From the Archives: Almost Improvising

I’m editing this one from 2013 just before Superbowl Sunday, which is mentioned in this post. Leaving it AS IS!

“We aren’t always improvising, we are almost improvising. Then there is that moment we are actually improvising and it is all worth it.” Matt Smith, liberally misquoted by yours truly.

I spent Superbowl Sunday at an improv workshop, thinking that my avoidance of the television and a shift from American football sports to theater sports was good karma. I wanted to step further into improvisation, particularly applied improvisation (vs performance.)  Little did I know that my learnings from both would intersect around the power of being ready to improvise.

I met Matt Smith last September at the Applied Improvisation Conference in a fabulous workshop he co-led with Rebecca Stockley. (The post about the workshop experience links to some good stuff by Viv McWaters also worth reading…) After AIN I realized I needed a lot more work on my own in order to weave applied improvisational approaches into my facilitation and community work. Finally, I found a day that worked for me and headed over to the beautiful Valley School (ah, I want to be 8 years old and go to school here!) with an open mind, heart and lots of questions like “how does this work in an intercultural or even multilingual contexts?”

 

“The big question is, what happens when everything changes, when you go off script?” Hofstetter said. “That was where it got fun.”

via How Oreo Got That Twitter Ad Up So Fast.

 

From the Archives: Saying Just Enough: Judicious Use of Prompts

From the draft archives 2013. Yes, I’m up to 2013. The little gif is just for fun!

An animated giff of my grandchild dancing

One of my yoga teachers is really good and putting together a great flow sequence. She is observant and gives good verbal suggestions during poses. But her narrative runs non stop for the whole hour. Even the narrative about emptying our minds, turning away from the “monkey-mind” feels like my very own, well, monkey-mind!

Nancy back in 2012

Saying less, clear prompts, and space to listen to the answers. This one still resonates.

Polluted Science Communications is Still a Problem

From the draft archives 2012.

Why we are poles apart on climate change : Nature News & Comment. This post prompted me to make a few notes about how communities and networks could help reduce polluted science communications. How naive I was.  We now know that troll farms assume the mantle of communities and networks and more efficiently pollute science, political and other domains of communications better than ever. I think revisiting my draft archives is making me sad…

From the Drafts: Felt Accountability

Notes about accountability on a flip chart: behaviors, bureaucracy, organizing and sharing

From the draft archives, 2012. This post from Bob Sutton came out of his frustrations with an airline, and led him to consider factors of felt accountability. I loved rereading his post as it spoke to this time of strong individualism here in the US. Do we have any felt accountability? I’ve snipped in the four aspects of felt accountability, but go read the post!

Felt Accountability: Some Emerging Thoughts – Bob Sutton.

Authorship…  That feeling that not only am I obligated to do the right thing, but that I am the person responsible for designing and making it as great as I can…

Mutual Obligation…David Novak, CEO of Yum! brands, argues that this should be the goal of a great leader, to create a place where it feels like you own it and it owns you.   …there is palpable weight on people, they feel pressure to do the right thing even when no one is looking, as the old saying goes. And they pressure others to do so as well.   

Indifference…Think of the average hair salon, where each stylist rents a chair.  Or a group dental practice, where dentists share a common receptionist and a few services and little else. Some organizations are designed this way and can be quite effective. The mutual dependence is weak, it is a “we don’t do much for you, so you don’t have to do much for us” situation.   

Mutual  Contempt… everyone seems to despise everyone else.  I hope I am wrong about this, but the awful stories rolled in from so many sources that it seems as if all the years of cost-cutting, all the battles with unions, all the management changes, all the stress that customers have endured over the years have conspired to bring the organization — at least most it — to this dark place.  

Archives: ROSVIZ 2012 Video Harvest

From the Draft Archives, Summer 2012, the RosViz graphic facilitation workshop with Michelle Laurie. Just. Plain. Imperfect. Fun. The always creative Jason Toal produced. Never underestimate the amount of fun people can have when let loose. I think this is a thread as I reflect back on these old blog drafts!
#MondayVideos

For a slightly more polished harvest video, also from the 2012 archives, take a look at what these kindergartners did for THEIR harvest! https://www.samchaltain.com/this-is-what-student-learning-looks-like