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 …

Harrison Owen‘s latest book (Wave Rider – Leadership for High Performance in a Self Organising World) has a great title and I, being a novice surfer, was drawn to the title. Here’s some quotes from Chapter 1 … “Wave Riders are curious people possessed of an innate capacity to go with the flow, constantly seizing upon opportunity when others see no possibility, or even disaster. Their level of performance is consistently high, and projects are often completed in breathtakingly short periods of time, with a degree of excellence that may seem unbelievable.” “The times have changed. The anomalous behavior of …

I’ve been on the road lately … facilitating lots and lots of conversations with lots of lots of people. Big groups and small groups, mixed and unmixed groups. The conversations have been about learning from our past and working out ways to ‘do it better’ in the future. When you accept the offer to facilitate day after day, there is such a great opportunity to practice the art of being present … to enter a space with purpose yet being able to ‘let-go’ of how/what/when and respond to the group’s needs. With each workshop I got better and better at …

In keeping with name of my blog, I used a quick Impro activity with a group before Opening Space on the weekend. After re listening to this podcast at the 2008 OSonOS confernece, Chris Corrigan and Viv McWaters (and others) took my own understanding of the OS priniciple “Whatever Happens is the Only Thing that Could Have” to a new level. I have always struggled to articulate the essence of this principle. In the podcast, Viv McWaters explains the importance of using Action Methods to help participants ‘experience’ the principles and not just ‘intellectualize’ them. Viv introduces us to the …