Life can only be understood by looking backward

The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once said that life can only be understood by looking backward, but it must be lived looking forward.

Looking backward: A cartoon by Tom Gauld: "The musings of Kierkegaard"
The musings of Kierkegaard, by @tomgauld, New Scientist November 19, 2022

I agree!

Understanding by looking backward

In my 7th decade, I think I better understand some of the mysteries of my youth.

Feelings

Paradoxically, one of the things I now understand better is the importance and influence of my feelings. Growing up, no one talked about feelings in my family. I got the message that feelings, especially uncomfortable ones, were taboo to discuss and best suppressed. So, I focused on understanding the world and my life by developing my rational understanding and knowledge of the world as a physicist. I had little understanding of how my feelings were influencing my life and decisions.

Over the years, I’ve realized that how I feel determines what I do far more than what I think. Though it’s still a struggle at times, I work to be more aware of how I’m feeling and how it is affecting my behavior. Doing this helps me to minimize being “stuck” in feelings that are associated with my recent or distant past. This leads to another understanding…

This too shall pass

These days, I find myself better able to deal with life’s ups and downs. I wouldn’t say my life feels easier overall. Increased financial security comes hand in hand with the infirmities of old(er) age. But over time I’ve internalized my understanding that “this too shall pass”.

Perhaps this is because I have more experience knowing that bad or good times don’t last forever. Perhaps I have become more resilient, or more accepting of the reality that some things are beyond my control. Or, maybe, it’s simply that my short-term memory is worse so it’s easier for me to live in the present!

Forgiveness

As I age, I’ve become more tolerant of imperfections in myself, others, and the world. I am better able to forgive myself and others, having learned that everyone makes mistakes and that it’s not fair to hold anyone to impossibly high standards. I’m more empathetic, tolerant, and understanding than I used to be.

Many of the certainties of my youth have given way to respect for diverse opinions and a greater acceptance of imperfections in the world around us.

One specific example of this is forgiving the flaws and limitations of my parents, of whom I was so intolerant in my youth. I now see them as imperfect people rather than the all-knowing, all-powerful figures they appeared to me as a child. As a parent and grandparent myself now, I recognize the sacrifices and efforts they made on my behalf. I’ve gained a deeper appreciation for their love and support, despite their imperfections.

Everything else

The older I get, the more I realize how little I know compared to what there is to know. Paradoxically, I’m increasingly surprised by what I do know when circumstances bring it to mind. Most of my knowledge is tacit. Though my slowly deteriorating memory bugs me at times, I’m fundamentally at peace with remembering and understanding stuff that I used to know. Coming (mostly) to terms with my frailties as I age is a blessing.

Living looking forward

Until I die, there’s always the future—which hasn’t happened yet! I think the trick of experiencing the future as fully as possible is to work on minimizing the effects of past experiences that get in the way of being in the present. I’ll never completely succeed in this, of course, but it’s a worthy goal. Living looking forward is tough because…

…looking backward evokes feelings

Looking backward helps us to understand our past in ways that were previously hidden from us. In addition, thinking about the past often reinvokes feelings associated with that time. Sometimes this is a positive or healing experience. But sometimes it leads us to wallow in the past, stuck in unresolved trauma. That’s why looking backward with therapeutic support is often useful. It’s something I’ve done numerous times over the years which has paid rich dividends.

Living in the present

Here’s a final thought about living in the present by a meditation teacher:

“Let thoughts about the past be known for what they are: thoughts about the past. Let thoughts about the future be known for what they are: thoughts about the future.”

My biggest consulting mistake and the systematic development of informed consent

A presentation slide with a picture of Adrian Segar wearing a dunce's cap. The slide text reads, "Learning from the biggest consulting mistake I've made — and that you probably have too."At edACCESS 2008 I gave a 90-minute presentation entitled “Learning from the biggest consulting mistake I’ve made — and that you probably have too”.

OK, the formal title was “The Systematic Development of Informed Consent“, which sounds much fancier but requires explanation.

17 years have passed, yet I think the blunders I made while working with a client during one of my past careers—IT consulting—are still relevant and instructive. So, I’m going to ‘fess up to the world. And as a bonus, I’ll introduce you to the people who taught me the biggest reason worthy projects don’t get implemented, and what you can do about it.

The Systematic Development of Informed Consent

The story begins

The story begins in November 2007, when I was invited to a two-day training given by Hans and Annemarie Bleiker. There were about forty of us. Here is a photo of our merry group.

