Last week I attended a speed awareness workshop in Sunderland run by Drivetech (UK) and I have to say it was an excellent use of four hours and should be compulsory for all drivers.
I came out convinced that ‘safety cameras’ may not please everyone but they are a serious attempt to reduce accidents and fatalities at known black spots and that the boundary of 30mph is the appropriate approximation of the tipping point between surviving and dying.
The workshop is presented by very experienced advanced driving insructors. Their use of storytelling was exemplary as they told illustrative true stories of individuals that invited empathy with each situation and the learning self-realised by each of us as the sheer horror of the outcome dawned upon us.
Three of the many lessons that will stick in my mind:
When positioning yourself for a right turn and waiting for a suitable gap, never turn your wheels into the turn. If you were shunted from behind you would end up in a head-on collision with oncoming traffic. Always hold them straight until the last second.
It can cost an HGV up to £1.50 to get from 0 to 30 mph and they each have a ‘green zone’ on the speedometer indicating maximum fuel efficiency. This is why lorries are so reluctant to slow down on motorways, always edge around each other and probably why roundabouts are being phased out on roads like the A1. Once aware of this motivating factor, be considerate to them, and aware of their financial imperatives and long journeys are a lot less frustrating and other drivers actions make a lot more sense.
A man was paralysed from the neck down when his toolbox from the boot hit him between the shoulders during a crash. Prevent this by securing large objects in the boot with a cargo net or easier still, secure both seatbelts in the back when not carrying passengers. This will hold the rear seat from collapsing.
Last week, at the invitation of the Knowledge Management Forum Norway (part of the Norwegian Computing Society) I travelled to Oslo and gave the first of a two day course on complexity with Dave Snowden giving the second day (I am not stupid – never try and follow Dave).
Hosted by Åsmund Mæhle (chairman) and Gunnar Coll (of Computas) I had a great time telling all my favourite stories from the Badger Man to Bat Milk while throwing in all the ecological metaphors for a complex business environment known to mankind.
The two workshop exercises, an anecdote circle and future backwards were a first for me as I gave instruction in English but all the stories and hexxies were done in Norwegian. This made it surprisingly easy for me to remain context free of the subject matter (Knowledge Management) and the ambiguous instructions were made much easier by the fact that everyone in the room spoke better English than me.
This was also the first time I have taken my son, Toby, along as my ‘official photographer’ and he did a great job as can be seen in his professional Flickr account here.
With lunch at 11:30 and coffee and a bun at 2pm the day seemed to accelerate and be over in a flash but I think I went down well with lots of laughter, storytelling and very well thought out questions.
The basic tension is one between the parts and the whole. The emphasis on the parts has been called mechanistic, reductionist or atomistic; the emphasis on the whole holistic, organismic, or ecological.
A very interesting evening, yesterday, for the second Centre for Narrative Leadership workshop in London. Geoff Mead and Judith Hemming took a select group of us through an experiment in combining traditional storytelling and systemic constellations.
The basic principles of this combined approach was to allow the archetypal themes, characters and energies that emerged in each of us after hearing a traditional Norse story, to suggest to us, chapter by chapter, metaphorical advice to a problem owner who had just described an intractible business problem to us.
The outcome was a rich and varied stream of new insights, pertinent advice and a greater understanding of both the problem and the traditional story. Geoff has recently published a detailed explanation of the method and the complete story here.
By far the most inspiring aspect of an event like this is the people that you meet. As I said previously, I felt greatly honoured to spend time with such wonderful storytellers from such diverse backgrounds and so very different approaches – so briefly from my notes here goes:
David Metcalf of Fire Springs, told us stories, sang songs and played the most exquisite acoustic guitar
Anthony Nanson also of Fire Springs shared with us, around the fire one evening, a dramatic piece from his 2008 book of short tales, Exotic Excursions
Chris Holland brought his Didgeridoo and shared great tales of North European elves on farms. He revealed his new ‘almost entirely self published’ book ‘I Love My World’
Charlene Collison has helped produce a narrative based book on her Town’s Transition Plan which is a great piece of work. You can download the entire PDF of it here for free.
Malcolm Green the great storyteller and member of ‘A bit of Crack’ based at Newcastle shared a piece of work to develop a tale around a threatened Elm tree near Stockton
Dominic Kelly had us mesmerised with tales of Scottish pubs and ancient seal hunters, and we are all wishing him well with his new piece of dramatic storytelling, The Crow which he is performing at the Cheltenham Literature Festival and was very favourably reviewed in Yesterdays Times.
