Tag: LPI

Icons and Artefacts

In my office I have a box of icons and artefacts. The contents of this box connect me to powerful people, places and things. My mum’s engagement ring is in the box along with its hand written receipt. There are postcards, concert tickets, thank you letters from clients, photographs, badges, conference swag, all kinds of stuff. I can’t recall ever demoting anything from the box – so I take great care in choosing what goes in there.

Icons and Artefacts

I used to keep many more icons and artefacts. I once had a huge collection of vinyl amassed mainly from the punk and new wave era, with a side order of new romantics and occasional outbursts of rock. I used to keep several guitars too, including this honey blonde Telecaster.

Guitar

I lost the records and guitars, and much more besides when, as a nineteen year old in the mid 1980s, I adopted a nomadic lifestyle for a while. When I stopped roaming, the collection inside the box started and has been coming together since then.

Why am I telling you this? I have something new for the box…

A letter arrived in the post this week containing two very important pieces of paper, our tickets to the 2016 Learning Awards. The event takes place in London on February 4th – and the Art for Work’s Sake project is shortlisted in the Innovation in Learning category.

Learning Awards 2016 Tickets

I’m excited about the evening, and nervous too. Excited because we might go one step beyond the short list, and nervous because – truthfully – I’m not convinced I did a good enough job presenting to the judging panel on the day. I found myself a little overwhelmed to be up against much bigger organisations. That mind of mine which knows how powerfully art impacts learning and is usually open to possibilities, felt unusually closed – just at the wrong time. In the immediate aftermath of the presentation I was frustrated by what I felt was a missed opportunity – and I’m comfortable writing about this now. The decisions have long been made and there’s no fate to be tempted.

Given what I’ve just written, you might be asking why I want to add these tickets to the box. This is why:

I’ve benefitted hugely from the process of applying. I like flowing, improvisational work, and distilling ideas and getting clear on things can sometimes be a struggle for me. Getting the message across in the awards submission forced me to communicate concisely, clearly. I remember showing the completed submission to Carole shortly before I sent it off and she acknowledged it was some of the clearest work I’ve done. ‘I can read this – and understand why people would want and need to work with you.’

I’m chuffed to bits that the work got shortlisted. I know you’re supposed to say that – and it’s true. I’ve no idea how many entrants there were in our category but I know that there were over 300 submissions in the awards overall. I have a good feeling from this progress, and the journey so far adds to the story of why arts based learning is important, as a set of useful tools we can use and as a way of exploring and challenging behavioural aspects of our work.

Based on my experience I’d encourage you to look for opportunities to put your best work up for recognition. Yes – the process is hard, and time consuming, and frustrating! And for the reasons I’ve just described – it’s worth it too. Here’s to an excellent evening on February 4th.

Art for Work’s Sake : Belief

Belief: I’m fascinated by our ability to talk ourselves into and out of stuff. We all know from experience that finding the courage to have a go at something different can be tough, and we see good things happening to others and without even trying ourselves, we believe ‘that will never happen to me’.

I’m no different to anyone else in this respect, so when in conversation with a friend earlier this year about how to continue my development of Art for Work’s Sake, initially I failed to take the idea of seeking some formal recognition for the work seriously. ‘Why don’t you submit your work to the 2016 Learning Awards?’ In the moments after the suggestion was made, I came up with a bundle of perfectly convincing reasons why this should not happen. ‘I’m not good enough’, ‘It’s not ready yet’, are just two of the things I often hear from others when first we explore the chance to think, feel and do our work differently, and there I sat offering up the same excuses to myself.

I reflected, and decided I would get over myself and develop this idea. In the coming weeks I drafted and redrafted an awards submission. It was a painful process, trying to distill over four years work into a few hundred words which simultaneously told the story of the journey and met the award criteria. I nearly gave up several times: ‘I’m not good enough’, ‘It’s not ready yet’. I persisted, and with some excellent contributions and support from Carole, particularly in the reviewing and editing stages, a piece of work emerged that felt….good enough. I submitted the entry and waited. And waited. There were so many entries that the initial judging assessment window was extended, and without any good reason, I convinced myself this announcement delay did not bode well for me.

I put out a request for some good vibes last week, and several people kindly responded. Thefinalists were confirmed last Friday, October 23rd, my late Father’s birthday. Art for Work’s Sake has been shortlisted in the Innovation in Learning category. Perfect timing. #FistBump #HighFives #ThankYou. A brief pause to enjoy the moment, then onwards and upwards, I’ve much work to do.

