gift of Listening"

One of the finest, most personal gifts we can give another person during this season is our presence, by which I mean "being present to," or "being with" another person.

This gift is perhaps most poignant when given to persons who are older, infirm, or isolated. For them, one's living presence offers the possibility of connection. and validation. John Donne's lovely poem asserts that "No man is an island, separate from the main." Still, we observe that many people in our society and world experience the feelings of separateness. Hungry for connection, they can all use more of our personal presence.

Presence is not intrusive. It does not push or nudge or prod or probe. As well, presence does not judge, or challenge, or impose. When we are present, we show up, we are aware, and we extend our awareness to the other with our eyes, our ears, and our intuitions. Presence is hospitable and welcoming. Deep attention and deep listening are the activities of true presence.

When a person's presence is fully available to me during a conversation, I feel touched and appreciated. Even when only I am the one bringing the presence (because the other is troubled or distracted), I still experience similar feelings.

Everyone has a story to tell, and when we invite others to share a personal story, they are almost always invigorated. I like to ask people to tell me about one of the most memorable Christmas experiences they've ever had. As they recall and tell this personal story, they relive many of the feelings of that experience, and as I listen carefully, I vicariously share in their personal history. (Now while I write this I think of a Christmas in Ferrara, Italy in 1960, walking through light snow with my friends to deliver hand-made Christmas cards to their neighbors.)

During the holidays we have so many distractions with phones ringing, FedEx deliveries, timers going off in kitchens, office parties, and last-minute shopping. Maybe this fragmented situation is what makes personal presence so precious at this time of year: It acts as a healing antidote to our seasonal anxieties and disconnectedness.

Some people tell me that they resist being more personal and more generous during the holiday season, specifically because it's expected of them. I suppose they have a point. On the other hand, we can use the busy season as a clear reminder that at this time - when old feelings are re-stimulated, sometimes as "the holiday blues," expressing a generosity of spirit by being present to others can be just the right thing to do.

Last week an old and wise friend told me that elderly people experience a special kind of loneliness because they almost always have lots of regrets for times they didn't come through in life. The times they didn't say what was needed, the times they didn't make the courageous choice, the times they didn't seize an opportunity before it passed them by. When we are present to these people without judgement, they once again can feel validated and worthy.

So we can take a breath and center ourselves as we approach family, friends, and colleagues. Strangers, too. Now we are ready to give others the gift of our attentive presence at the same time we give them other physical gifts. And we'll all be better for having shared our selves.

Synchronicity

So here am I blogging about inspiration and connecting to passion and I find this in Chris Corrigan's blog. In a previous job, Chris gave people their annual training budget and let them decide for themselves what to spend it on. They could learn cabinet-making if they liked, as long as the $800 was spent on learning. He comments

It is in learning about something we are passionate for that we develop the capacity to make connections to the world of work. We become better thinkers when we can connect the experience of learning to the rest of our lives. Despite the fact that the Government of Canada has a pretty good management development centre, it's a tragedy that the vast majority of career public servants to go through life with the the only learning taking place in labs where they study contract management or learn how to write replies to letters sent to their Ministers. In that respect, I think that we are not serving our public servants, or those that work in our corporations, within our society. Connect learning to real passion and you have employees who suddenly discover that there is something that they care about. Triggering that reaction leads to them finding other ways to bring an autodidactic approach to the workplace.

Viola Spolin inspires me

A year ago I met Gary Schwartz at a conference in San Diego, and I saw him again last month in Toronto. Gary introduced himself at these conferences in a way that is quite unusual... barely talking about him self at all, and instead talking about his dedication to his former teacher, Viola Spolin and to the propagation of her ideas. Gary inspired me to pick up a copy of Spolin's bible, Improvisation for the Theatre and I'm now working through it.

It's a breathtaking book, full of insight. I love working with teams using Improv exercises to develop collaboration; it's a method that never fails to surprise and delight me with how it gets people to connect and create something between them that is more than the sum of the parts. They create in a simple way the kind of outcomes that are described quite bafflingly in tomes of work on complexity and human psychology.

