Blog
ImprovisationHow to bring the best of lockdown into your work
Many of us have fresh experiences of working from home. While #WFH will remain a trendy hashtag for a long time yet, some of us will be making the journey back to shared offices. Wouldn’t it be great if we could merge the best elements from our domestic professional arrangements with the most valuable aspects of being face-to-face?
How multiplying your communication channels will get you the results you need
When we are not face-to-face with each other in real rooms, we can lose people’s attention very easily.
Participants drift away mentally and who knows what happens when the camera is turned off? There are some really simple ways to engage and sustain people’s attention on a topic…
How to juggle content and processes, without getting overwhelmed
As a facilitator, your attention is dragged in at least three different directions – towards the content, the process and the people.
It’s your responsibility to look after all these dimensions. But, for a whole range of reasons, there are times when your participants are no longer on-board..
What this disruption means for the future – two confident predictions
Many of us are discovering new possibilities in lockdown and also wondering what the future might look like. We’re questioning the ways that we have been used to working all these years. Whether work simply stopped or was conducted exclusively from home, there was a sudden and unavoidable disruption.
Defusing dangerous dogma in improvisation
This week a group of us re-watched, via Facebook, one of the most impactful talks ever given at an Applied Improvisation Network Conference. Pablo Suarez spoke about adapting what we know (i.e. improvisation) to the field of disaster preparedness.
What dogmas do you think can be let go from classic improv-theatre?
A creative activity to give you fresh impetus with a problem or project
If you are stuck with a problem or want to generate new ideas for a project, here’s a great activity to prompt fresh thinking..
Your problem with group brainstorming isn’t creativity…
How many of us have been part of a bad brainstorm?
But what if it’s not about the group but about how ‘bursty’ it is? And how can improvisation create burstiness? Creativity comes in bursts. Well, that’s according to the Adam Grant podcast ‘WorkLife’, in which he visited Trevor Noah and ‘The Daily Show’…
What do you want to celebrate? Please, not mistakes!
There may be some good arguments for celebrating mistakes, but the fact that they lead on occasion to good outcomes is not one of them..
Embracing Uncertainty
Much of what happens in work is unpredictable. An improvisational attitude invites you to trade the illusion of control for the reality of influence..
Three tips to increase beautiful layering in meetings, workshops and conferences
Layering is the idea of having more than one thing going on at one time in a meeting, workshop or conference. For example, displaying posters on the wall is an example of a layer beyond people simply talking to each other. Each extra layer added to a meeting, workshop or conference also provides an opportunity for the layers to be combined in new activities.
Why you don’t have to pretend to be a wardrobe
We are seeing a lot more articles about the use of improvisation in organisations. Much of the action is on the West Coast of the USA, especially centred on Silicon Valley. Although we are seeing more applied improvisation coming from the UK.
Transports of Delight
My colleague was inspired to invent a new introductory game for our London improvisation group session the other night. She saw a new electric scooter hire service and fancied giving it a try. So, at the beginning of the workshop, she asked everyone to describe to a partner how they had got to the session that evening and what way they would have liked to have arrived.
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