While teaching at MIT in the 1960s, Hans and Annemarie noticed the dismaying reality that many public projects never get implemented or even started. They decided to research to find out why, and if there was anything people could do to improve their chances of success. She’s an anthropologist, he’s an engineer. Since then, they have presented their findings and unique methods for improving matters to more than forty thousand professionals around the U.S. Here are some of their clients…

[Click on the image for the current list.]
…and their mission.

Mid-morning on the first day of the workshop I had a major aha! moment. I understood a core mistake I’d made eighteen years earlier. That mistake led to my failure to successfully implement an organization-wide IT system for a major client.

During the workshop, I discovered that the mistake is so common that the Bleikers have spent decades teaching people how to avoid it.

So, I want to share what I learned with you because you have probably already made the same mistake.

My Harrowing Story

The following story is mostly true, though I’ve changed all names to confuse the innocent.

In July 1989, I was hired by a client I’ll call Seagull School. The school had two campuses, North and South, that were three miles apart and housed slightly different academic programs. The key personnel I worked with were Mr. Head, Mr. South (head of the main campus), Mr. North, and the Tech Director.

biggest consulting mistake

From 1989 – 1998, I wrote custom software or adapted commercial software for Seagull’s administrative needs. It was all hosted at South. South’s computer labs included both PCs and Macs; North decided to only use Macs. At the time, I didn’t think much about it.

In 1999, I was asked to develop an integrated administrative system that would eventually be used at both campuses. It took about a year to develop. During the development, North was asked repeatedly to define what system functionality they would like, but they didn’t want to talk about specific data elements. Over the next couple of years, it slowly became clear that they wanted something that could be changed on a whim. North wouldn’t consider the ramifications for the whole school. For example, North wanted the school registrar, based at South, to create transcripts, but wouldn’t specify what might be on them for North’s programs.

Finally!

In 2001, Mr. Head decreed at a meeting with all the administrators that the system I’d developed should be used at both campuses. Yay!

But…no.

A few days later, Mr. Head called me into his office. He had just met with Mr. North who had presented him with a large packet of documents expressing his view of the current state of affairs. Mr. North claimed that the integrated system solution had been developed without talking to people at North. So, he had just purchased another system from a neighboring school (without talking to anyone at South). He told Mr. Head that he thought Seagull School should use North’s system for both campuses and have the existing integrated system be an archive of past data.

Everyone at South whom I talked to thought this was ridiculous.

However, for some reason that I was never made privy to, Mr. Head left that meeting feeling it would be impossible to make my integrated system a viable solution for Seagull School right now. So, Mr. Head told me to keep the folks at South campus happy and leave North to its own devices for the present.

Well, what about…this?

A year went by and I had a bright idea. Why not develop a web-based system that would be platform-independent? I gave the Tech Director a quote, but the school decided it was too expensive.

North decided to hire its own consultant to develop a custom system. As I expected, the consultant didn’t do much because he was incapable of pinning North down to say what they wanted.

By 2003, Seagull administrative staff at South were complaining that they couldn’t do the work that North wanted them to do because North’s data was still in a separate system.

So, Mr. Head hired two more consultants to advise on what Seagull School should do. Eventually, the second consultant concluded that the “strongly recommended” scenario was to use my system, with North accessing it via remote control software. The next best option was to develop the web-based system I’d recommended. The third option “difficult to justify”: was to keep using two systems.

For another year, Mr. North ignored the report, and Mr. Head did nothing.

Finally, in July 2004, Seagull asked me to create a web-based system.

I told them, “No, I’m retiring from IT consulting in a couple of years, and I don’t want to start a new project for you now.” <Muttering under my breath: “You should have said ‘yes’ two years ago when I suggested it – I would have done it then.”>

More dramatic twists and turns ensued, which I will spare you because they aren’t germane to the topic of this post. I’ll just add that Seagull School kept using my system for another five years.

So, what went right?

As a fan of Appreciative Inquiry, I think it’s important to spend a moment summarizing what I did well for Seagull School.

  • I successfully devised, created, updated, and supported easy-to-use custom software that handled the core administrative needs of Seagull School for almost twenty years.
  • The core Seagull School staff, based at South, appreciated my work and were strongly supportive during this time.
  • The investigations of several other independent consultants upheld my recommendations.

