What if we took the same approach to rules and regulations? From the way we make laws for society, to the way we choose the rules that we personally live by, thinking ahead to the time when that rule will no longer be useful to us will give us a deeper understanding of why it exists now and how to best apply it. It will also help us recognise the assumptions that makes the rule valid for now, and to recognise when the time comes to discard that rule or law in favour of something new.

We had a rule (well, more of a habit) of going to the toilet before leaving anywhere in London! (Your parents might have enforced something similar when you were eight!) In a big city, one is never sure if one will get stuck underground on public transport for an hour, become lost repeatedly, or find distraction in exciting goings on. It’s somewhat prudent to visit the water closet when one is not guaranteed of being able to find another, should one be in need.

And so, the rule became: go to loo before venturing outside.

Like all habits (and in the end, many rules become habits simply because we forget why we made them in the first place) this one had a good chance of sticking around. Visiting the bathroom quickly becomes part of the comforting routine of departure, such that when in a new city, one follows the same routine of going to the loo before venturing outside – not because one is actually at risk of not finding ablutions when one needs them urgently, but because one feels comfortable doing what one is used to.

Rewind a year or four to the moment when friend-in-big-city said, “Ooh, must visit loo before I go. Might get stuck on the tube.” In that moment we are very aware of why we are bringing this new law to existence, and there is also an implied prediction that when getting stuck on the tube is no longer a possibility, the Loo Law can be discarded.

Imagine if we did the same thing to even bigger and more important things.

“You must clean your room” might be an ethic you want to instil in your child around care of property, or it might be to keep you sane. You can think forward to the moment when the child shows care and concern for other rooms in the house as a time when you might relax the room-cleaning regulation. Or when you yourself are less stressed with work as the era when mess is more acceptable chez vous.

Compulsory bike helmet use, as a societal-level example, helps to reduce the number of injuries and deaths from people moving around on two wheels. A heap of carefully considered judgements make this choice right for now: the evidence says the risk of injury is high and research demonstrates helmets as a very good way of reducing that risk.

What if we then asked, “How long will this law be valid?” We would have to ask, “When will the risk of injury to be lower?” and, “When will helmets no longer be the most appropriate means for reducing that risk?”

This prediction of how long the law will be valid gives us some insight into our assumptions and values. Values about minimising injury, reducing the cost to the state, and also our assumptions about how cities and roads are designed and used.

We can do the same thing with occupational health and safety, with office procedures, rules about how long one works in a day or when lunchbreaks are allowed. It could be applied to who parks where, pub closing times, immigration law, building codes.

Whenever we are about to enforce something, we ask, “Why does this need to be compulsory and until when?”
A cradle-to-cradle approach to law-making. Understand what gives birth to this new rule, and think forward to the time when that rule will be old and grey and ready to be laid to rest.

What might things look like in a post-Loo Law era?

Drawing on the awareness and centring that comes from a yogic practice, and the creativity and openness developed through performance and play, we help you bring more of yourself to work, communicate better with your colleagues and find solutions that are better for more people.

Strategic Creativity at Work helps:

• Businesses find new ways of learning and working
• Enhance collaboration
• People better understand themselves and those they work with
• Enhance the impact your work has on the people around you and on your environment
• Develop your ability to give everyone more of what they need and less of what they don’t
• Artists and creative practitioners find new ways to apply their craft to develop people and businesses

At the end of the fortnight I concluded that, in a car:

“…we are a different person, seeing our life and our world from a different vantage point.”

(Full piece on my other website in On Having a Car.)

The intention to explore how my own life changes with access to a car led me to understand that it isn’t just my own individual-ness that is affected.  My interactions with my neighbours and my neighbourhood are all equally altered.

My personal choice to drive to a cheaper supermarket a little further away says that the financial savings are more important to me than supporting small, local businesses.  It says that the ease of carrying twelve cans of beans is worth the footprint of owning a car.  And it also suggests that I will accept that my city is not designed for people who don’t drive.

Rather than professing that these are not valid reasons for driving  - money, time and ease are all enablers of wellness – I offer an invitation to notice how you see your world from the vantage of point of a car.  Not just when you’re in your car, but as you decide to do something that would include the car.

Go a step further and notice how you experience yourself in your city simply by being the owner of a car.

In Perth we are starting to get excited about laneway bars and single speed bikes.  There is an ambitious Transport Plan for 2031.  Councils talk about liveable neighbourhoods and European-style cafés are a pleasant stop for pre-work lattés.