Belief: noun. What you get when you combine persistence, resilience and encouragement. Belief can appear fragile, easily broken, and as such doesn’t get taken out of its box and played with very often. Paradoxically, it turns out that the more you play with it, the more resilient it gets. Learning all the time.

Art for Work's Sake

Learning Live 2015 – A Lecture Free Zone

Last week I went along to the Learning and Performance Institute‘s Learning Live conference. This was my third year in attendance, my first since becoming a Fellow and consultant at the LPI. The event’s a good size, not too big, not too small – and the organisers, and the people who come along, are a friendly, interesting and interested bunch. There’s a small exhibition sitting neatly alongside the conference. Nothing pushy, just interesting people sharing their interesting stuff with people who are interested in exploring ways to make work better. It works, it’s useful fun.

Lecture Free Zone

This year, Learning Live started an experiment to make the event a lecture free zone (LFZ). The idea being that as a guest, you attend sessions which are primarily designed to engage you in conversation with other curious people, rather than just turn up and have knowledge spewed at you from the front of the room. The speaker/facilitator has an important role to play in helping set the scene and in nudging the conversation and flow from time to time, and that’s about it. Easy huh? It’s harder than it looks.

How well did the LFZ work? On this first attempt it’s fair to say it was a mixed bag. Some sessions flowed better than others, and I think a handful of speakers either lost or ignored the LFZ memo. More importantly, kudos to the Learning and Performance Institute for starting this experiment. People are seeking different experiences, and it falls to adventurous event organisers to reshape conferences into more engaging, conversational gatherings. Whilst I often see adventurous folks experimenting at unconferences and maybe on the fringe of larger events, many conferences fall short of this need to change as a result of their addiction to the sage on the stage formula.

The best LFZ session I attended was facilitated by Kate Davis from the Humanitarian Leadership Academy. After a rather PowerPoint heavy few minutes, we got into conversations at our tables about ‘challenging experiences of facilitating/training’. After setting the scene with a few basics: ‘Where/when/who was there/what was the content/context’, we got to discussing what things had made the experience(s) a challenge, and what had our responses been to the challenge(s). We recorded our responses and the data was collected at the end of the session for analysis and feedback. I really enjoyed the opportunity to reflect on some of my own challenges, and hear about those which other people face too.

The best LFZ session I didn’t attend was Getting creative in L&D, hosted by Michelle Parry Slater and Amy Brann. How do I know it was any good when I wasn’t there? Simple. As I watched from afar, Twitter exploded with people engaging in the conversation, both in the session itself and in the wider world of L&D. There was a real sense of energy flowing and fun being had, good work folks.

Doing Something Better…

The event wasn’t an entirely lecture free zone – there was an outstanding keynote given by Jamil Qureshi on the morning of Day Two. Notwithstanding that you really had to be there to get the experience, I’m going to share with you a few notes I scribbled down from Jamil’s talk, largely so I don’t forget this stuff myself.

The formal title of the talk was ‘How do we maximise our potential and that of those around us?’, and on stage, Jamil positioned it as being about ‘doing something a little bit better, occasionally, if we remember.’ Works for me. Jamil talked about the folly of trying to change how people act, when first we need to address how we ourselves think, and then feel, and then act – in that order. Thinking about what we seek to achieve (creative contribution, what you’re enabling), beats thinking about what we seek to avoid (redundancy, ‘I don’t want to lose this client’).

Define yourself by what your customer values, not what you sell. What business are you in?

Event + Reaction = Outcome. You choose the reaction, it is your response ability.

Ownership beats engagement – how can you help people take their share of ownership in something? Choice beats circumstance.

The world is improbable, uncertain and complex (some like to call refer to this as a VUCA world, it’s a bullshit bingo term meaning volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity). Jamil’s response is so what, who cares? It’s how we respond that matters.

Your experience is a reflection of your attitude towards it. You make things come to pass. Blame looks backwards, taking responsibility looks forwards.

40% of what we do is habit. Ask why five times. Can I reduce the habitual down to 39%?

Purpose is not achieved, it’s attained on a daily basis.

I’m still reflecting on what I learned, and starting to think, feel and act differently. More to follow on this, particularly in the areas of taking responsibility and focusing on what I want to achieve. For now – well done to The LPI and to everyone who helped make Learning Live 2015 a success.