So, what went wrong?

I was unable to get Seagull School to adopt a single integrated administrative system for both North and South.

You might ask: “Why did I fail?” But “Why” questions are not especially useful in cases like this.

A better question is: “What could I have done differently?

I’ll answer this question after telling a fairy tale…

The Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, there was a baby princess, born into wealth and privilege. Everyone who’s anyone was invited to her christening.

Unfortunately, the invitation email sent to a wicked fairy with an AOL account bounced back to the palace mail server, and the bounce never made it through the palace spam filter.

You know what happened next. Although guarded carefully, the princess, grown to a young woman was one day accidentally tased by a palace security guard.

Nothing would wake her.

She had to sleep for a hundred years with her crown on until tech support finally showed up and rebooted her.

The Wisdom of The Bleikers

So now we arrive at The Wisdom of The Bleikers. Here’s their answer to the question “What could I have done differently?” It was the following explanation that provided my aha! moment halfway through the first day of the Bleiker workshop.

Setting the stage

You’re trying to implement a Good Thing for a constituency. It could be a new water treatment plant for a town, a program to reduce the number of unhoused, or—dare I say—the adoption of a single organization-wide administrative information system.

When we do this, invariably some folks are against our Good Thing. Our constituency is divided.

[An important caveat: The Wisdom of the Bleikers is not a panacea for developing consent for a poorly thought-out plan or proposal.]

The Bleikers’ research found that just about everyone thinks of a divided constituency they’re working with like this:

biggest consulting mistake

The Bleikers reframe this common view in the context of a scale of agreement, like this:

The key Bleiker addition that the above diagram omits.

Almost every major constituency faced with a significant change includes NIMBYs (“Not In My Backyard” aka “Over My Dead Body”) who, even if they are a small minority, have a great deal of power to torpedo implementation of the Good Thing.

Mr. North was my NIMBY. And, as I’ve related, he succeeded in preventing the implementation of a single administrative IT system during my entire consulting gig at Seagull School.

The Bleikers have found that the single most effective way to improve the chance of implementing the Good Thing is to focus on the NIMBYs.biggest consulting mistake
And the heart of the Bleiker strategy is to move NIMBYs to 0+%.

The Bleikers have found that this strategy works. Though it’s not 100% guaranteed, they have successfully helped hundreds of organizations to implement complex projects despite the existence of considerable NIMBY opposition.

Why don’t people follow the Bleiker strategy?

Why didn’t I talk to Mr. North as soon as I started to realize that not all was well?

Fear.

Remember that everyone at South who worked with me was very happy with my work. It was easy for me to hang out with the folks at South and join them in complaining about how unreasonable the folks at North were. It would have been scary to go and listen to Mr. North. I felt scared to hear what they might have to say. So, I played it safe. For years.

It’s really easy to hang out with the folks that agree with you. It’s hard to go into the lions’ den and talk with people who are highly opposed to what you, and perhaps a majority of a constituency, think should happen.

My mistake was to focus on developing support at South for a single administrative system at both campuses, rather than developing what the Bleikers call Informed Consent at North. I never really thought about who might be affected by my work. If I had, I might have realized that I needed to spend a lot more time listening to Mr. North. If I had successfully implemented what the Bleikers eventually taught me, Seagull School might have had a single administrative system by 1999, instead of nine years of countless meetings, expensive outside consultants, and school-wide frustration.

This was my biggest consulting mistake. (That I’m aware of.)

Informed Consent, and an introduction to what you need to do to move NIMBYs to 0+%

The Bleikers identify three kinds of consent:

  • Informed
  • Uninformed; and
  • Misinformed

And they define Informed Consent as the grudging willingness of opponents to go along with a course of action they are opposed to…

So, if you can develop Informed Consent, you can get your proposal implemented!

You can become what the Bleikers call an “Implementation Genius”!

Implementation Geniuses:

  • Don’t concentrate on developing support for their proposals
  • Focus their efforts primarily on the bottom of the Agreement scale
  • Aim to develop their fiercest opponents Informed Consent

The Bleikers spend most of their workshops teaching how to develop the Informed Consent of NIMBYs. I’m not going to try here to reiterate or summarize what they teach. I recommend you go to their workshops for that! But I want to end with five Bleiker “pearls” that give you a taste of what to expect.