If you are a planner, involved in public transport or enabling communities, if you promote local produce or anything that is about creating a more dynamic city, if you or your colleagues got to the meeting by car, recognize that you will have a different perception of what makes a vibrant neighbourhood than the east-London artist who has never had a drivers’ licence.

We put the cafés in, we build bike paths and we have some farmers’ markets, but the experience is not the same as it would be in Lille, Amsterdam or Sheffield.

Perth is unique.  There is space, we have cars, we have roads and, for the moment, we have a thriving economy.  Know that this affects how we create our city.

Our version of a sustainable way to live is going to be different to Europe, the US or South America.   If we recognize who we are and how we are we can collectively find our own way of living well, in all senses of the word.

I opened my presentation with a handstand.    It was spontaneous and yet not without motive – we were in the carbohydrate slump slot forty-five minutes after lunch and shifting the energy was critical if I wanted to keep my audience with me.  So I got them moving, I did a handstand and we knew we were going to do things differently.  This presentation was about seeing problems through new eyes so as to find creative solutions with a more positive social impact.

Each of the various industries I have worked in – as an engineer, as a facilitator in strategy, as a yoga teacher and even as an acrobalance performer – has a unique approach to working.   Over the hour, we took key parts of three different professions and viewed our technical engineering problems through their eyes:

• Social entrepreneurs put the social impact first.  Business and a good product are still critical, but the social impact is foremost.
• Facilitators ask lots of questions.   They merge the subjective with the objective and they inquire into what really needs to be done.
• And circus performers open themselves up to unknowing in order to hear what is being asked of them.

When we viewed our engineering through the eyes of a social entrepreneur our intention was different.   (“My client thinks I’m building an accommodation block for 200 miners.  What I’m actually creating is a home for people isolated from their friends and family, where they find the rest and time out that lets them work healthily and happily.”)  When we asked the questions we’re sure everyone else knows the answers to we found deeper clarification.  (“When you say sustainability, what does that mean to you?”)  And through clown games we tasted the openness that results when we get out of our heads and more grounded in our body.

In the closing “Yes, AND” game, more than one hundred engineers yelled out vast ideas for having a greater social impact in their every day job.   They cheered and they applauded.

When we have space to be, we are more able to ask our clients and our boss about what REALLY needs to be done.  We release our assumptions about what’s possible and what isn’t, and we can see the problem through the eyes of the people who will be affected.  It is then that we are in a position to find innovation.

Power Point presentation: Engineers Without Borders 2011 The problem through new eyes

This workshop is a unique opportunity to use concepts from performance and clown to help you develop your awareness and presence as a facilitator and communicator through physical practice, play and reflection.

No red noses or face paint in this session! Rather, an introduction to the stillness, complicité and openness that beginner clowns practice over and over in order to fully express themselves for the joy of their audience, with presence and apparent spontaneity.    Read more about the content for Clowning for Facilitators Perth 2012 and find the 2012 schedule for events around Australia here.

Cost of the workshop is $300 or $210 for smaller social enterprises.  Bookings three months in advance receive a 40% discount.   8 weeks in advance is a 25% reduction.  And four weeks in advance a 10% reduction.

Max. 12 participants.

For facilitators, teachers and those whose work would be helped by developing their capacity for finding presence and tuning into an audience.

Contact Rachael Claire West on 0450 393 336 for more information.

“I’m back to school in a week and a half and I think the first day routine will be re-written as a result of today!”

“It was valuable to take myself out of traditional facilitator type training and try something new.”

“It’s unlike anything else you have done.  You learn as much about yourself as you do others.”

“You’ll practice letting go and rediscover spontaneity.”

But we would miss an opportunity.

Public transport for Perth in 2031: mapping out the future for Perth’s Public Transport Network outlines an ambitious project. It shows WA’s commitment to public transport and, in a way, it demonstrates a forward thinking approach to urban design and the premise that everyone in a city should have access to it.
But we could do more.

What if, instead of asking, “How do we move 3.5 million people around a city?” we wondered, “What does public transport mean to what Perth could be in 2031?”

It would require some conversations and some processes that are perhaps different to the way we usually do things here. It might feel like it slows things down, at least in the beginning. We’d have to be open to not quite knowing what the end result would look like. And it would involve a lot of listening.

But a bit of innovation in the way we approach this project, has the potential to generate a shared vision for a transit system that engages the people of Perth. With more people talking, with more minds at work, what we create will be unique to Perth. It will meet our needs in the future. And it will create the city we want to live in.
I’m a civil engineer by trade. I understand and respect the need to be prudent. I am in awe of the detail that is present already in this plan.

There’s a chance for Western Australia’s engineers to show what we’re capable of. That what we build and design goes even further than a technical piece of brilliance. It’s an opportunity to look to the future.