Spolin devoted her life to this work, and her insights resonate. Here are a few juicy quotes I've enoyed so far

It is highly possible that what is called talented behaviour is simply a greater individual capacity for experiencing. From this point of view, it is in the increasing of the individual capacity for experiencing that the untold potentiality of a personality can be evoked.

When a goal is superimposed on an activity instead of evolving out of it, we often feel cheated when we reach it. When the goal appears naturally and comes from growth rather than forcing, the end result, performance or whatever, will be no different from the process that achieved the result. If we are trained only for success, then to gain it we must necessarily use everyone and everything for this end; we may cheat, lie, crawl, betray or give up all social life to achieve success. How much more certain would knowledge be if it came from and out of the excitement of learning itself? How many human values will be lost and how much will our art forms be deprived if we seek only success?

To keep the word "intuitive" from becoming a catch-all word which we throw around... use it to denote that area of knowledge which is beyond the restrictions of culture, race, education, psychology, and age; deeper than the "survival dress" of mannerisms, prejudices, intellectualisms, and borrowings most of us wear to live out our daily lives

The fear is not of the unknown, but of not knowing.

(If some of this seems baffling to you, don't worry, but do take any chance you get to play the games and have the experience. Gary keeps a cool website - related to Viola Spolin. And if you are in Europe, contact me and I'll play one of the games with you by phone...)

Inspiration

I'm still feeling great after running a facilitation day for a client with my friends at The Clarity Partnership last Friday. This was an opportunity to work with a leadership team using a mixture of reflective practice (meditation) theatre/improv games and elements of visual dialogue (a process using pictures to capture problems and get people talking about them). It was a joy to work with a client who wanted to use these very human practices to open up conversations and support team building.

This year I've been really apprecating the ideas of Curt Rosengren whose personal mission is to get people to follow a career that reflects their passions. Closing the working year with this workshop, I had the sense that I was following mine. What goes with that is a sense of deep satisfaction, different from a more adrenalised sense of elation. I really love faciliation work, especially with clients who are willing to step into the unknown and see what can be discovered. Wonderful things happen when people find ways to be truly present to each other's experiences, and the mixture of reflective practice and Improv really allows this to happen. Next year, I want to do much more of this kind of work.

Thoughts for the day

These came to be via Tony Quinlan from Terry Tillman at 227company.

"You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation." - Plato

"Anything on earth you want to do is play. Anything on earth you have to do is work. Play will never kill you, work will. I never worked a day in my life." - Dr. Leila Denmark, 100, USA's oldest practicing physician.

Uninspired, disengaged...

Great Britain's Workforce Lacks Inspiration

According to Gallup

More than 80% of British workers lack any real commitment to their jobs, and a quarter of those are "actively disengaged," or truly disaffected with their workplaces....

Why are so many British employees disengaged? Poor management is the problem, according to the Employee Engagement Index survey. Workers say they don’t know what is expected of them, their managers don’t care about them as people, their jobs aren’t a good fit for their talents, and their views count for little. The survey also found that employees feel they are far more productive if their supervisor focuses on their strengths and positive characteristics rather than their weaknesses.

Another worrying trend: Employees who have been with their companies for a long time are more likely than those with shorter tenures to be "not engaged" or "actively disengaged." So human assets that should increase in value with training and development instead depreciate as managers and companies fail to maximize this investment.

Gallup have been producing these findings in the USA for some time. They come as little surprise. I think they are a sad measure of the failure of marketing to create genuine engagement for stakeholders in organisations. What hope is there of a brand engaging customers if it can't engage it's own workers?

The perils of plenitude

Chris Lawer blogs on plenitude in response to reading the latest from Kalle Lasn of Adbusters. Lasn describes plenitude:

While most people tend to associate suffering with scarcity and deprivation, there is a very different kind of suffering that's caused by plenitude. Plenitude is (American) culture's perverse burden. Most have everything they could possibly want and they still dont think it is nearly enough. When everything is at hand, nothing is ever hard won and when nothing is hard-won, nothing ever satisfies. Without satisfaction, our lives become shallow and meaningless. In this era of gigantism - we embrace the value of More to compensate for lives that seem somehow, Less. Eat the instant you are hungry and as the Buddhist master put it, "You will never find out what your hunger is for". Plenitude feeds malaise as it fills the stomach.

