July 20, 2010

Great use of YouTube by Dave Snowden

I spent about 30 minutes putting together this post and if you have got a spare 20 minutes (and you are keen to challenge your own worldview), go grab a cup of tea and work your way through these videos. I have put them in an order that will make sense to someone exploring these concepts for the first time.

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Why do we still see policies in workplaces like, “You Tube banned on Government Servers to stop staff wasting time!”, when staff could be learning stuff as rich as these videos from Dave Snowden? Dave is the Founder & Chief Scientific Officer at Cognitive Edge. His blog is very heavy, often amusing and well worth following.

Dave is working with an Australian video producer to help communicate his models and frameworks with the world. The videos bring a subtle and effective use of visuals and graphics to illuminate the key points that Dave is making. Dave’s confidence and sense of humor shines through as well.

I have embedded a series of videos from Dave (and others) to help you understand the world of complexity. Another place to visit is Dave’s series of posts on the Origins of Cynefin.

The Set Up

Understanding the Cynefin framework is probably the first place to start. One from Shawn Callahan (Anecdote), the 2nd from Dave the third a Pecha Kucha presentation from Mark Schenk (also at Anecdote).

The most humorous story

If you have listened to Dave’s podcasts, you will have heard his ‘how to organise a children’s birthday party’. I often show clients this video when facilitating strategy and planning workshops. Apart from some laughs, the key message can challenge last century ways of working that still persist today.

The Close

This final run of videos, again from Dave explores some of the other concepts and ideas that relate to working in a complex world. They tell great stories and the final one shines a light on the Cognitive Edge Sensemaker Suite.

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July 19, 2010

Emerging possibilities and collaboration

My life’s work is in a really fascinating place right now …

I am sensing a shift in the work that I do. A shift from being reactive to client offers, to a more proactive space. New ventures where collaboration with others, co-learning and creating opportunities for new types of work to emerge. This shift is not part of any clever business plan, in fact, these are the first written words to describe it. Allow me to ramble, share a story and then get back this this change I am sensing …

About working with others …

Viv McWaters mentions collaboration in this post, I tend to agree with her and she says …

“I can’t speak for organisations, or anyone else for that matter. All I can say is that for me collaboration has never been easier. I can find people to collaborate with – whether they live nearby or on the other side of the planet – and we can communicate using a whole range of media, with my particular favourites being  skype, blogs and Twitter. All of the people I collaborate with are friends first. We get to know each other, learn of each other’s skills and contributions, find opportunities to collaborate, challenge each other, have fun and provide something as collaborators we couldn’t each provide alone. Given the choice, I wouldn’t work any other way.”

A couple of Friday’s ago, Euan Semple and I co-facilitated a Social Media training day with a mixture of people from across the Victorian Public Service in Melbourne. Despina Babbage, at DIIRD (Dep. Innovation Industry & Regional Development) helped to make it happen. DIIRD fully sponsored the training and invited a range of people – most were connected through an Innovation Hub and most are experimenting with social media in their government work. Big thanks to Despina and Glenys!

Anyway, the point I want to make here is that we now have amazing opportunities to find each other, learn together, have conversations and work together more than at any other time in history. In the last paragraph, I was going to write “I was lucky enough to work with Euan Semple”, but realised that it wasn’t luck, Euan and I (and Despina) made it happen by ‘showing up’ and trusting each other!

This day of training started as a long shot, a possibility and something that might happen. We kept the conversation going and I tapped into some of my networks. One thing lead to another and whole lot of trust was on offer. Despina had never met Euan or I. In fact, I had never actually met Euan or worked with him face2face.

The thing is though, Euan and I did know each other. We have read and contributed to each other’s blogs for years. We have shared great weblinks, resources and a few passing comments about peacocks on Twitter. I have worked with people who know Euan and I hear his name pop up in podcasts that I listen to. So, trusting Euan was easy.

What about the question, ‘will we make this day of training work?’. Again, we both knew we would click and be able to improvise and co-facilitate together. Those online interactions on blogs and twitter have allowed us to understand each other’s worldview and a sense of what’s important. It’s intangible and difficult to measure but it’s so true. I like Howard Rheingold’s thoughts on this which remind us that it’s not the shiny, new media tools that’s important here, it’s the emerging changes in human behaviour that is happening as a result of their use …

“It’s not the technology (or the social media tools), it’s the emerging social practices” H. Rheingold.

