Over the weekend, myself and Marty Maher and a bunch of other volunteers stage the 3rd annual Aireys Inlet Open Mic Music Festival. Apart from being an absolutely outrageous success, it was loads of fun and we designed and staged it all without a Steering Committee (yaaay) … or a detailed strategic plan for that matter! Marty has grown and nurtured this event from a seed … an idea that Marty had (and he has lot’s of them). The core of that idea assumes that there are loads of musicians out there desperate to strut their stuff and play music …

Neil Perkin penned this terrific post Agile Planning. Image Source This post resonated loudly with me because of the recent work I have been doing as a facilitator with Government agencies. Also, the upcoming Show Me The Change conference in Melbourne this May is also linked. Here’s a snapshot of Neil’s Agile post: We are all bombarded by change and it’s accelerating (and will not slow down) … the enterprise of the future will be hungry for change … but our current business/government are stuck in linear systems that are slow, top-down & inflexible … “Our structures need to be …

Are you fascinated by human behaviour … and do you spend at least some of your time trying to influence and change others? When you do this, are you asked to ‘measure success’ or report on outcomes? If yes, then this conference in for you. and the registration page is now accepting your money and booking. Places may run out fast so watch the conference space 🙂 I am proud to part of the design team working with the conference sponsors and supporters to bring this event to the world. I am passionate about the theme and the approach taken …

Just got home from a terrific Karate session! After nearly passing out at the last 2, grueling sessions, my Shihan (teacher) gave me some advice. “Geoff … you are trying to hard. Loosen it up … breathe. Let go of that tension across your shoulders.” he suggested. So tonight, my focus was to ‘let it happen’ and stay loose even when ‘trying’ to learn new moves and techniques. Over the weekend, I thought back to my competitive tennis days and remembered the game I used to play when my tennis game went off. It is called ‘Bounce-Hit’ and I learned …

I have been noticing some stuff written about working and trying too hard. Allow me to ramble and explore some emerging thoughts on this and other related (or maybe unrelated) things … One example was in an email conversation and gave the example of a ‘process/model’ (for doing things differently) that appeared on the Open Space list. A comment made about it was something like, “yer working too hard …”. So where are you/we/I working too hard? Where are we working hard at following processes and linear schemes to get things done better and more effectively? Are these processes a …