Asking for help
25 January 2012I quite enjoy helping others. I’m not so good at asking for help. From an improv perspective it’s like making offers – asking for help is making an offer to the world. And boy, does it pay back big time. Those of you reading this blog recently will know I’m in foreign parts designing a…
The Casuarina Project: Community Leadership 10 years on
8 September 2011It’s 10 years this month since the first group of local Surf Coast Shire residents finished the inaugural Casuarina Project. The final session was on September 15th, 2001 and I remember it vividly. We’d booked out a local restaurant for us to gather to reminisce on the journey we’d shared over the previous seven months.…
Meetings. How can we make them better?
2 September 2011Recently my friend Chris Corrigan wrote about objections to participation in conferences and meetings. One of his key points was the question of who is responsible for the experience. Often it rests with the organisers, or in the case of a meeting, the chairperson or convenor. We are all responsible for our meetings. This is…
Valuing friendships and connections
20 October 2010Have you ever been to an event where you have come away excited, but unclear why? And have other people at the same event wondered what the point of it was? These are two extremes of experience with many shades inbetween and represent the great diversity of experiences we have at different events. What works…
There is no manual
7 February 2010I once worked with a young woman who wanted to know, at every turn, what she should do, how she should do it. She was smart, passionate and able – yet she was gripped by fear. Gripped by the fear of not doing it ‘right’. The problem was, and is, that there is no manual…
Nick Owen keynote at the improv conference, Portland Oregon
15 November 2009Thought I’d try some live blogging. I’m at the Applied Improv Conference in Portland Oregon with about 100 other people. It’s day two – and Nick is our only keynote. The title of his session is called Touching the Heart: Exploring Core Values through Personal Storytelling. He’s doing some introductory stuff – building rapport with…
New thinking
15 April 2009For many years now I’ve had this Arthur Schopenhauer quote as part of my email signature: “Thus, the task is not so much to see what no one yet has seen, but to think what nobody yet has thought about that which everybody sees.” This TED video captures exactly that! This gives me faith that…
Just ask. The answer might be ‘yes!’
22 January 2009Check out this photo. It announces some tour dates for Eric Bibb in Australia. Nothing strange about that. Now take a closer look. There’s a gig in Melbourne, capital of Victoria. Population 3.8 million. And another one in Hobart, capital of Tasmania. Population 205,000. And Meeniyan. Population 1006. Meeniyan. Where the…
Leaders rule – differently, though
6 January 2009Keith Sawyer has an interesting post about the role of leadership and lessons learned from the impact of internet ‘democratisation’ and the emergence of ‘open source communities’. Keith suggests that the internet has enabled ‘participatory democracy’ evidenced by Wikipaedia and Linux. The question remains however if there is a different form of leadership required in…