by John Brooker | Feb 7, 2012 | Facilitate meetings
YES! AND… Facilitate. Innovate. Transform – Creative Gorilla # 38 Look to see how you can make things simpler. This can save time and money… “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” Albert Einstein Do you find some solutions are a little more complicated that necessary? This week my son was ill and wanted to sleep with his Mum, so Dad slept in his bunk bed some five feet off the floor. Waking in the middle of the night I wanted some water, but was too lazy to climb down the steps. Lying back, I invented a rope and pulley system in my mind on which I could haul up the water sitting in its beaker on the table below the bed. The pulley would screw in to the ceiling and the beaker would sit in a small container to catch any slops as I hauled it up. Thankfully I dozed off to the imagery of little beakers of water gaily jaunting through the air in a very Heath Robinson fashion. The next morning my daughter came in to wake me. I asked her to pass me up the water and explained my idea. “Oh” she said “Andrew has already done that. But he just put a little bucket on the window latch and puts his cup in it.” Hah! I looked at his device and burst out laughing. Obviously I’m Einstein’s “simpler” in his quote. Heath Robinson made a good living for many years by creating caricature drawings of “complex inventions that achieved absurdly simple results” (quotation from BBC site). He believed that many...
by John Brooker | Jan 31, 2012 | Facilitate meetings
YES! AND… Facilitate. Innovate. Transform – Creative Gorilla # 31 There are some forces in this world that we tap in to but do not fully understand. One of these is “synchronicity”. If we follow our calling, if we commit to something completely then synchronicity will occur, in unexpected ways, to help us succeed… “Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans. The moment one definitely commits oneself then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would otherwise never have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.” W.N. Murray, The Scottish Himalayan Expedition [Source: “Synchronicity” by Joseph Jaworski] Are you totally committed to something in your professional life? “I wish my flight were two hours later,” I mumbled to my wife when the alarm sounded at 5.30am last Sunday morning. That afternoon, PRECISELY 120 minutes later than scheduled, the tyres of my 747 amicably divorced the runway and I wondered if there is a mysterious force in the universe, yet to reveal its corporate brand. You might consider this force has nodding acquaintance with one that C.J. Jung called “synchronicity”. He defined it as “a meaningful coincidence of two or more events where something other than the probability of chance is involved.” In his quotation, Murray alludes to this force but calls it “providence”, a force unleashed by commitment. So So why...
by John Brooker | Jan 13, 2012 | Innovate
YES! AND… Facilitate. Innovate. Transform – Gorilla # 13 If you treat staff as consumers rather than as human resources, might you effect change better…? “We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses. “ Carl Jung Psychologist When you are faced with a change programme at work, would you rather be treated as a consumer or a human resource? I read somewhere that 80% of change programmes don’t achieve objectives, (if you know the source please let me know). Why might this happen? Could it be because so many change programmes treat those involved as resources to be controlled by using e.g. “bogus consultations”, “traffic light” project tracking, name and shame progress reports and “copy all” e-mails to managers who are slipping deadlines. It is little surprise that people revert to previous behaviours once the controls are released. Some years ago I took responsibility for a company change programme, to implement and document all processes. There were a few challenges because the company was not process oriented outside of computer operations, people were change fatigued after three company change programmes and the day job was keeping them busy! Had I accepted a poison chalice or a G & T on the patio? It depends how you frame the problem and reframing a problem in a different way is a powerful creative technique. “What if,” I mused, “we treat the staff as consumers rather than human resources? Would that make them more responsive?” So we did, and they were. We ran the change programme as a consumer campaign. We held optional consultation sessions (over a third...