Pearl 1. Why versus What

  • Telling your constituency:
    • WHY you exist…
    • WHY you do what you do…
  • …is ten times more important than just telling them WHAT you do.

Pearl 2. The mission is not the mission statement

Your mission is a bunch of responsibilities. It resides in people’s guts.

Your mission statement is a bunch of words, a verbal sketch of the mission, but just a sketch.

You need many different mission statements, some long, some short, some technical, some non-technical – but many, many…

Pearl 3. The Bleiker “Life-Preserver”

Repeat often!

  • “There really is a problem.”
  • “We are the right entity to be addressing this problem; in fact, given our responsibility, it would be irresponsible for us not to address it.”
  • “Our approach is reasonable, sensible, and responsible.”
  • “We do listen, we do care.”

Don’t say “we want to” or “we would like to”.

Say “we need to do this!” or “we owe it to you”.

Pearl 4. The Null-Alternative

  • The Null-Alternative is the sequence of events that, most likely, will come to pass if you don’t implement a workable solution.
  • It is the consequence of your failure to implement a workable solution.
  • Write it as a story.

Pearl 5. Use stories

Conclusion

I titled this post “Learning from my biggest consulting mistake”. There aren’t really any dumb mistakes. Mistakes are integral to learning. They only become dumb if you don’t learn from them and consequently repeat them over and over again.

Have you ever avoided people who have the potential to torpedo important work because you feel scared of what might happen if you do?

I have, and I believe such behavior is understandable and, unfortunately, common.

I hope that by sharing my story and the Bleiker approach to developing Informed Consent with you, you learn how our natural unwillingness to listen to those who vehemently oppose something we think is a Good Thing can be overcome.

To your and your constituency’s benefit.

Has something like this happened to you? Please share your stories, experiences, and thoughts about anything in this post in the comments below!

Image attribution: – Illustration of The Sleeping Beauty by Ruth Ives from Wonder Books’ “Sleeping Beauty” by Evelyn Andreas, Copyright 1956.

Becoming Brave

becoming brave: an instant photograph of Adrian Segar wearing a wig and makeup, holding out his hands towards the camera, with a red curtain behind him. The photo is labeled in marker "BRAVE".

The past

It’s been a long journey to becoming brave.

Fifty years ago, I was a teenager who, after a single embarrassing moment, gave up dancing in public. For forty years.

Twenty-five years ago I was a college professor who spent hours preparing classes, fearful that students would ask me a question I couldn’t answer. And when I started convening and speaking at conferences I was scared of being “on stage”, even in front of small audiences.

I could share reasons why I was this way, but the reasons — known or not — aren’t what’s important. I felt embarrassment and fear as a response to these kinds of situations. Emotions aren’t susceptible to logic.

The present—an example

On February 16, 2019, I unexpectedly participated in an Italian four-hour drag queen workshop. I say “unexpectedly” because, as twenty of us sat on a coach returning to Milan on the last day of the fourth annual Meeting Design Practicum, we had no idea of what we were about to experience.

“For those who have always dreamed of turning into Marilyn Monroe and want to dance with moves of Raffaella Carrà. For those who torment themselves to understand how they attach false eyelashes and want to know how to walk on heels. For all those who, with a serious but not serious spirit, want to experience a different way of being grotesque on stage.

Because nothing is impossible for a Drag Queen!”

I’d never done anything like this before. It was a tough stretch. Yet when it was time to share our “diva inspiration”, I was the first to step up and demo. (My inspiration was Rihanna in “Shut Up and Drive“, in case you’re interested.)

At the end of the workshop, each group member received another’s photo and we added a word that summed up our experience of this person.

I am proud that Stefano added “BRAVE” to mine.

Being out there

Also, these days I think nothing of dancing in public (it’s gotta be the right music though).

And I’m comfortable being in front of thousands of people at the largest events I facilitate.

Becoming brave

How did all this happen?

First, a reminder about emotions. Although we don’t like to admit it, they, not our reasoning run our lives. Emotions evolved because they have survival value. I mentioned fear and embarrassment earlier. Embarrassment is a form of shame. Feeling fear is helpful when you come across a tiger in the forest. Feelings of shame strengthen human communities by lessening the likelihood that members will do things they know are bad for others.

Our emotions handicap us, however, when they arise for reasons that are not related to their true survival roots. My feelings about dancing or speaking in public came from being taught when young to feel shame when I made mistakes.