In an effort to top that, Chris self-diagnoses a plenitude of reading about plenitude:

Yes!! I'm finding it increasingly difficult to stay "on task" with all this stuff, and as Lasn points out with his own analysis of first-order plenitude, many people are experiencing higher-highs and lower-lows - "We soar the skies one moment, then feel slack and depressed the next" - I know what he means, and I am not afraid to admit it. It feels like someone is holding a magnet to my inner compass - pulling me constantly towards consuming more stuff about consuming more stuff...

So hats off to Chris for being honest. I certainly recognise in myself the higher-high, lower-low syndrome. It's a result of overstimulation...

The amount of media overload we're offered is incredible. 24 hour news is one example that bugs me, with its steady supply of instant anxiety. The Soham trial coverage was an example of vast overstimulation. Our society is overstimulated, and trys to deal with stress by taking more stimulants. Worn out out by overwork? Come home and watch TV. Worn out by TV? Drink coffee. Over-caffeinated? Have a beer to relax. (Not that this is a new thing; my dad used to drink coffee as a bedtime drink, and then take sleeping pills to get some shut-eye.)

Those Buddhists are definitely on to something. They say we need to use the mind, not let the mind use us. Meditation is about observing the inner dialogue and we need to take responsibility for the outer dialogue too - we can turn Sky News off, we can stop reading all those books!

There is so much real pleasure and satisfaction to be had in the simple act of human contact without the need for an orgy of consumption.

And I keep coming back to my own mantra: let's put relationships before ideas. Blogging at its worst becomes a diet of too many ideas and not enough real contact. We tend to think of innovation as inherently good, but an awful lot of grief is caused by the championing of an abstract idea in a way that trashes relationships. It's a mistake I catch myself making, or about-to-make, quite often.

And I thought there was only one

Suddenly there's another John Moore marketing blog. I realise I'm a bit of an addict for this, but this latest is not mine. It's produced by another John Moore, this one in the states. He's just started it and it looks interesting: Brand Autopsy. John and I have agreed that it's going to be handy to scapegoat and/or steal credit from each other in future!

Authenticity meeting

I had a delightful meeting yesterday with David Boyle, author of "Authenticity: Brands, Fakes, Spin and the Lust for Real Life" a wonderful book published earlier this year (and now in a second edition for a bargain £7.99). David's also written The Tyranny of Numbers and it's not hard to see where he's coming from.

As Authenticity is my pet subject (that's what my chapter in Beyond Branding is about) we had a great conversation. Including sharing our experience that many people find the idea of authenticity frightening, even dangerous. Some seem to think fascism was a product of authenticity; others see it as a cloak for a puritanical agenda. For me, authenticity is not about either of these things, nor is it a counsel of perfection; it's largely based on my experience that in most relationships the truth is more interesting than the lie; it's usually more efficient... even though our "emotional truth" is not a fixed but a varied and often paradoxical thing.

Anyway, David's joining an informal meeting of friends interested in advancing the idea of authenticity at work on the evening of January 21st in Central London. If you're interested in joining us, email me.

Ton Zijlstra has been reflecting

Ton Zijlstra has been reflecting on muliple conversations among bloggers on how to collaborate to do work. He discusses a model where groups of freelance consultants join together to work on specific client problems, in groups that dissolve and reform differently for the next client. He writes

Personally I think this has potential as it combines the best of the independent single consultant (geared to the problem, not to off the shelf copies of previous solutions, flexible, versatile, agile) and the bigger consultancy organisations (authority by wider reputation, explicit bodies of knowledge e.g. toolkits), and might even turn out to be the basic enterprise model of the future: ad hoc virtual organisations of people from within a wider network, emerging around a specific question or issue, melting back into that wider network after the need has been fulfilled. These types of organisations are intrinsically geared to delivering value, not to merely furthering their own continuity.

