Author: Tenneson Woolf

OK, I really enjoy improv theatre and principles. As practice, haven’t had so much, but welcome it. I’m old enough to release more of the nervousness that I couldn’t have previously.

“Only the Dead Don’t Improvise” is a chapter title in the book, Everything’s An Offer, by Robert Poynton. The chapter headings alone are enough to feel very alive. Such invitations. Such offerings of relationship.

The principles that arise from improv are spoken with more simplicity than I have seen anywhere. And the inherent aspect of play is such a different energy. As helpful as anything I know when married to the world view of living systems.

From Robert’s book, “let go, notice more, use everything.” I’ll use this simplicity this weekend in a workshop I’m hosting on participative leadership.

And also, this list of similarities and needs shared by organizations and improv creators. Again, I’ll use these in a workshop soon.

-work with scarce resources
-under massive time pressure
-unpredictable circumstances
-required to produce a constant stream of innovation
-required to use cocreative and collaborative methods
-must thrive on constant change
-deliver an enormous amount of satisfaction to customers and themselves

Only the dead don’t improvise. Good myth-busting here, isn’t it. Thanks Robert.

I really enjoyed the conversation I had today with friend and colleague Bob Fischer. It was one of those calls where I felt like I learned a lot in a short period of time. Bob shared with me his passion for a project implementation process, Agile. Agile was developed primarily by software programmers. It includes many of the principles that the Art of Hosting community ascribes too in working with learning organizations and communities. The principles and Agile Manifesto are worth a read.

I asked Bob what he felt were the most important similarities between Agile and what he knows of Art of Hosting. He shared the following:

-rooted in self-organization
-encourages participative leadership
-recognizes the value of being together
-commitment to learning and reflection
-encourages experiments
-requires a full self in the work

I get excited to hear these values from a software development community of practice. It inspires me to think of how programmers have adapted to their rapidly changing and innovating industry. It’s a story of emergence. I feel like a common link to the work I do as  consultant and facilitator using social technologies is to create the next level of conditions for organizations to learn. To commit to wellness. To be clear on agreements. To work from a principle of emergence.

Makes me want to hang out with Bob more and others who are building a culture of learning and experimenting.

I’ve known of this Shona greeting for a number of years now. I learned it again from my friend Silas, of Zimbabwe (pictured at left here, along with friend and colleague Nancy Fritsche Eagan). We worked together, cohosting an Art of Hosting training in New York. We were also roommates for the training, along with Martin Siesta. There is something about this that speaks to an identity rooted in community rather than individual.

Mangwanani. (Good morning.)

Marara sei? (How did you sleep?)

Ndarara kana mararawo. (I slept well if you slept well.)

Mary Oliver’s poetry has been touching me for years now. In this one, I love the last line / question as invitation.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?