Where business and the arts meet, making work better together.
After the #connectinghr unconference last week we had a bit of a sing song. At one point, Mervyn Dinnen asked me, “don’t you know any happy tunes?”. So here’s one, for Mervyn, for the late shift at #chru and for anyone else who is interested.
It’s the weekend!
What’s a good way to start to make something happen? Conversations work for me. Yes, we could have a conversation, but what if there’s say, over 80 of us together in one room? Surely that could never work…
Yes. It. Can.
If you’ve never used it before, the World Café method is a fantastic flexible way to allow great big conversations to happen. Small groups gather and converse at tables, discussing the important questions. The groups are encouraged to note down their conversations, insights, and doodles on paper tablecloths. Every ten minutes or so the group briefly convenes to capture the essence of the conversation before separating into new groups and continuing.
As people share insights between the tables a sense of the whole becomes more accessible. World café can be a great way to:
Clarify purpose and strategic intent
Explore critical issues and questions
Engage all key stakeholders
Skillfully use collaborative social technologies
Guide collective intelligence toward effective action
And perhaps most importantly, a World Café is a great way to meet and get to know people.
At the 2012 Stop Doing Dumb Things unconference on June 27th 2012 you will once again have the chance to play with the World Café method. It’s a lively and involving way of sharing and we hope that all the unconference guests will have a lot of fun playing.
I’m really looking forward to the conversation, I hope you are too?
This photo is a view of our garden in the early Spring. You can see the old shed and some of our apple trees bursting with leaves. I enjoy growing things, it is enormously satisfying. Growing fruit and veg, growing business, growing community.
On May 5th the #connectinghr community will get together for our second unconference. I will be helping to disorganise things. The full details are here and it would be great if you could join us. Why should you? I would like to share a couple of feelings about the last one which I hope will resonate with you.
In October 2010 I attended the first #connectinghr unconference. It was the kind of powerful community event that I really enjoy. I went along with one objective: to share. And I benefited enormously from it. I picked up loads of ideas, and the event inspired me to write and perform a little song, on the spot. That last sentence says a lot to me about inclusion, involvement and encouragement. I felt sufficiently confident to experiment. When was the last time you went to a meeting of new minds and dared to be different? In the moment.
I was and still am hugely grateful for the support of the #connectinghr community. And I want to help it grow.
Will you?
