Nothing is Written – Learning is an Adventure now available
1 June 2015To celebrate a whole new month Johnnie Moore and I are releasing the PDF of our new short book, Nothing is Written. It shares eight simple ideas that guide how we work. Nothing is Written Emotional connectedness Experiences over explanation Shared peril Avoiding the teacher trance The value of loose ends Getting out of our…
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…
Learn facilitation?
7 January 2015Facilitating is like rock balancing – you never know if you can do it until you try. Everyone’s offering training at this time of the year (let’s face it, everyone’s offering training all year round!) How do you choose? Not sure, but here’s my advice: PICK ME! PICK ME! You can read all the details…
The meaning of words
3 December 2014Musing over the meaning of these words – play, playfulness, game, activity, ice-breaker and warm-up – I invited others to share their understanding. Even with a sample size of 14 responses*, there’s some interesting insights regarding word meanings and the use of language when facilitating. here’s what i discovered. Some people gave meanings for each word, others…
Idea Bounce
19 October 2014What do you get when you combine a mini one of these with a mini one of these? I call it an Idea Bounce (new process alert). Inspired by TrampolineDay and Open Space – it’s what to do when you don’t have time for either of those processes. I had about 75 minutes, a group…
What is the real work of facilitation?
8 October 2014If you could draw a caricature of a facilitator, what would you include? Covered in sticky notes, in multiple colours and sizes Surrounded by butcher’s paper Holding multiple marker pens Trying to herd cats or catch clouds Wielding a whip or cattle prod Standing in front of, or at the centre of, a group of…
What I learnt about productive meetings from tree planting and report writing
6 October 2014Many years ago I worked with an environmental program that was designed to help bring conservationists and farmers together, to help make agriculture productive and sustainable. Measuring productivity was easy – farmers knew how to collate the costs associated with their particular enterprise, and the market took care of the rest. It’s fairly straightforward economics…
Creative Facilitation workshops in London Nov 6 & 7
1 October 2014After our success in Melbourne and Amsterdam, we’re now bringing our Creative Facilitation workshops to London. There’s two one-day workshops on November 6 and 7. Do one. Do both. They stand alone, and they complement each other. Bringing meetings to life: The Basics! We cover the basics of getting more from meetings, with lots of…
Planning workshops
30 September 2014We’re often asked about designing workshops – how to, what processes to select, how to estimate timings, what works, and what doesn’t. Everyone eventually develops their own approach. Whenever I’m doing something new, I write it out – long hand (not on a computer). This slows me down and I can visualise each step. It…
Facilitation and equilibrium
30 September 2014Some beliefs and theories in facilitation have always bothered me. What appears to be sane and sensible on paper, in reality, just simply don’t stack up when working with a real, live group of humans. One of these is divergent thinking and convergent thinking. It presumes that people will engage in divergent thinking (coming up…