My response to this was to try to be as perfect as possible. To try to hide the mistakes I inevitably made, and avoid situations where I might make them. Believing I wasn’t a “good” dancer, I avoided dancing when others could see. Worrying that I might be tongue-tied or incoherent when speaking, I’d practice for hours, reluctant to risk slipping up “on stage”.

It took participating in a couple of multi-day, experiential, large and small-group workshops, in 2003 and 2005, for me to see these limiting beliefs, attitudes, and assumptions I held about myself, and receive some experiences of what I could be like when freed of them.

The rest was practice.

Not caring about how others see me

Today, I don’t care what I look like when I dance anymore; I dance because I love to dance. I still feel nervous excitement right before I’m about to speak to or facilitate hundreds of people, but it vanishes as soon as I start because I love what I do and I’m not caught up in being flawless.

Today, when I have opportunities to do things I’ve never done before, I say “yes” to many of them. I love to learn, and I’ve discovered that I learn from trying new things and making “mistakes” along the way. [In fact, the most important learning occurs when you make mistakes.]

Becoming brave is a journey, and mine isn’t over yet.

I’m happy about that.

How to create a safe environment for learning at your event

safe environment learning safety: a photograph of a handmade classroom poster that says "In this class we are SAFE. Safe to be ourselves. Safe to share. Safe to take risks. Safe to learn. Photo attribution: Flickr user willowpoppy

How can we create a safe environment for learning at events? In the events world, the word “safety” has a couple of meanings. The first is objective: the degree of protection from undesirable environmental hazards. At events, we maximize the objective safety of attendees by eliminating or minimizing the likelihood of tripping, slipping, falling, falling objects, food poisoning, etc.

The kind of safety I cover here is subjective safety. How safe do attendees feel? As the following quote indicates, if we are to optimize learning at a meeting we want relaxed but alert participants; in a state I like to call nervous excitement.

“…brain research also suggests that the brain learns best when confronted with a balance between stress and comfort: high challenge and low threat. The brain needs some challenge, or environmental press that generates stress as described above to activate emotions and learning. Why? Stress motivates a survival imperative in the brain. Too much and anxiety shuts down opportunities for learning. Too little and the brain becomes too relaxed and comfortable to become actively engaged. The phrase used to describe the brain state for optimal learning is that of relaxed-alertness. Practically speaking, this means as designers and educators need to create places that are not only safe to learn, but also spark some emotional interest through celebrations and rituals.”
—Jeffery A. Lackney, report excerpt from the brain-based workshop track of the CEFPI Midwest Regional Conference

It’s easy to create a meeting environment that feels unsafe for most if not all attendees. Without careful preparation, asking people to walk barefoot over hot coals, dress up in costumes, dance on stage, or give impromptu talks to a large audience will evoke feelings of discomfort and fear in almost everyone.

It’s also easy to create a safe event environment by treating people as a passive audience who are not required to participate in the proceedings in any way. Unfortunately, this is often the choice made by many meeting organizers who are themselves afraid of what might happen if attendees are subjected to something “new”.

So, how do we strike a balance between unduly scaring attendees and treating them as inactive spectators?

It’s not easy.

Creating the right amount of nervous excitement for a group of people is challenging. Each of us responds uniquely to different situations. For example, meeting someone new at a social might be easy for John and scary for Jane. But Jane has no problem skydiving from an airplane at 12,000 feet which is a prospect that terrifies John.

Ultimately, we can’t control other people’s feelings (let alone, often, our own)! Consequently, we are unable to guarantee that anyone will feel safe during a meeting session. But there are some things we can do to improve participants’ experience of safety when they face the new challenges invariably associated with learning and connecting.

Create an environment where it’s easier to make mistakes

“Learning is fun when errors don’t feel like failures.”
—Laura Grace Weldon, Fun Theory

Why is feeling OK about making mistakes important? With traditional broadcast learning, your comprehension—or lack of it—of presented material is something that happens in your brain and is essentially invisible to everyone but yourself. In a social context, this creates a great deal of safety; no one can easily see that you don’t understand.

But because experiential learning requires us to do something external, like talking to our peers about our understanding or ideas, or physically performing an activity, we lose this invisibility safety net. This brings up the possibility that others may experience us doing something “dumb”, “stupid”, “slow”, etc. (For example, read the “Graduate student story” on pages 62-64 of my book Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love.)

