Posted on

How do I improve learning and development programmes?

SHIFT Act 1, Episode 1: Current reality

FUNDA is a training and conferencing company who specialises in providing the knowledge and resources their clients need to train their people and develop their teams. FUNDA (funda is the Zulu word for ‘learn’) started out 17 years ago and quickly made a name for themselves in the organisational learning and development sector. Their clients praised the quality of the content they provided and the expertise of the specialists they hired to present the training.

Over the last 7 years or so, FUNDA had been losing clients, though. When they ask defecting clients why they are leaving, they get mixed answers:  ‘we are cutting costs, so we are opting for online learning courses’, ‘We felt that we needed more entertainment and inspiration mixed into the learning – something wow’, or ‘our people want something that is more fun and challenging, something that brings the team together ’and ‘we are looking for something different, that is more relevant to us specifically and can cater for the diversity of people we employ’.

The owner and CEO of FUNDA, Claire Pillay, started looking at what her competitors were offering. She noticed that the speaker’s burro across the square from her had halted their office renovations. A few years ago when the renovations at Motivation Inc started, it looked like they were doing great, now it seems they were cutting costs. “If people are really looking for inspiration and entertainment mixed into the learning, why is Motivation Inc not booming?” Claire wondered.

A previous loyal client of her company dropped in one day to give her a pamphlet: ‘Team Adventures’ it read ‘every extreme adventure you can think of for your whole team’. She looked at her client with raised eyebrows: “So is this the trend now?”

“No,” he answered “too expensive and nothing changes at the office after you go on one of these”. Can’t you get us something that is fun and meaningful? Isn’t there a way in which we can learn, bond, be inspired and shift our company into the 21st century so that we can keep up with the changing times?”

Claire realised that the lecture based, information transmission model her company was built on, no longer served. People can get everything they wanted to know off the internet in various forms to fit their individual needs, from blog articles to full online courses. But people are also no longer looking for pure motivational or inspirational speakers who can both entertain and teach them at the same time. While people enjoy the ‘show’, they still leave without the message impacting and changing their work environment. Yet, when organisations try to remedy this by taking their teams on teambuilding experiences to build relationship and connection, still people do not integrate the experience into everyday work life.

“So what is the solution?”  Claire asked herself, “How do I improve our learning and development programmes?”

 

Posted on

Yes and story

Goals:

• Practice listening and awareness
• Practice accepting offers and building on them
• Practice focusing and reincorporating.

Overview:

Participants tell a story in a circle, each participant contributing one sentence at a time.

Time: 20 min

Number of participants: 4-12

Game flow:

Have everyone sit in a circle. Get a name for an original story from the participants. Anyone in the circle may start to tell the story by saying an opening sentence. The person on their left then builds on the opening line by adding the next sentence to the story by starting their sentence with “yes and”. The person on their left then adds the next sentence also starting with “yes and.” Continue the telling of the story, each person starting their sentence with “yes and”, until it comes to a conclusion.

Tips:

The easiest way to get a name for the story is to first get a name for the main character (ex. Jimmy). Then ask what Jimmy is (ex. a donkey). Then ask what the main character’s biggest challenge is (ex. to win the J&B Met). The name of the story could then be something like: “The day Jimmy won the J&B Med.”
Often people struggle to get the story to a conclusion. This could be a very interesting observation to debrief. When participants struggle to conclude the story, remind them of the title. For more advanced players you can tell the story without a title.

Debrief questions:

• What was interesting about this exercise?
• What made it difficult?
• What did you do to make it easier?
• What would you do next time to tell a better story?
• How did the title help or inhibit the story telling?

Variation: One word story

In this variation instead of contributing one sentence at a time the participants only contribute one word at a time.