This makes sense to me in many ways. Perhaps what this amounts is that organisations will continue but their lifecycles will accelerate. In some ways that's quite a scary thought, since many of us attach some value to elements of stability in our lives. It's the old paradox of structure and freedom.

Uh oh, I'm gonna be sued...

Well it had to happen. I've set myself up for what sounds like an intellectual property suit to make SCO-IBM look a cake walk. Gary Lawrence Murphy warns me in his comment on Do group blogs suck?:

You may think what you have posted here is a one-man show of original work, but I have news for you: These words are not original!

You see, you must confess: I have a facimile reprint here on my shelf that shows quite clearly that most of the words you have used in this post were in fact prior art, almost every one of them (and much of your language structure as well) previously and publically used as far back as 1585 by a London stage director and some-time poet named Bill Shakespeare. The intellectual property lawyers for Mr.Shakespeare's estate will be contacting you shortly about his heirs' recompense ...

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And departing leave behind us
Footprints on the sands, of time.

The blog is the thing!

Ever wondered what it's like to work in a porn shop?

Well, now you need wonder no more. A friend told me about this (no, seriously... my Feedster feed on improvisation turned it up). Is it for real? Yes, apart from anything else, it's too funny and detailed to be fiction, surely. Thrill to the cast of characters (Mr Buddy, Mr Pig, Mr Creepy) and the reasons for excessive use of the hand sanitizer. Learn about Porn Trance:

This is the odd, timeless zone that people go into when studying the boxes. Lone porn renters go into it immediately and resent being pulled out. Group renters never intend to go into the Porn Trance. They start out laughing together, pointing at the boxes and reading particularly ludicrous copy out loud. They are far too hip to really be interes... and then they see an orifice that really strikes them and one by one they get sucked in and the porn section is quiet again.

I don't have the guts to reproduce any more in my blog - so grab a macintosh and read it for yourself. Or listen to this NPR Real Audio show with a reading by Ali Davis, the author of this journal - her bit starts a 31'30".

Yes, and...

For some reason, lying in bed this morning, I called to mind a piece of wisdom that went something like

Act as if your every action is significant to the world, and laugh at yourself for such grandiosity

.Just thinking about it cheered me up. And paradox is on my mind this morning.

A paradox is not a contradiction. Paradoxes are engaging, and challenge our tendency to think of things as either/or. Quite a lot of trouble is caused by getting into either or, as in "She loves me, she loves me not" "If you loved me, you would (or wouldn't) do X"

But apparently light is both particle and wave, even though it can't be. And Schrodinger's Cat is both dead and alive.

Now Paul Goodison links me to Piers Young blogging

There's an interesting article in the New Scientist concerning research on newness and novelty. We now know fear of new things shortens life, in animals at least, thanks mainly to the stress it generates.

But ...

"The researchers also found that both traits [fear of novelty and curiosity] were roughly as common in the population. That suggests that sustaining both behaviours actually benefits a species."
i.e. running away is sometimes good.

So fear of the new, and openness to it are both good, sometimes...

As the great Harry Hill is fond of saying, "I don't make the rules"

Spam blocking

All hail Jay Allen for his MT-Blacklist, just updated, which is doing a great job of keeping Comment Spam off this site. About 15 attempts were blocked this morning!

Who says fun is dangerous?

I wanted to share this email doing the rounds this morning...

