What I learned about facilitating by doing stand-up comedy
16 July 2018Earlier this year I co-hosted an experimental event called Radical Acts. The premise being that we need to do things differently – maybe not big things, sometimes the smallest of acts can make a huge difference. For many people attending Radical Acts was just that – a radical act of stepping into an experimental event,…
Games connect
28 April 2017On our recent trip to Mongolia, in winter, I knew we’d be spending a lot of time indoors, with host families and with each other. It seemed like a good idea to take some table-top games to play. I chose games that did not require any understanding of English: Ghost Blitz and Skip-Bo Both games…
Imagine if you were the type of leader YOU would want to follow
15 December 2016Fancy three days of fun, engaging learning on a theme of leading creative teams? Johnnie and I are bringing our Creative Leadership workshop to Melbourne, February 7th to 9th. Here’s some reflections from those who came to this workshop in Cambridge earlier this year. Lots more info and bookings here
The two not-so-secret secrets about Creative Facilitation
24 October 2016There’s no big secret to Creative Facilitation, it comes down to two things: using creative processes that allow people to really participate, and showing up as a facilitator that people feel able to trust. The hard part is letting go of all those practices that squeeze the life out of meetings. We are social creatures, fundamentally…
Best summer ever!
15 September 2016I’ve just had the best summer. Yet it wasn’t summer. Not here. And I wasn’t here. I was there, in the UK, hanging out with my friend and business buddy Johnnie Moore in Cambridge. There’s many reasons that it was a great summer, and one was the fun and connection we had in making a…
Fractals
17 February 2016Have you ever been to an event that is talking about being one thing while being something else? For example, a conference about innovation that uses well-established, mainstream and predictable processes? Or more specifically, focusing on creativity, for example, while sitting in ferried rows listening to an ‘expert’ speaker using poor powerpoint slides? With questions,…
Serendipity and discovery
1 February 2016It’s hard to get back into work mode after the holidays. It’s tempting to put off the inevitable, but today I had a couple of meetings to go to in Melbourne with some spare time to wander the streets. A bookshop beckoned. There’s not many bookshops around these days, so I was tempted. I never…
Learning is an adventure
30 May 2015Training is on my mind at the moment. I’ve always believed in the importance of helping others learn to do what I do with facilitation, and more, rather than build a dependence. The next couple of weeks are chocker block full of creative facilitation training – one of my favourite things to be doing. So…
Creative Facilitation – New stuff. Yay!
23 April 2015How does a facilitator announce new stuff? A musician brings out a new song or album, an artist has an exhibition of their latest paintings, a writer releases a new book or poem – and a facilitator announces…”I have new stuff to share with you.” Sounds a bit lame really. Nonetheless, I DO have new…
Kinetic type AND language AND Stephen Fry
28 September 2014In my last post about interests, I mentioned that one of them was kinetic type. This can be traced back to early days in my career when I worked with a hugely talented graphic artist, Frank Moore, who taught me the ins and outs of typography (not to mention layout and design, pre-internet no less).…