The transport plan is available in draft for consultation on the Department for Transport website here. We are looking at submitting comments with suggestions for using social innovation and service design to make this amazing project even better.  If you’d like to hear more, contact rachaelclairewest@gmail.com.  

More about the workshop here.  If you are interested in participating in another session, please email rachael.westheafer@yahoo.com.au.

When I facilitate, I like to provide a session that is multi-layered; as well as developing a sustainability strategy or a business plan, I like the group to develop a greater awareness of the self and their place within the organisation.  I also want them to leave feeling positive and more deeply connected with the people they work with.   My role traverses the very fine line between guide, coach, teacher, ringmaster and performer.

With the potential for operating under many guises I need to be acutely aware of my own biases and perspectives in order to avoid unwittingly manipulating the group.   This has led me on an unending quest for self-awareness, a journey shared by the clown, who must learn to accept her oddities and weaknesses so that when the audience sees them (they will!) and laughs (they will) she can deal with it.  (My ideosyncrasies include extreme self-consciousness, uncontrolled arm movements and an interesting wiggle, which makes for cringe-worthy but hilarious film footage. There are probably a zillion I haven’t get discovered – or refuse to admit!)

Through performance and clowning I have increased my awareness of myself in front of an audience, both physically and emotionally.  I have developed a greater ability to let go, keeping the end in mind but allowing it to be reached in the way that meets the needs of the group at that time. Clowning has allowed me to develop many of the intangible skills that are so critical to good facilitation: how to read the energy in a room and create a space for transparent, generative discussion.

I’m excited to share this experience with other facilitators, whether you consider yourself a professional facilitator or lead team meetings as part of your job, to give you the opportunity to explore your role leading teams to a shared outcome in a positive and playful way.

For information on how to book for the next Clowning for Facilitators, which will be running on Tuesday July 13 from 2pm – 5pm in EC1, London.  Also feel free to get in touch or post a comment about the post and we can have a chat.

I’m not a fan of Monopoly or poker but I love impro, charades and Pictionary: games that combine physicality and mental work, with the ultimate goal of stopping your critical brain get in the way of creation.   As experiential learning that is linked well to ‘how do we apply this at work’ it can provide a powerful shift in ‘how we do things around here’ in the office.

Take this simple exercise:

The Yes, AND game in impro goes something like this:

Person 1: Let’s go for a picnic.

Person 2: Yes!  What I like about that is that I love eating in nature, AND we could take our picnic to Regent’s Park.

Person 1: Yes!  What I like about that is that Regent’s Park is beautiful in winter (!) AND we could visit the zoo as well.

Admittedly that version doesn’t sound particularly exciting, but practise these skills enough and you will eventually come up with storylines that quickly turn a picnic into a space adventure with chocolate-infused chartreuse dished out by Richard Branson or supermodels (see previous post for more on that!). Turn those skills back to the company – and innovative ideas on how to improve business performance have a shining chance to manifest.

It’s very often used by strategic facilitators to show people how to generate ideas.  The object is to find something you like in another’s suggestion and build on it.  Business environments are so complex and interconnected, that not listening to input is highly risky.  These skills help ensure that what comes out has 1) engagement from the group, and 2) builds on the wisdom of the group.

At a creativity day run by Expedition Engineering earlier this year, the amazing Belina Raffy of Maffick led a team of engineers through the Yes, AND game and a host of other activities to develop these skills in engagement and handling complex information.  I was invited along by Expedition to observe the creative process as it particularly relates to engineering and recommend how lateral thinking learnt in the workshop could be integrated into their work practices.

The engineers struggled: instead of the Yes, AND game, they tended towards a No, BUT version:

Person 1: We could go for a picnic.

Person 2: BUT it’s going to rain.

By contrast, a session run for entrepreneurs (by actor and engineer Simon Scott) generated a load of random and interesting storylines.  Belina and Simon both led great sessions but the entrepreneurs had a greater capacity for positive, generative thinking.  I had the same experience when I worked with entrepreneurs at The Hub. (Simon has actually done research to show that learning improvisation skills helps develop entrepreneurship skills.)

There’s a lot of talk in the engineering sector about a new way of doing things.  Keith Clarke, from Atkins, discussed a new set of skills to create a low carbon future during his Brunel lecture this week.  The IET is embarking on an ambitious strategy for a global agenda.

We need to upskill the sector to be more intrapreneurial, more collaborative, more creative.  It’s going to require some experimentation. Some Practical Creativity.  And it just might require looking outside engineering for the answers.