Imagine a world where most people think that life’s events are largely predictable. A world where people believe that planning, expert analysis, centralized control and risk assessments will smooth out the bumps of unpredictability … and ensure that predetermined targets are hit. Sound familiar? Now imagine a world where the universal human tendency is to ‘be prepared for the unexpected’ … because that’s life! In this world, planning is still done, but is balanced by the formation of improvisational teams – teams that emerge in response to what is happening in the moment. In this world, the term ‘script think’ …

My 8 year old son is learning guitar. After a few months of rote-learning standard riffs and chords, he is beginning to experiment with his own tunes and chords. “Daddy,” he says as he fingers an improbable combination of notes. “Is this a real chord? It sounds kind of cool.” On balance, he spends as much time creating his own sounds as he does practicing the songs and scales his guitar teacher provides him. Both types of practice are important and both help to wire his developing his brain differently. In this TED Talk by brain surgeon Charles Limb, he …

Here’s a video of John Cleese in a more serious moment. He reflects on his own creative process and illuminates some lessons in this 10 minute video. These are not new, but worth reminding ourselves nonetheless. Some points that I picked up … 1. Sleeping on a problem (eg. writer’s block on a report/story) not only helps the solution become clear … the problem seems to vanish altogether – and so the subconscious mind does the work for you In conferences we facilitate or attend, the ‘overnight rule’ means that even if at the end of Day 1 everyone is …

I’m on a roll! My last few posts have been inspired by my reading and reflections on Impro. Like any parent, I want my kids to thrive, be passionate and happy. I’d also like my kids to learn to improvise … or maybe slow down the un-learning process that happens as kids start to fear failure, judgement and criticism. I was playing with my eldest son last weekend … we were building structures with shapes. I noticed that Griff wasn’t happy with the end result. We were building structures slowly and we were ‘judging’ the building process with each move. …

Thanks to Chris Corrigan for highlighting this 2 minute video by David Gershon talking about what it takes to take change to scale. Chris comments on this video and leaves us all with an important question to consider … “As an artful act of invitation, this is briliant.  How many of us outside the movie industry consider making trailers to gatherings?  Putting audio and video to work in this way is a fantastic way to get the message out, introduce people to ideas that will be bandied around at your gathering, and it becomes a great way to have people …