Posted on

Team Innovation through Improvisation – Part 6

Click here for more information about our Team Innovation workshops.
Click here to read the other parts

Ideas

Idea sharing is essential in an innovative team. The more ideas are shared in the group the more creative and novel ideas are triggered. And if these ideas build on one another the team will come up with a much more creative and meaningful idea than one team member could have come up with by themselves. But why is it that in some teams it feels like your creativity is diminished? Or the creative ideas are not much better than one individual’s idea. It is because in such teams the members don’t feel safe to participate in idea sharing. How can an atmosphere be created in which team members feel safe to share their ideas? Actors in an Improvisation theater group creates this atmosphere by applying the “yes and” principle. The “yes and” principle means that when your team members shares an idea you accept it (yes the idea) and then build on it. When an idea is not accepted it is called a “block”. The way we often block one another is by saying “yes but”. Most people are more used to saying “yes but” than “yes and”. Every time someone shares an idea and it is blocked by another team member the likelihood that the person will share another idea is diminished. Therefore to create an atmosphere that promotes idea sharing start applying the “yes and” principle.

Right now you might think “yes, but I can’t say yes to all ideas all the time.” Yes and you might be saying this because you are already in a mindset of “blocking” rather than “accepting”. It is true there are appropriate times to block, but they are far less than appropriate times to accept. Try the “yes and” principle for a day and see what happens. The “yes and “principle is more a mindset than anything else. It is a mindset of accepting reality and doing something useful with it.


Quick exercise:

Let everyone pair up with a partner. Tell them that together they have to plan a company Christmas party. One must start by sharing an idea. The other replies with the words “Yes but”, a reason why it is not a good idea, and then share another idea. The first then replies with “yes but” and so they go back and forth blocking each other’s ideas. After a while stop them and ask them to plan the same party but this time instead of saying yes but they must start their sentences with “yes and”, accepting the other’s idea and building on it. Reflect on the exercise and ask the following questions.

How did accepting feel different from blocking?

How were their outcomes different?

How did they feel about the other person when being blocked or being accepted?

What are the benefits and the costs of accepting?

What are the benefits and costs of blocking?

Click here to read the other parts
Click here for more information about our Team Innovation workshops.

Posted on

Team Innovation through Improvisation – Part 5

Click here for more information about our Team Innovation through Improvisation Workshops.

Relationship

How to build team relationships that promote innovation.

The relationships between the members of an innovative team are based on trust and support. Your responsibility towards yourself is to be trusting and trustworthy, whilst your responsibility towards the rest of the team is to support them. The phrase we use in Improvisation to describe this element is “make your partner look good”. When everyone in the team is out to make the rest of the team look good it creates a safe environment where everyone feels safe to share new ideas. We are so used to just making our selves look good, but if you know that everyone in your team is out to make you look good it takes a lot of pressure from your shoulders and it builds trust between you and the rest of the team. Besides ,everyone in the team will look amazing if there are 10 others making them look good instead of everyone just trying to make themselves look better than the rest.

Quick exercise:

Here is a fun game from improvisation theatre that illustrates the “make your partner look good” concept very well. The game is called “Yes lets!” For this exercise you need enough space for everyone to move around. The game starts with anyone in the group making a suggestion for an action such as “Let’s climb a tree!” or “lets bake a cake!” Everyone then replies with the words “Yes lets!”, and mimes the action with enthusiasm. At any point someone else can make a new suggestion and everyone replies again with “Yes lets!”

The best way to make your team members look good is by accepting their suggestions and doing the action with enthusiasm. If someone said something like “let’s roar like lions” and just did it by himself, he would look like a fool and probably feel like one as well. What I love about this game is that you don’t just say yes I like your idea; you actually have to accept the idea by doing something with commitment. Often we will say we accept someone’s ideas but it’s just lip service, because we don’t actually take any action. The safety, trust and support that is generated when everyone in the team is committed to making the rest of the team look good, creates a energetic atmosphere in which innovation can thrive.

