Harnessing Serendipity: a book featuring 66 collaboration artists

A promotional image of the book "Harnessing Serendipity" with Adrian Segar.I am delighted and honored to be featured in ‘Harnessing Serendipity,’ a unique book that explores the magic of facilitating connection that leads to collaboration. It includes the stories of 66 “talented connectors” who share insights on how they create transformative experiences. The primary professions of the collaboration artists the authors include are wide-ranging—to say the least. We are actors, impresarios, meeting designers, diplomats, teachers, musicians, creative directors, facilitators, management experts, sports team owners, fundraisers, journalists, experiential marketers, retreat leaders, event producers, philanthropists, coaches, and dealmakers!

The book, by BizBash founder and friend David Adler, James Cornehlsen, and Andrew Frothingham, classifies the people David calls collaboration artists into six groups. We are people who…

  • Create safe spaces for conversations;
  • Facilitate awareness for others;
  • Foster community and belonging;
  • Stimulate creativity;
  • Cultivate wonder and curiosity; and
  • Nurture empathy.

I appear in the section on fostering community and belonging. However, the work of everyone included in this book incorporates most if not all of these approaches. They are all important modalities that support people coming together to meaningfully connect and collaborate.

The authors define a collaboration artist as follows:

A “Collaboration Artist” knows how to bring people together, enroll them in a common mission, create idea flow, and translate ideas into new solutions to solve problems and drive achievement of important goals. From modest challenges like moving a small corporate initiative forward, to eradicating a disease, whether in small or large endeavors…collaboration equals success!
—”An Invitation”, Harnessing Serendipity

My take on Harnessing Serendipity

Harnessing Serendipity celebrates the art of connection and collaboration. It’s an easy and absorbing read; you can dip into it and pick up little gems everywhere. The book opens your mind to what is possible, yet it’s sobering to realize that it just scratches the surface. I know quite a few of the featured collaboration artists. All of them have much more value to share than can be included in this book.

Perhaps the authors’ greatest gift is to introduce the reader to people who can change how the world thinks about convening, connecting, and collaborating. Certainly, that’s been my focus for the last forty years. I encourage all readers to explore working with any of the people featured in the book, and thank the authors for making us more visible, and perhaps a little more influential than we were before.

When a guy brings bagpipes to your event

photograph of a surprised woman by Flickr user beta-j

What happens when a guy brings bagpipes to your event?

“My full-day live seminars have impact on people partly because I don’t announce the specific agenda or the talking points in advance. It’s live and it’s alive. I have no certainty what’s about to happen, and neither do the others in the room. A morphing, changing commitment by all involved, one that grows over time.”
The Show Me State (of the art), Seth Godin

I run conferences and sessions like Seth’s. I don’t really know what’s going to happen and neither do the participants. Yes, I have an overall structure in mind, but there’s always room for an impromptu performance by the guy who just happens to have brought a set of bagpipes (that was edACCESS 2011, I think), and the unexpected sessions on sea kayaking (Fixing Food Oregon 2009) and Spiritual Leadership (last week at the VLN 1st annual conference).

bagpipes eventIt’s not only the unexpected topics and activities that it turns out people want and get but also the serendipitous connections that get made. One of the things I feel best about? The lifelong friendships between seemingly unlikely souls, sparked by events I’ve had a hand in. You can’t put a price on that.

So why do most events still insist on trumpeting precise program schedules? We do, of course, go to such sessions hoping to learn something new. And perhaps something surprising will happen. Sadly, we often don’t learn much and are rarely surprised.

Why set up the majority of events this way? I’ve written about this here and more extensively in (free download) Chapter 3 of Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love, but another reason is that most of us are fearful of trying something new if we think we might fail at it. I’m no exception. I’ve lived with this fear most of my life. (Apart from my early years, when this fear is largely absent in everyone.) Only in the last dozen years or so have I begun to rediscover the joy of the adventures that begin when I say “Yes” to what life offers me.

What frustrates me is that most people who experience events designed to accommodate and support the unexpected discover they prefer them. But until they take a chance and attend one, they’ll never know what they’re missing.

Viv McWaters and Johnnie Moore call the need to know what something will be like before you commit to it “the tyranny of the explicit“. Need more information before you act? Stuck! Viv quotes Keith Johnstone“Those who say ‘Yes’ are rewarded by the adventures they have, and those who say ‘No’ are rewarded by the safety they attain.”

When you say “No” you’re safe (unless it’s an emergency.) But you’ll miss out on the learning and delight that is the constant companion of the unexpected.

Ultimately, it’s your choice.

On balance, I’m glad that my events are pretty open to the unexpected. Otherwise, the guy who brought bagpipes to my conference would have just left them in the trunk of his car. Let the hornpipe begin!

Photo attribution: Flickr user beta-j