I was educated in a school where knowing the “right answer” was praised and lack of knowledge or understanding denigrated. Consequently, I felt ashamed about “making mistakes” in public for many years. Unfortunately, this is a common experience that many learn to some degree while going to school.

So how can we create an event environment where it’s easier to make mistakes?

Here are three suggestions:

1) Tell participants that it’s impossible to make mistakes

A simple way to create a safe environment for what participants might otherwise feel is risky is to tell them that whatever they do is the right thing.

For example, when I introduce the opening technique The Three Questions at an event, I tell participants that it’s impossible to answer The Three Questions incorrectly. Whatever answers they give are the correct answers. This sounds almost too simple—but it works surprisingly well!

2) Improv exercises

One of the first games used to introduce improvisational theatre (improv) to those with no prior experience is keep the ball in the air, usually shortened to ball. Players stand in the circle and a ~12” diameter hollow rubber ball is tossed into the air. The object of each game is for the group to keep the ball in the air with any part of their body. The game ends if anyone contacts the ball twice in a row or the ball touches the ground. Holding the ball is not allowed. Each ball touch adds one to the group’s score, which the group shouts in unison after each contact. A game rarely lasts more than a minute or two, so many rounds can be played in a short time.

Games of ball get a group working together on a goal. They provide a challenge (reach a higher score than in prior games), include physical movement, and are fun to play. Sooner or later, every game of ball comes to an end because the ball hits the floor or is touched twice in a row by the same person. But because ball is a lighthearted game the thought that the last person who contacted the ball failed in some way never really matters. Everyone just wants to play another game of ball.

There are many improv variants of ball, played with one or more imaginary balls. When you are tossing and receiving multiple imaginary colored balls to people in your circle, everyone will “make mistakes”. (i\If they don’t, the leader just increases the number of balls.) Again it doesn’t matter. Everyone making mistakes is simply part of the game.

Improv exercises provide wonderful opportunities for people to get used to making mistakes. That’s why people increasingly use them for leadership development and organizational team building. Games like ball provide an enjoyable transition to environments where making mistakes is the norm, rather than something to be ashamed of.

3) Model being comfortable with messing up

It’s crucial that facilitators and leaders of conference sessions model the behaviors they wish participants to adopt. If I am not comfortable with facilitating new or impromptu approaches that may or may not work, how can I expect my participants to be comfortable attempting them? This doesn’t mean, of course, that I should deliberately mess up. But responding in a relaxed manner when I do provides a reassuring model for participants to adopt and follow.

The right to not participate

It’s important to explicitly give attendees the right not to participate. Clearly state that people do not have to take part in any given activity before it begins. When working with a group, do not put specific individuals on the spot to participate. Instead, ask the group as a whole for feedback/ideas/answers/volunteers instead.

At the start of an extended (adult) event, I tell participants that I want to treat them like adults. I encourage them to make decisions about how and when they will participate. I also explain that they can take time out from scheduled activities or devise their own alternatives when desired and appropriate.

However, it’s also fine to set limits on non-participants. An example: ask people who do not want to participate to leave the session during the activity rather than staying to watch.

Provide clear instructions

I think that one of the hardest things to do well when leading a participatory activity is providing clear instructions. After many years it’s still not unusual for someone to complain that they don’t understand the directions I’ve given. I recommend writing out a narrative for exercises beforehand and practicing until it feels natural and unforced. But this won’t cover ad hoc situations when unexpected circumstances arise and you need to improvise.

Besides sharing instructions verbally, also consider displaying them on a screen or wall posters. Or providing a printed copy for each participant. Once you’ve shared your instructions, ask if there are any questions. Then be sure to pause long enough for people to formulate and request clarification of what they don’t understand.

Learn from participant feedback. Remember what was not clear and revise your instructions as soon afterward as possible, so that the next time you run the exercise you will, hopefully, be better understood. It may take several attempts before you find the right choice of words, so don’t give up!

Consider providing explicit ground rules

Providing explicit ground rules at the start of sessions and events can, in my experience, significantly improve participants’ sense of safety while working together.

Conclusion

“There are people who prefer to say ‘Yes’, and there are people who prefer to say ‘No’. Those who say ‘Yes’ are rewarded by the adventures they have, and those who say ‘No’ are rewarded by the safety they attain.”
—Keith Johnstone, Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre

As Keith Johnstone reminds us, people choose to participate or not for their own good reasons. Respect their choice by creating a safe environment for learning to make it as easy and safe as possible for them to take the risk of trying something new.

