I believe in miracles. Not necessarily or automatically in physics-bending miracles of the walking-on-water genre, or sightings of the leprechaun-in-Alabama-tree variety, but I do believe that all of us have the ability to step outside the bounds of what is known or expected and take inspired action that transforms the tide of everyday existence into something miraculous. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘Gifts’
Miracle
Friday, July 24th, 2009Hurd is the Word
Monday, July 13th, 2009
For months before we met for lunch last week, I had been hearing about Brian Hurd, mainly from Deep Patel of GoGreenSolar. Deep claims that Hurd is one of the sharpest tools in the shed. Has more experience than just about anyone in the solar industry. Knows as much as anyone in the world about the state of solar technology. Started the solar installation program at the East L.A. Skills Center, where he has trained more certified solar technicians than anyone in the U. S. Helped write the State of California certification tests for solar installers. Is a protege of Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis, the former Congresswoman from California who admires the work he’s done to create jobs in the community. The web site for the company he founded, Hands On Solar, and the Google results page for ‘Brian Hurd Solar Technology’ bear out all this and more. (more…)
Three Moves (You Can Make Right Now to Change the Game)
Friday, June 26th, 20091. Initiate a scene without having an outcome in mind. We get so locked into our goals that we seldom enter a business scene for which we don’t have an outcome already scripted in our minds. From an interview we want the job. From a sales scene we want the sale. From a scene with the boss we want the promotion.
There are two issues with focusing exclusively on our goals. The first is that the people with whom we share our scenes usually have different goals from ours. The interviewer’s goal is different from the interviewee’s. A customer is not interested in helping the salesperson meet a sales quota. A jealous boss might have the goal of turning an up-and-comer into a down-and-outer. It’s been known to happen. Focusing only on our desired outcomes can result in a tug-of-war for control of a scene, severely limiting the scene’s progress and potential. Not good.
The second, and bigger, issue with being exclusively goal-oriented in our scenes, is that we diminish our potential for breakthrough moves. Breakthroughs reveal unexpected avenues for productivity. Breakthroughs can only happen if we are willing to let go of our expectations about what a scene needs to achieve. And what is a goal but an expectation for a scene? (more…)
The Unsung Hero of the Game
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009We cannot emphasize enough how often the origins of the productive game rest not with actions of the first person to act, but with the person who defines the game by supporting and adding to what the first person is doing. The second person is the unsung hero of the game.
Ethan Bauley sent me a link that’s a perfect depiction of the ‘Unsung Hero’ idea. Take a look at this video shot at the recent Sasquatch Music Festival outside Vancouver:
The first dancer, Collin Wynter from Calgary, deserves credit for initiating well. He’s having fun, and he’s high energy, connecting with the music and the rest of his environment and not at all caught up in his own little world. He is acting on his environment (the hillside and the soft grass and the music) and as a consequence, the environment ‘acts on him’ as his dancing becomes infectious. But it doesn’t become a scene, it doesn’t find its game, until the second dancer joins. The second dancer adds and heightens, and from that point on, there’s no stopping this scene. First, he learns the second dancer learns the ‘rules of the dance’ from the first dancer, then he makes the dance even more playful by falling to the ground and crawling through the first dancer’s legs. It is the second person who embraces the rules of the game and plays the game in a way that others cannot resist joining. After the third person joins, the joining becomes a wave that lasts until the music ends. (And maybe beyond, that’s where the video cuts.)This same dynamic is characteristic of any productive game. A game played alone has finite potential, while a game that invites joining has unlimited upside. It is the second person to play who signals to the crowd that your game is worth joining.
It is worth noting that this article in the Calgary Herald celebrates Collin Wynter as being some kind of hero, but does not mention the second dancer, or even the existence of the unsung hero of the game.
GameChangers of the Month – February 2009
Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009For the first time, we have two winners of the coveted Gamey in the same month. They are Ty’Sheoma Bethea, an eighth-grader from South Carolina and Leonard Abess, a banker from Florida, both of whom were recognized by President Obama in his state of the nation address last month.
