Posts Tagged ‘Teamwork’

Detroiticulture

Monday, January 4th, 2010

FarmingDetroitOur friend Rasul Sha’ir of Cnvrgnc.com sent us a story about John Hantz, a wealthy money manager who wants to build a large farm inside the city limits of Detroit:

The theme of Farming is a strong one, especially in the context of a post-industrial city like Detroit.  It’s interesting that urban gardeners who farm quarter-acre plots of land in Detroit have come out against Hantz’s plan.  The anti-Hantzers are, according to the article, seizing on their own themes:  Racial Bias (Hantz and most of his team are white; Detroit’s population is 92% black) and Big Business vs. the Little Guy.

Comment:  We don’t have time or energy to spend on being racially or economically divided, it doesn’t matter what color the finger being pointed is or the size of the rock on the ring it’s wearing.  Themes can help us find the agreement that transcends race, religion, income level and personal history–all those things that divide us–thereby liberating new avenues for communication, learning and growth.  John Hantz and the urban gardeners of Detroit can unite around the theme of Farming to be productive and move the ‘Saving Detroit’ scene forward.

Housecleaning

Sunday, March 1st, 2009

As the toxic cloud of the Bush-Cheney era in America begins to lift, we are beginning to see the scope of the mess they’ve left us in.  The boys from Delta House have been partying hard for eight years, and now we’re supposed to move in and live here like nothing has happened?   The party is over the the place is a disaster.  The trees are filled with underwear!   The toilets have exploded!   And nobody’s laughing, because it’s real, and it’s on us to clean it up.

AnimalHouse3

Some of the clean-up work is so vast in scope, the banking industry shitstorm that shows so sign of abating , for example, or our crippling dependence on fossil fuels, that nothing short of a federal government strategy can begin to dig us out of it.

Every one of us, however, can find ways to support the clean-up work on a personal and practical level.  Cleaning house presents us with opportunities.   A chance to evaluate inventory, and eliminate waste.  It can be the impetus for a much-needed remodeling.

Here’s a GameChangers checklist for what to Toss and what to Keep as we clean up and remodel an economy that has been Skulled and Boned into the pathetic shape it’s in today: (more…)

Improvise (Don’t Script) Your Training Scenarios

Sunday, November 16th, 2008

I sometimes answer business-related questions on LinkedIn that can be addressed with the principles of improvisation. This is one in a series of responses that was deemed ‘Best Answer’ by the questioner…

THE QUESTION: I have to run a workshop for a top management team that has recently adopted a new highly matrixed structure. As a result, there is a challenging amount of interdependence and ambiguity. While they have an understanding of the structure, very little work has been done on how it will operationalize, what operationalizing it will mean etc.

One of the activities I want the group to undertake is a scenario building exercise where they will build potential scenarios that will arise in the future, and then based on the scenarios, evolve in advance, an appropriate response to the scenario.

I have never run a Scenario Building activity before. Would appreciate if you could share:

a. A process for how to run it
b. Tips/Techniques
c. Do’s/Don’ts
d. Any other advice/input

Thanks in advance!

Gurprriet Siingh

THE ANSWER: The ‘highly matrixed structure’ you describe, Gurprriet, is in fact one small subset of a much more complex environment in which this management team will perform — and that is the Networked World. Because of the fluid, incredibly complex nature of these networks-within-networks, it is both impractical and impossible to run scenarios that can accurately predict any particular outcome. By the time you have created the scenario, run the scenario, analyzed the outcomes, then ratified and codified the outcomes, the environment will have changed, rendering the results irrelevant and passe’. (more…)

The Coach

Friday, December 14th, 2007

Wooden1

Coaching is absolutely vital for a team to reach its potential. It’s true in athletics. True in improv theater. True in business. The objectives for each activity might be different, but the techniques by which good coaching elicits performance are strikingly similar in all three arenas.Wooden 2 John Wooden, who at age 97 (pictured above) is still as sharp as a backdoor bounce pass, is possibly the best basketball coach who ever lived. He’s also a GameChanger of the highest order. Wooden’s teams changed the very concept of the sport of basketball, from a polite Hoosiers-style half-court square dance, to a baseline-to-baseline rampage of disruptive defenses and extreme athleticism. And they have the championships to show for it.

There’s a lot to be learned from looking at what made Wooden’s teams successful. Wooden’s role was Coach; how he played it was as an educator who used the game of basketball as his classroom. His techniques set a high standard for coaching and teaching in any arena. Here are some parallels between Wooden’s Way and the GameChangers approach to business improvisation: (more…)