Back to shift in what I do …

The work phone has all but stopped ringing. The offers from traditional clients to work with me is at an all time low. On the flip side, the offers from friends and worldwide networks to work & play is at an all time high! At times that means a whole lot of work for very little money. It means giving away a heap of time to the Gift Economy. But, I am getting more and more connected with people … people like Viv described above as being ‘friends first’.

One such person was in my home office last week and he asked me, “So, what do you see yourself doing in 5 years time?’. Great question and to be honest, I don’t know. My sense is that I’ll be working more and more with friends. More work overseas in both f2f and online ways. More work of my choosing and more using processes that I truly believe in.

And now I’ll take some advice from my friend Chris Corrigan who writes …

“Indigenous science is about discovering the connections between things, rather than isolating something and trying to understand it free from the externalities that tie it to everything else.”

And from here, as a sense this shift in what I do and who I am becoming, I’ll “dive in, connect and put relationships to use”.

And here’s some graphic note-taking that I made when Euan was running his part of the day …

Cheers

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July 6, 2010

A turning point in my life

Recently, I have had many requests for copies of the Castlemaine 500 Report – a report that I co-authored in relation to a community scale sustainability project that ran a few years ago in Castlemaine. You can read more about the project here.

Why was this project a turning point in my life? Here a just a few reasons …

1. The failures of our efforts to bring about change (i.e. sustained reduction of household energy use) were confronting. I was lucky to have a client (thanks Bron) and a team (you know who you are) willing to go on a learning journey and explore ‘why’. After 12 months we responded to our observations and changed direction. We started to focus on the emerging stuff that was working … that leadership and capacity of the community itself.
2. Our ‘inquiry’ lead to new ways of thinking and, for me anyway, a whole new worldview on ‘How Stuff Changes’ emerged. If there is 1 section of the report to read, I would direct you to Chapter 3 Principles: Getting the Mindset Right. Much of the writing in this chapter informs everything I do now.
3. The people and community of Castlemaine. Let’s face it, relationships between people are everything and I have been gifted with a whole new network of people.
4. This blog space emerged from my need to connect with others during the ‘dark days’ of running this project. Thanks to Viv McWaters, I started writing in this space and connecting to others around the world. Through blogging and ‘showing up’ and contributing to other people’s work, I find myself blessed with a worldwide network of great thinkers, writers and artists who I can call on at any time to collaborate with.
5. In writing the report, Curtis Riddington and I decided at the outset to create a ‘remarkable’ report story – that is, something that would be ‘remarked on’ and even criticised. We employed a cartoonist (Simon Kneebone) and a design company in the Netherlands (Studio GloriusVandeVen). Our first drafts of the report were described as being ‘way too harsh’. In the end we toned it down and I regret we removed the stuff in the first paragraph about the importance of learning from failure.

In sum … Nowadays I expect to fail more and therefore I learn more . When trying to ‘change things’ I am a disrupter and expect criticism (keeping everyone happy when dealing with complex stuff is futile). Share everything, give it away and connect with others and often. Let go of control and be prepared to improvise. Before you try to change everything … start by simply opening your senses, slowing down and noticing more.

Cheers, Geoff

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June 29, 2010

2 great questions

Here’s a 1 minute video featuring Jack Thompson. He has been asked the simple question, “What is your happiest moment?”. I really enjoyed his response – HT to Katie at Get Shouty for this

Chris’ story and question, links back to a conference I was involved in running with Swinburne Uni, Sustainability Victoria and The Slips. At Show Me The Change, we even used an Einstein quote that Chris uses in his presentation. We used it in our ‘invitation’ to the field to describe our conference whose theme was ‘Evaluation of Behaviour Change’. Check out slide #4 …

What do I count? Here’s 3 things that I think are important to notice, value and count …

1. The joy that comes from moments when I truly ‘connect’ with others – when playing Lego with my son Lachie on the weekend, we were laughing at something we created and and our eye contact, for just a few moment, was like we were looking into each other’s heart and soul … what counts is our true connection and being present with each other.
2. The adventure and relationships that build when we say “Yes”. It is too easy to block other’s point of view and ideas and it’s a constant struggle to do otherwise. When we do let go of control and open up to possibility, saying ‘yes’ more often to more people and in more situations is another thing that really counts in my life!
3. Solitude. Leo over at Zen Habits wrote about this recently here. He described Solitude as being the #1 habit of highly creative people.

