There is never nothing happening

That's a line from The Way of the Peaceful Warrior. I was reminded of it by this post by Dominic Campbell, reflecting on his facilitation of an event last month (with long, flattering reference to me in there, shucks.)

Dom discusses my view that efforts to make meetings productive sometimes have the opposite effect.

I’ve discussed this point with Johnnie a fair amount recently, and the challenge remains how you resist trying to make something more ‘useful’ from the session, be it action plans or whatever.

Actually I'm all for useful things happening but it raises good questions about what "useful" is. An ill-mannered, fiery debate in which nothing is resolved on the day may turn out be a very useful step on a longer journey.

And there is never nothing happening. There's always a lot going on if we make the effort to see it. That's what Chris Corrigan means by "harvesting".

Dom quotes Seth Godin's advice:

“Lean in, back off, but don’t do nothing

but then try this: find a partner, sit facing each other and spend 60 seconds trying to not influence each other. More and more lately, I'm saying to myself notice more, change less as a rough and ready reminder to myself to be more present to life and less desperate to be in control.

Abstract demands for action and angry labelling of meetings as "unproductive" may also have their place in a complex world. But behind these voices there may be a desire not so much for action, but more for an end to the discomfort of uncertainty - or a badly concealed need to be in control. Can't resist reposting this Python classic.

Models

Graham Wilson has a provocative piece on the pitfalls of Spiral Dynamics. I liked his general comments about the dodginess of models applied to people and organisations.

There's usually three clues that they are little more than marketing hype for one consultant or another - a conveniently packaged way of trying to differentiate themselves:

- The first is that effort has gone into visual design - as if nature would have based itself on a model that needed CAD skills.

- Second is that they always have a fixed number of stages, levels, steps, or phases of which there are two schools of thought - either keep it few so people can hope to remember them, or make it many so people are impressed by the complexity.

- Thirdly, stick on a TM, (R), or (C) as a little suffix.

I wonder how many Nobel Prize winning theories had "12 steps", were printed in colour with neatly overlapping pyramids or circles, and had a TM appended to their name? [ed: The answer is none.]

I'm generally wary of these three steps/seven secrets/twelve levels approaches. They feel like after-the-event tidying up of things that emerge in complex ways, a rewriting of history and a set of filters through which to (mis)understand the present.

Hat tip: Dave Snowden

The experience of dialogue

Good post by Chris Corrigan: Our experience of dialogue.

This clip is interesting: interviews with screenwriters who point out the function of dialogue in a television show. One of the high points of writing dialogue, it turns out, is that it will never be effective if people are actually seen talking to each other. So it’s no surprise that bringing these forms of conversation into the real world creates all sorts of dysfunctional social situations.

Behind the mask

I'm going to a workshop at the end of this month led by Shawn Kinley and Steve Jarand, who are coming over from the Loose Moose improv company in Canada. The theme is Mask and Improvisation (pdf) and I think it will be fascinating. Shawn is that rare combination of awesome performer and teacher. I also remember taking a short mask workshop before and being blown away by the experience. As the blurb says:

Our minds are conditioned to seek out and create powerful emotional responses to faces.
The use of masks is extensive with their use in rituals and occurs throughout the world reaching into our pre history. Masks today are used by skilled practitioners in theatre technique and organisations for deep self discovery and expression.

There are still places available if you want to join me.

Heroes of leadership?

I agree with Rob and Earl most of the time, and especially lately. Greed is not good.

The evaluation hamburger...

.. is new one on me. It's a euphemism for the famous "feedback sandwich". I prefer the third option which you can find in this engaging post on the Castleton blog. It's a riff on the book, Everything's an Offer, reviewed here a few days ago.

Us Now

I'm just back from a screening of Us Now, courtesy of NESTA. It's a one hour documentary, exploring the question: In a world in which information is like air, what happens to power? It doesn't so much answer it as invite the audience to think about it, provoked by some interesting examples of how folks are using the web (and some lower-tech methods) to collaborate as never before.

The scene that particularly engaged me tonight was of an experiment in participative democracy in Morecambe. The community gathered in a school hall to vote on competing proposals for investing £20,000. Voting was done on sheets of paper, not through fancy technology. The camera lingered on a guy wanting to improve his churchyard and a group of model railway buffs. The latter won no money, but their reflections on the process were quite interesting: they were not sore losers, though disappointed they respected the process. That little scene points to what feels like an important truth about the merits of transparency and participation - there are some deeper wins that people can appreciate beyond getting what they ostensibly want.

Disclosure: I'm hopelessly biassed as I've been working with both NESTA and Thinkpublic (where Ivo works when not being a film director). So you'll just have to see the film for yourself, I guess.

Python's other other operation

As regular readers know, I am a massive Monty Python fan. And having caught up with this (via Geoff Jones), now even more so!