Make your partner look good story

Last night my wife told me a beautiful story about how a family made their mother look good by accepting an offer and doing something with it. In this story the offer the mother made wasn’t an idea; it was a reality that was imposed on her without her choice. She was diagnosed with throat cancer. In her final week her last wish was to have a meal with her family, since she loved cooking and sharing dinner with her loved ones. She couldn’t swallow the food because of the cancer and therefore had to spit it out after chewing it. Seeing this, her family also spat out their food after chewing. They made her look good by accepting her reality and doing it with her. Accepting other’s reality, whether it is their creativity, personality or hardship and doing something with it is how you show real acceptance and that is how you build trust in your relationships with others.

More on trust

People often tell me that they can’t trust others because the others aren’t trustworthy. What comes first, trust or trustworthiness? People will say others must earn their trust. Does that mean you treat them untrustworthy until they have earned your trust? People will react in the way that you treat them. If you treat someone as untrustworthy, they will act untrustworthy. But what if you trust someone and they disappoint you? That is where grace comes in, because you know you are also not perfect and also not always 100% trustworthy. Accept the mistake and do something with it. The more trusting you are going to be the more trustworthy the people in your team will become.

Posted on

Team Innovation through Improvisation – Part 3

Click here for more information about our Team Innovation through Improvisation Workshops.

Risk

For a team to be innovative individuals in the team must take risks and help the others to feel safe to take risks. Most people are terrified of taking risks because they are afraid of failing and how others will react when they fail. So in order to protect ourselves from others we rather not take any risks. The irony is that some of the most revolutionary inventions started out as a failure. Just think of penicillin that was invented when a scientist noticed that his “failed” experiment was killing bacteria. Or post-it notes that was invented when a researcher of 3M who wanted to develop a very strong adhesive just created a somewhat sticky substance. His colleague accepted the “mistake” and used it to stick his bookmark in his hymn book. In improvisation we say “everything is an offer”, even a so called mistake. Your responsibility towards yourself to help create an innovative team climate is to take risks. Your responsibility toward your team members is to accept their failures and do something with it.

Quick exercise:

Before you start your next brainstorming session let everyone stand in a circle. Tell them that everyone will get the chance to step forward into the circle, then say anything in the line of “I made a mistake” or “I failed” and then give a big bow. The rest of the group must then give a round of applause. This exercise is called circus bow, because whenever a trapeze artist makes a mistake and falls down into the net, he will make a summersault out of the net and bow towards the audience as if that was exactly what was supposed to happen. Ask the following debrief questions:

How did that make you feel being applauded for stating that you made a mistake?

How did it feel to applaud the others?

What can we learn from this exercise?

How can we help each other to take risks?


Click here to read part 1 – Introduction
Click here to read part 2 – Communication
Click here to read part 3 – Risk
Click here to read part 4 – Control

Posted on

Team innovation through improvisation – Part 1

Click here for more information about our Team Innovation through Improvisation Workshops.

Introduction


Click to viewChanges in business environments have resulted in a need for the development of innovative teams, because it is through teams that the management of change through innovation is achieved. One of the factors that play a crucial role in the innovation shown by teams is the climate for innovation within the team. This climate is the same as the climate prevalent in an improvisation theatre group who respond to ideas from their audience, fellow actors and the scenario quickly and creatively and in collaboration with one another. Research has shown that the exercises used by improvisation actors can be used to enhance the innovative climate in a work team. Neuroscience also supports improvisation as an experiential learning tool. Applied improvisation is an emerging field and business schools all over the world are starting to include it as part of their leadership and innovation courses.

The 7 crucial elements of an innovative team climate:

Click to view clip

There are 7 elements that play an important role in an innovative team climate. These elements are Communication, Risk, Control, Ideas, Relationship, Vision and Excellence. In each of these elements each team member has a responsibility towards him/herself and a responsibility towards his/her team members. All of these elements are interrelated and need to work together to create an innovative team climate.

Watch this space for a discussion of each of these elements.

Click here to read part 2 – Communication
Click here to read part 3 – Risk
Click here to read part 4 – ControlIntroduction