AIRCRAFT MAINTENANCE
After every flight, Qantas pilots fill out a form called a gripe sheet, which conveys to the mechanics, problems encountered with the aircraft during the flight that need repair or correction. The mechanics read and correct the problem, and then respond in writing on the lower half of the form what remedial action was taken, and the pilot reviews the gripe sheets before the next flight. Never let it be said that ground crews and engineers lack a sense of humour. Here are some actual logged maintenance complaints and problems as submitted by Qantas pilots and the solution recorded by maintenance engineers. (P = the problem logged by the pilot. S = the solution and action taken by the maintenance engineers.)
*******************************************
P: Left inside main tyre almost needs replacement.
S: Almost replaced left inside main tyre.
********************************************
P: Test flight OK, except auto-land very rough.
S: Auto-land not installed on this aircraft.
**********************************************
P: Something loose in cockpit.
S: Something tightened in cockpit.
**********************************************
P: Dead bugs on windshield.
S: Live bugs on back-order.
**********************************************
P: Autopilot in altitude-hold mode produces a 200 feet per minute descent.
S: Cannot reproduce problem on ground.
***********************************************
P: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
S: Evidence of leak removed.
**********************************************
P: DME volume unbelievably loud.
S: DME volume set to more believable level.
**********************************************
P: Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick.
S: That's what they're there for.
**********************************************
P: IFF inoperative.
S: IFF always inoperative in OFF mode.
**********************************************
P: Suspected crack in windshield.
S: Suspect you're right.
**********************************************
P: Number 3 engine missing.
S: Engine found on right wing after brief search.
**********************************************
P: Aircraft handles funny.
S: Aircraft warned to straighten up, fly right, and be serious.
**********************************************
P: Target radar hums.
S: Reprogrammed target radar with lyrics.
**********************************************
P: Mouse in cockpit.
S: Cat installed.
**********************************************
P: Noise coming from under instrument panel. Sounds like a midget pounding on something with a hammer.
S: Took hammer away from midget. ==========================================================

By the way, Qantas is the only major airline that has never had an accident.

Co-intelligence

Paul Goodison blogs this extract from a site on co-intelligence.

Co-intelligence is the capacity to live well WITH each other and life, creatively using diversity and uniqueness, consciously evolving together in partnership with nature, and consciously transforming culture. Co-intelligence is intrinsic in all living systems and can always be improved. Use it for organizational development, better family relations, community renewal, and creating a more just, democratic and sustainable society.

This is very much the theme of the work I do using Improvisation; getting people to create collectively something that is much more that the sum of their individual thoughts and ideas. It's a practice that celebrates diversity and empowers everyone to see that they are part of a creative process.

Do group blogs suck?

Robert Scoble reckons that Group Blogs Suck. It's a good thought, including this point:

The thing is, my visitors are coming to see me. Me alone. If I am interesting, the numbers increase. If I'm not interesting, they decrease. It's a very visible feedback loop.

But, in a group blog, my traffic goes up based on how interesting the GROUP is. In other words, if there's 10 people writing a blog and I'm an uninteresting member, my traffic goes up because of the other nine. Yet readers are stuck reading me, even if I'm boring.

But I think there are other ways to look at this, as I do both my own blog (here) and am in three group blogs - Beyond Branding, Mutual Marketing and Mutualist Manifesto.

I guess I use each blog differently, and it's always a compromise of a kind. I put whatever I like in this blog but I do tailor what I write in collaborative blogs so that it coheres with other writes. You could say this amounts to self-censorship; I prefer to think of it as a structure that makes me think more.

Sure, group blogs may tend to average out opinion, but I like the challenge of collaborating which sometimes means sublimating my ego a bit more than I do in my own space.

Scoble worries about the "owner" of the group blog being in control, but in the group blogs I do, no-one is in control, somehow we just get along. Sure, some of what others write I don't fully agree with - but I can live with a measure of dissonance. I find it thought-provoking. Anyway, I quite often read stuff Iwrote a while ago and disagree with it.

So I guess I'm saying, it's not an either-or choice. At least not for me.

Also, so what if sometimes others get credit for "my" thoughts, and sometimes the other way round? That's ok, I think the idea of owning ideas is a bit twentieth century; ultimately that's the mindset of SCO in their miserable lawsuit against IBM.

Well, it made me laugh

There's been a bit more activity in the Improvisation in Business Yahoo Group lately, and some good discussions.

People have been giving their feedback on the recent conference. Including my mate Denzil Meyers who posted the following. It made me laugh and I would like more of this in my life. No apologies, here it is verbatim.

Well I for one had a great time, though some of the repercussions are taking a while to get used to.