“Creativity flourishes in solitude. With quiet, you can hear your thoughts, you can reach deep within yourself, you can focus.” Zen Habits.

Why is solitude important to measure? Well, maybe we don’t measure it in numbers, but we should learn to value these moments more. We hear business and government catch-cries of “being creative and innovative” but rarely do the leaders create the space for creativity and innovation to flourish. That involves releasing control and measuring staff time and activities in vastly different ways.

Imagine an organisation that allowed all staff to spend 20% of their time on anything that contributes to the business? They don’t need to report on KPI’s and justify their time … they are encouraged to work on ideas and things for which they have a real passion for. IDEO and Gore are just 2 of many companies that do it – I suggest you read Group Genius by Keith Sawyer to find out more.

Cheers, Geoff

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June 23, 2010

What will it take?

A story and questions conjured from viewing, and brought to tears by, Boston.com images …

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June 22, 2010

Playing with iOS4

Today I downloaded the latest iPhone OS – iOS4.

Apart from a whole bunch of gimmicks, there are some really big improvements. The multi-tasking and app-folder additions are long overdue and very welcome.

The other thing I like are the 3rd party app improvements to Instapaper and Evernote. Haven’t even played with Mail as yet.

The biggest improvement is in the WordPress App which will allow me to write and update blog post and pages. I can now add images to post (like this one of my home office) but still can’t figure out how to embed weblinks in text though?

All done from my iPhone.

Geoff

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June 18, 2010

What’s Your Time Perspective?

Rob Paterson has written about a talk I have heard before. This time, however, the message was clearer due to the fantastic visual animations done by the RSA Animate crew. Watch and learn for yourself …

In response to the content in in talk, I like Rob’s points here …

“School is all analog and sequential. It is all about the future – when you know this it will be great when you are 30! School is all about it being in control not you. School is all passive. The rewards are all off in the distant and abstract future.

This is the heart of the problem that boys today face. Working harder to drill stuff into boys is not going to work.

School demands a cultural revolution that starts with this new context. We can’t go back – we have to find ways of making learning more engaging.”

It also starts me thinking about another dimension that I haven’t considered when facilitating workshops … what is the time perspective of the people in the room and of their workplace culture? What are the implications for future oriented strategy sessions, or, a backward looking learning workshop?

This concept of time perspectives also has implications for the climate change discussion. I wonder if particular people/groups/cultures are more (or less) likely to accept the future consequences of present actions? The futility of ramming 1-way information and knowledge into the brains of adolescent boys plays out the same way climate change scientists (and groups/government) work really hard to persuade skeptics with facts and figures.

Interesting stuff and will dig a little into these questions.

Geoff

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June 4, 2010

I have seen links to this 8 minutes of animation way too many times on Twitter and other’s blogs to ignore … so it gets a run on my space as well! Show it to your kids and have a chat about what they see happening here.

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June 3, 2010

Core Purpose

I love Hugh McLeod’s latest cartoon. It reminds of a conversation I had with Chris Corrigan who asked me to draw a tree. So here’s Hugh’s version of a tree … showing the purpose at the middle and the layers that emerge and build on the layer before it.

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May 31, 2010

The many and varied ways to communicate story

I have taken a few minutes away from a piece of work I am doing for the Show Me The Change (SMTC) conference which happened in Melbourne recently.That piece of work in progress is called “The Story of Show Me The Change” can be seen here.