Photo attribution: Flickr user willowpoppy

Five lessons event planners can learn from the iPad launch

Seth Godin wrote a powerful post—Secrets of the biggest selling launch ever—about why Apple sold 300,000 iPads on the first day of the iPad launch. Here are five of his secrets that are 100% relevant to the fundamental challenges facing event planners today.

Seth Godin's blog illustration: the top of his head

2. Don’t try to please everyone. There are countless people who don’t want one, haven’t heard of one or actively hate it. So what? (Please don’t gloss over this one just because it’s short. In fact, it’s the biggest challenge on this list).

Designing events so that they will appeal to the least adventurous attendee guarantees the same-old snooze-fest. Event planners need to aim higher and use innovative formats, even at the risk of jolting people who didn’t expect to be jolted.

3. Make a product worth talking about. Sounds obvious. If it’s so obvious, then why don’t the other big companies ship stuff like this? Most of them are paralyzed going to meetings where they sand off the rough edges.

How many events have you attended that you still remember years later? (Or a month later?) It’s possible to create memorable events. And the best ones are memorable not because they had great content or great presenters, but because wonderful, unexpected things happened there. We know how to create events like this: by using participant-driven approaches. But we are afraid to take the risk of trying event formats that are different. Apple took that risk with the iPad launch. If we event planners won’t take the risk, who will?

6. Create a culture of wonder. Microsoft certainly has the engineers, the developers and the money to launch this. So why did they do the Zune instead? Because they never did the hard cultural work of creating the internal expectation that shipping products like this is possible and important.

Until we fully embrace the belief that it’s possible to successfully employ powerful interactive formats at our events, we’re going to be churning out more Zunes than iPads.

7. Be willing to fail. Bold bets succeed–and sometimes they don’t. Is that okay with you? Launching the iPad had to be even more frightening than launching a book…

Apple has been willing to make mistakes: the Lisa and the Newton come to mind. You can’t have great success without risking some failure.

Every time I facilitate an event I welcome the possibility of failure. Not the kind of failure where the event is a total bust—I’m not that far out on the edge—but the failure of a session’s process, or the discovery of a flaw in a new approach. And you know what? The new things I try that succeed more than outweigh the failures I experience. And, bonus, I get to learn from my mistakes!

So take some risks with your event designs. Have the courage of your convictions, trust your intuition, and be willing to make mistakes.

9. Don’t give up so easy. Apple clearly faced a technical dip in creating this product… they worked on it for more than a dozen years. Most people would have given up long ago.

We event designers can learn a lot from the success of the iPad launch.

I think we face a long hard road in changing people’s perceptions of what is possible at an event. It’s not easy to challenge hundreds of years of cultural history that have conditioned us to believe that we should learn and share in certain prescribed ways. But the rapid rise of the adoption of social media has shown that people want to be active participants in their interactions with others, and we need to change our event designs to satisfy this need when people meet face-to-face.

I’m willing to work on these issues over the long haul. Will you join me?

Everyone Makes Mistakes

In 1977 I immigrated to the United States and first heard the classic Sesame Street song Everyone Makes Mistakes. I’d quote it here, except my teacher Jerry Weinberg shared the following in his writing workshop. “Never, never, never, quote the lyrics from any song in your published writing.”

So I’ll take the coward’s way out and link to a video.


It was a shock to me to learn that everyone makes mistakes. In the hot-house competitive educational atmosphere of the 50’s and 60’s in England, I believed my smartness determined my self-worth. It had been drummed into me that smart people didn’t make mistakes. So I felt shocked when Big Bird told my three-year-old daughter that it was OK to make mistakes. Everyone did it! Up until that afternoon, with the voice of Big Bird issuing from the scratchy record player, I had felt embarrassed when anyone discovered that I didn’t know the answer to something I thought should have known.

It took me a while to get over this shame, which, I’ve discovered, many people experience. If you are one of them, listen to Big Bird’s message and read Chapters 13 and 15 of Jerry’s “Becoming a Technical Leader.” (Heck, read the whole book—it’s that good!)

Eventually, of course, I found out that giving yourself the freedom to make mistakes is a gift to yourself. The gift of freedom to explore new possibilities for your life and work. That’s why the environment at every peer conference encourages and supports making mistakes—an important way for us to learn and grow.