I want to first of all thank Hank for pulling me out of that bar before the cops got there. You really saved my ass, buddy, you'll never know how much extra shit that simple act of human kindness saved me. And to Phyllis and Gladys (twins!) I hope you will send me your dry cleaning bills as we agreed at that Taco stand on Peterson Street.

As for the rest of you, in the weeks that have since transpired, I have come to recognize that our weekend "Spring Fling" together was a natural denouement to 7 long years of explosive personal & creative growth. The previous 5 years had been a sinkhole of missed starts, misfires, and broken promises. So I arrived at the hotel feeling pretty good about myself.

Thanks to the willingness of everyone to stand up, get down, and do the Hokey Pokey, I am now the proud new owner of a labrador puppy named Jake (after you-know-who, of course). And I will hug him and feed him and take him on long walks though the snowy forests as the winter light wanes, as has been prophesied.

And I want to add on to what Filbert said when he explained about his decision to shave his head, wear exclusively pink terry cloth, and stop eating peanut butter:

We are all products of our own imagination. The only things that exist are those we agree on. Without seeing ourselves in others' eyes, we cannot know we exist. Feedback defines identity.

This is the post-modern condition. This is the existential dilemma. The center does not exist.We are utterly dependent on each other for survival. This is the Ego's version of the Faustian Bargain.

In lesser subjects (as we all undoubtedly are on occasion), the experience of fear triggers a mania to control. Let's help people be just a little bit nicer to each other and to themselves & have fun doing it.

The most important thing to me is advancing the professionalism of our craft. While I've never been a big believer in prognostication, I see unlimited potential ahead for those who are willing to say Yes & take one small step for mankind. I don't know what we'll find there, but its got to be better than those poisoned cheese blintzes the hotel served for breakfast on Thursday that gave all the presenters the runs.

I have decided to go back to my first love — taking copious amounts of LSD and arranging individual grains of sand in elaborately hand painted & bejeweled velvet lined music boxes (christmas lights optional). Its an idea that came up one weekend on Ibiza when we (Brian Eno, Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, and I) were trapped inside for a freaky long rainy weekend. Laurie later took full credit for the idea in a story she tells in her performances, which is the REAL reason Lou won't talk to her anymore. But you didn't hear that from me.

I look forward to our next meeting in Mechanicsburg, PA.

Fly straight, or at least right side up. I mean, really people,

And I wanted to say Hats Off to Larry Harvey, the man who gave me my first real break in show business.

I guess I just welcome the shameless introduction of fiction and absurdity into any conventional process, for the whack to the side of the head it provides. Or do some you out there think the world of work is already too much fun as it is?

Rewriting history...

Thanks to my Improvisation friend Kelsey Flynn I rambled into a letter cited in Margaret Cho's Blog (go to Letter #1):

Lately it seems like Bush's fundamentalist Christian buddies are doing their damndest to re-write American history. Their claims that America is a Christian nation founded on Christian ideals is pure, absolute bullshit.

A rip roaring analysis.

I wonder...

Curt Rosengren's blog is going from strength to strength, a nice mix of simple but well expressed career wisdom with occasional nuggets of information about careers in weird things like dog pampering.

Or do I just mean he just says lots of things I agree with? Well either way, I liked his little homily today on The Power of I Wonder.

When you look at the future, try taking a view of wonder and curiosity.

I must remember to do that, it's all too easy to think of the future as if it's a known.

Simplicity, control, community

John Porcaro blogs on Bob Rosner, author of Gray Matters.

He cited a study that showed that in office buildings, most thermostats aren’t hooked up to anything. People like the feeling of control, even if it’s an illusion. He said “don’t even get me started about the close button on elevators…”

He said everyone’s frustration comes down to two missing things: Simplicity and Control. Bob adds Community.

I'm glad he added community, that's pretty vital. It's also the hardest thing for a very individualistic society to get right. And of course, our needs for simplicity, control and community will often be at odds with each other. I'd love a community that gave ME control and made MY life simple... but that wouldn't be a community would it? And then I wouldn't love it, after all. Hmmm....

Results

A look through my site log led me to this posting by Chris Corrigan. Chris does Open Space facilitation and gets people demanding evidence of its results.