Katrice Horsley sang, danced and told African stories and has produced a very interesting childrens book and pack on ‘how to deal; with sudden bereavement’ called ‘The small creature’ available for free from the British Heart Foundation.
Finally Jane Flood shared with us songs and stories that ebbed and flowed like the wind blowing around us and I, having bought her most recent story/music CD ‘The Chance Come’ and listened to it in the car mesmerised, cannot recommend it highly enough.
This years Tales to Sustain (T2S) gathering was a smaller more intimate gathering which I only just found out about a few weeks before. Thirteen other storytellers from around the UK bringing a vast amount of, but very differing, experience and approach.
Located at the BurnLaw Centre, an organic farm of 45 acres of pasture, old and new woodland, wetland, orchard and kitchen garden, in the Northumberland, North Pennines not far from Haydon Bridge, While there the sun shone, the landscape lit up and in the evening the stars shone like I have never seen before. One of our group, Jon was so star struck one evening that he walked back to our dormitory through the pond.
All Four days I was constantly in a state of disbelief. The story of Jonah and many more allegorical tales that match the cyclical disappearance of the moon matched identically our four days and three nights outside of our ‘normal’ worlds. The thirteen storytellers matching the thirteen moons that had been and gone since the last event at Cae Mabon. The chance to listen and absorb some of the most passionate and eloquent stories about sustainability ever created, and a surreal moment when on arrival I met two lads who showed me the International Frisbee Golf Course outside our dormitory that I had only ever (very recently) experienced on the Wii Sports Resort. If ever I thought I was imagining my own reality this had to be my best yet.
The centre itself is a fabulous mix of traditional old farmhouse, living community and religious retreat with its Yurt, Kiln, Lovers Lake, Labyrinth and Temple of Love. The welcome, and way we were instantly treat as part of their community was an example to us all.
I had so much fun last week helping to run a two day training event for new facilitators in the wonderful setting of the Hitchin Priory at Hitchin (of course). Fifteen enthusiastic learners arrived and we (Alan, and me in my role as an Argenta associate) worked through essential energisers (where I learned the string exercise mentioned in an earlier blog) and a rich variety of divergent and convergent methods, most of which were entirely new to me before I started working with them earlier this year.
Facilitation training turns out to be very different from facilitating and I was so please that I remembered so many heuristics and tricks of the trade, probably because I have madeso many mistakes myself in the past. I did find that I could not say ‘post-it’ without saying ‘hexagon’ which shows the depth of patterning of my thinking.
I have never been a big fan (probably because I have had a few bad experiences) of metaphorical techniques but I took my group out into the vast grounds of Hitchin Priory collecting any objects that took their fancy. After the obligatory chat about the sad sight of a dying Horse Chestnut Tree we returned and the metaphors generated were rich, relevant and plentiful so that was a real lesson learned for myself.
Incidently, if you ever find yourself in the Hitchin area and thinking of a short meeting, the Hitchin Priory does a two hour meeting, for up to five, free wifi and free refreshments for only £10.
All day Monday we spent exploring present, past and future of Narrate, a company I have been working with as an associate for almost a year. Given that all but one in the room was C0gnitive Edge accredited we gave the nightmare job (and poisoned chalice) of facilitating us to our good friend Richard Hare.
My sincerest apologies to Richard for constantly chipping in with additional ideas, constraints, methods, summations etc etc but he did a sterling job letting the energy and conversation flow naturally and the learning and insights emerge without, force or interpretation by traditional consultancy methods. Facilitating facilitators is not only hard to say but unenviably hard to do.
We used Future Backwards with a much greater quantity of shared heaven and hell hexagons that we naturally patterned and discovered some interesting themes for the ‘ecosystem’ that is Narrate. We then plotted these on a different wall using a technique called ‘Boundary Negotiation’ whereby we separated drivers from outcomes.
Concentrating first on the drivers we used a sequential echnique called ‘X-3-5 Idea collection’ and quickly amassed many great actions that we could take to ‘improve’ our drivers. [These last two techniques I learned only last week as part of my work with a company called Argenta]
Finally as time was now extremely tight we plotted all the emergent actions on the cynefin framework in an effort at least to diagnose just how we can best take some of these forward.
A hugely productive and highly enjoyable day made all the more exciting by an endless supply of fruit, food, snacks and drinks.