Bethea wrote a letter. It was what she could do and she did it. In that letter, she maintained of she and her classmates, “We are not quitters!” And that letter changed the game.
Abess had $60,000,000 in the bank, proceeds from the sale of his company. He gave it away to 471 employees and former employees who’d supported him over the years. That gift changed the game, too.
She gave a small gift that became something big. With that one letter, she opened a thousand doors that would have not been open to her otherwise.
He gave a big gift that got bigger. The number ‘60,000,000′ didn’t change, but the potential for that ‘60,000,000′ to make things happen in the world increased overnight by a factor of 471.
We honor Ty’Sheoma and Leonard because they bookend three important elements of gamechanging.
Big gifts and small gifts are equally important to our scenes. That’s the first piece of what these gamechangers teach us. All gifts have the potential to inspire profound scenes.
Here is the second piece: Action flows from character. Beathea and Abess didn’t just wake up one day and shazaam!—in a puff of genie smoke, suddenly turn into the people with game.
She is a young woman who wants to learn, and doesn’t want to be held back from it. She is a writer of letters, and a righter of injustice. She is not a quitter.
He is a friend who values friendships that go all the way back to grammar school, a manager with employee relationships that extend beyond current staff, a player who recognizes that he owes much of his success to others on his team. He is not greedy.
They took actions that were consistent with their characters.
And here’s the third piece: We can never know for sure how the game will change. But if we bring what we can to our scenes…if we are consistent in character and action…we can trust that, as Ty’Sheoma Bethea and Leonard Abess showed us, the game will change, as unforeseen opportunities bloom into new and fruitful realities.
Vaillancourt’s List 4.0
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009
The extraordinary improviser, Paul Vaillancourt, gave me a list of sayings that have been compiled and passed around the improv theater community over the years. The legendary teachers, Mick Napier and Del Close, get some of the credit, though the exact origins of most of these are as hazy as the roots of any folk wisdom. Here is the fourth in a series of sayings from Vallaincourt’s List, with my notes following. As you go about your business, keep these concepts in play: (more…)
GameChanger of the Month – January 2009
Thursday, February 5th, 2009
PFNC stands for ‘Por Fin Nuestra Casa,’ Spanish for ‘Finally, a Home of Our Own.” Founded in 2007 by Brian McCarthy, Pablo Nava and Mackenzie Bishop, the for-profit company converts used shipping containers into low-cost housing for poor families in Juarez Cuidad and other Mexican border communities. Each PFNC unit costs around $10,000 US. (more…)
Vaillancourt’s List 2.0
Thursday, June 19th, 2008
The extraordinary improviser, Paul Vaillancourt, gave me a list of sayings that have been compiled and passed around the improv theater community over the years. The legendary teachers, Mick Napier and Del Close, get some of the credit, though the exact origins of these are as hazy as the roots of any folk wisdom. Here is the second in a series of sayings from what I call Vallaincourt’s List, with my extrapolations in italics: (more…)
GameChanger of the Month, November 2007
Friday, November 30th, 2007My friend, Corey McAfee, a young player in the Nashville music scene, called TuneCore to my attention. It is a service that places music with online retailers and returns an unprecedented royalty to artists. Here is a brand that senses how to play the music game in the Networked World. When it comes to outstanding improvisation, TuneCore is right up there with Tina Fey.
Let’s break it down. (more…)
Big Little Gift
Wednesday, October 24th, 2007ENVIRONMENT: A Southwest Airlines 737 going from Salt Lake City to Reno/Tahoe. Full flight. Early evening.
PLAYERS: My friend Martin Gastanaga and a Southwest Airlines flight attendant.
INITIATION: Martin wanted a Heineken and only had a twenty. The flight attendant didn’t have change for a twenty.
REACTION: She kept on wheeling her cart up the aisle and without missing a beat said, “This one’s on me.”
What a great gift that flight attendant gave on behalf of the Southwest brand! Think about it. (more…)