What started to pick at my thinking was this implicit assumption that if something does not immediately change things in a controlled and predictable way, then it has no value. And so I crafted a long response to this problem this morning, which I reproduce here.

If you can give yourself five minutes, it's worth reading.

Sunny Delusions

Following my recent posting on Sunny Delight I saw an interesting BBC documentary this evening about its rise and fall. What struck me was the dull witted performances of the protagonists at Procter & Gamble and Saatchis. Although they were refreshingly frank about the marketing errors they made, they were surprisingly sanguine about their repeated attempts to relaunch this wretched and cynical brand. The awesome inauthenticity of these people is depressing. Time and again they try to change the image of this fundamentally worthless product to try and insinuate their way back into housewives' affections. Time and again they fail, admit their failure to strike a successful pose, and try another tactic - without ever copping to the true failure - which is not to acknowledge that this drink is without merit and was only ever launched to make money, not with the faintest desire to create real value.

Some suit for Saatchis blathered on about wanting to return the brand to its "heartland". But this is a product that never had a heart involved in it. Only a wallet.

The show drew my attention to this shameless, craven website created by the renamed Sunny D. "Dr Gary Stephenson is the man behind Sunny D."

Gary has been working on nutrition for the past 14 years so really knows his stuff.
There’s not much Gary doesn’t know about food, what the nutrients in it do, and how important different foods are to making sure our kids grow up healthy.

The hypocrisy and dishonesty of this is breathtaking. How dare Procter and Gamble pretend that this drink was ever the brainchild of a nutritionist on a mission to improve kids' health?

What on earth is the quality of conversation in a company that puts this nonsense in front of us? What can it be like to work in an atmosphere of such denial of the truth? Is Dr Gary so desperate for money and so bereft of optimism that he thinks the best use of his talents is to help try to foist this pointless beverage on supposedly gullible consumers?

This is despicable stuff that Procter and Gamble and Saatchis should be ashamed of.

Update After posting this last night, I went back to Dr Gary's website and used its option to ask him a question. The gist of it was: When you went to university to study for many years, did you really do it to end up in a job like this? Is this best thing you can be doing with your god-given talent? Readers, do feel free to ask Dr Gary your own question and let me know the answers you get!

Presence and focus

I've met Izzy Gesell a couple of times now at Improvinbiz conferences and he really knows his onions. His occasional ezine "Instructional Moments" is really good and the latest contains this insight:

Your quality of Presence is revealed through the power of Focus

When working with a large group, it is often desirable to have the participants form duos, triads, quartets or quintets in order to enable everyone to participate in a particular game. As the different teams are absorbed into their tasks, a substantial racket is normally generated, frequently punctuated by gusts of laughter. During the subsequent debrief, I ask for a show of hands by those who had been distracted by the cacophony. Usually, it’s only a few hands that go up. “How can this be in a room that is so noisy?” I ask. The answer comes quickly, clearly and from many parts of the room. “We were focused on what we were doing,” is the explanation. That “focus” is so strong it actually serves as a “mute” button or “white noise” box.

Having established the power of focus, my interest shifts to what, if anything, does throw the players off track. Here, the answers are more varied. “Surprise at my partner’s answer,” “I kept expecting the story to go in a particular direction and it wouldn’t,” and “I had a better story in mind and my partner wouldn’t go along” are three of the most common replies.

An individual’s inner dialogue turns out to be much more distracting than the external commotion. Our self-talk is disruptive because it takes us away from the present, where our task is, and whisks us to either the past or the future. Refocusing brings us back to the present while the ongoing self-talk keeps us somewhere other than the here-and-now.

I'm a great believer in the importance of presence in human relationships and I see a lot of what Charles Handy calls "presenteeism" in organisations; great things happen between human beings when they bring themselves fully present, often much more exciting than what is generated by clever-but-complicated facilitation methods.

Jazz Communities

Stuart Henshall has weighed into the continuing conversation about collaboration among bloggers. (His post links to most if not all of the threads so far). He comes up with the idea of Jazz Communies, a sort of uber-Blog package.