One my roles in the SMTC design and facilitation team has been to communicate stories. We have created slideshows, written blog posts and utilised the Twitter-sphere. All the while, keeping focused on a few operating principles like these:

1. If you are not having a conversation or telling a story … then you are not communicating!
2. MAKE IT STICKY: We are all visual beings and pictures, when combined with a narrative, increase our ability to remember drastically
3. MAKE IT SLIPPERY: When ‘producing’ a story or content for others to ‘consume’ … make your story as ‘share-able’ as possible
4. Bullet Points in emails, slides will kill-off everything they touch – and as I write this I am noticing how I am doing just that in this list ;-(
5. LEARNING FROM BRAIN SCIENCES: Pictures also bring to our messages an emotional edge that results in ‘Ah-ha’ reactions
6. If you need a website for anything … make it a blog or a wiki!
7. If you run a meeting, conference or gathering where sharing the story is important … always engage an artist, graphic facilitator or better still a cartoonist like this guy …

Let me provide some examples of the work that I have been doing with Viv McWaters as part of the Show Me The Change Conference …

Our online INVITATION to entice people into asking more about this conference. The topic of Show Me The Change was “Evaluating Behaviour Change in Complex Contexts”. Wow! How sexy is that for a topic? Well, we thought it needed some work and as 1 small part of the invitation process Viv and I produced this slideshow over at Slideshare and embedded it on the About page of the conference site.

Our Approach to the Conference Design

Now this slideshow took a lot of time! The first step saw Viv and I conjure up a story from the work and conversations happening within the deign team and with the conference steering committee.

Once the narrative took shape, I immersed myself in the story for about a week or 2. During that time I’d have ideas for pictures and images that would just ‘come to me’ when doing other things – some of my clearest ideas come from time spent taking our dogs for a walk on th beach.

In this slideshow a theme emerged from the Greek symbol for CHANGE (Delta). Around that colors and a pattern of drawings on my tablet emerged.

The Story of Show Me The Change

Now this effort to produce and share a story took even longer than ‘Our Approach’ – in fact it is still a work in progress. The process was complicated by the death of my pen-tablet and an inability of Telstra to maintain a working ADSL2+ connection! This made the video uploading process to YouTube a nightmare.

Here’s a snapshot of my Mac’s desktop … littered with many of the images I drew in Corel using my Pen Tablet. It was hard enough to keep track of all the different photo and video files that produced this very loengthy blog post.

Here’s the link to The Story of Show Me The Change (way too long to embed it here) and here’s a few random images used to bring the whole story together …

‘I hear the drums Fernando …”

I can already hear some people saying … “What a waste of time!”. The same poeple ask me … “So how do you find time to blog and tweet?”.

My answer is … ‘Because I love doing it, I’ve got some flair for it and let’s face it, the world needs to fnd new ways of communicating the stories that matter.

My sources of inspiration this work

If you are wondering who shapes and inspires me, here are my favourite visual communicators …

Nancy White for her graphic facilitation …

Franke James for her online essays …

Garr Reynolds for his design thinking and slideshows …

The crew at the RSA.org for these amazing videos and artwork …

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May 26, 2010

My 201st post!

Just realised I have passed my double century of blog posts! Here’s my 201st post featuring 3 cartoons that happen to be sitting side by side on my desktop. These cartoons are also very linked by the people around them and concepts they explore.

The first features “The Slips” (and that’s me in 3rd slip). The Slips is an international consortium of blogger and facilitators. Many of my 200 posts have featured links back to the blogs of Anne Patillio (wicket keeper), Viv McWaters (1st slip), Johnnie Moore (2nd slip) and Chris Corrigan (4th slip). Thanks to Simon Kneebone for the artwork!

The next 2 are linked around the theme of status and power. This second cartoon is from the stables of Hugh McLeod over at Gaping Void. I just love Hugh’s ability to cut through and be totally honest and blunt! As part of the The Slips, I am constantly working with the Improv principle of Yes!And – which also inspired the name and theme of my blog. When new ideas and new ways of doing things are proposed in workshops, Yes!But … can often be heard as the automatic response. And if you don’t hear it, watch and you’ll see it in the body langauge!

The last one again comes from Simon Kneebone and was drawn at the recent Show Me The Change conference. The design team for this gig happened to be The Slips (told you these pictures were linked!) and we embraced the principles of self organisation and emergence in it’s design. The other concept we brought was the notion of Keynote Listeners and Participants rather than Keynote (Expert) Speakers.

Cheers, Geoff

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May 24, 2010

Scan of other blogs

Here’s some very cool stuff that caught my eye in the past week …

Love this over at Nancy White’s blog on Acceptance in the Flow of Facilitation

Viv McWaters on Different Ways of Working

Garr Reynolds on We Are The Stories We Tell

Sound advice from Euan Semple on adoption of social media … 1 at a time please

Toxic conversations over at Andy Middleton’s blog … which also features Euan Semple

and 1 more over at Nancy’s blog … Cognitive Bias video in the form of a song (via another person I know … Irene Guijt)

… and will find some time to write something myself one day soon

Geoff

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May 16, 2010

The Slips

Over the past couple of weeks I have had the pleasure of playing (and working) with an “International Consortium” … of sorts. We call ourselves The Slips and we are (from 1st to 4th slip) … Johnnie Moore (UK), Viv McWaters (Australia), me (Australia) and Chris Corrigan (Canada). Without a wicket keeper we’d be useless and Anne Pattillo (NZ) takes up this position.

Together in May we worked with Swinburne Uni and Sustainability Victoria to host the Show Me The Change conference. Johnnie and Viv ran a workshop called Crumbs in Sydney and we all took part in the fringe OSonOS (Open Space on Open Space) in Melbourne.

We have been working together for some time now, however, our methods (and deliveries) have been somewhat ‘unorthodox’.

Until this May, The Slips had never been together in the 1 place at the same time. That had only ever happened on Skype. 4 of us managed to get to the 2009 Applied Improvisational Network conference in Portland, Oregan – with our 1st slip missing in action! Apart from all being facilitators, we all share a passion for applying Improv to our craft.

It now looks like The Slips will be together again in Amsterdam this September at the 2010 Applied Improv gathering. Who knows what we collaborate on together afterwards in the UK? We don’t know yet either, but, whilst we continue to learn from each other and have fun … something is bound to happen!

We came together as a results of many small offers. We build on each other’s learning through our blogs and in conversation. We inspire and support each other. On some levels we are the same – and very different. We love what we do.

To sum up, I’ll draw a great post written by Viv here.

From Viv …

We come from Australia, New Zealand, UK and Canada. We share a love of improv, are skilled facilitators, blog, use open space, are curious, adventurous and love to travel. We like to do risky, edgy work. We each have our own businesses and work, naturally, in different parts of the world. We’re generous, with what we know and what we share. We each bring different, and complementary, perspectives. We play together. We work together. We’re individuals. We’re different. We agree, we argue, we struggle, we care.

Are you seeing a theme here?

Before we worked together we were friends. Separated by oceans. Connected by ideas. Inspired by an audacious plan. We’re still friends. Maybe even better friends. Family. Love. This is what binds us. This is what makes working together a joy. This is why we’ll do it again.

Geoff

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May 10, 2010

Being in your element

I received a fantastic email from a friend this morning about an experience he had in the surf at Bells Beach this morning. Having a wonky right knee, and on the wat to Lorne to see the Physio, I spotted these sets coming in at Cathedral Rock. Thought I’d share the video and the email with the world …

“Oooh I’m still frothing from this morning surfed Bells & got some absolute smokers. The endorphins are juiced & it’ll be a hard day to keep still after the waves I scored this morning. Euphoria peaked when there were 3 of us 30m out past the other half dozen guys out & we saw the horizon lift & began the mad paddle, 2 went wide &  I went straight out – over the first wave, over the second and the third one was another 2 foot bigger than the rest I had taken about 4 strokes up the face of the wave & there was spray flying everywhere & then something clicked in my head & said you could catch this, I spun a couple of strokes & I’m standing on top of this beast & 40m down the line I can see the other guys wondering whether I’m going to make it or not their jaws open as I’m flying down the face of this thing – & I ride the wave all the way to the sand and come in just the Bells side of Winki. Chuffed”

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May 1, 2010

Using Improv to ‘Save The World’

If you want to hear 3 people talking about how Applied Improv can ‘save the world’ … then head over here to my podcasting blog Winkipod!

The names, the voices, stories and laughter from these 2 wonderful people will be revealed at Winkipod …

Winkipod-cast link – Using Improv to Save The World

Cheers, Geoff

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