SIMPLE FRAMEWORKS FOR COMPLEX ISSUES

Last week I helped a team of game designers get a handle on what their next game would look like. Now I'm not a game player, let alone a designer, and I can tell you this project looks awesomely complex. So all I could do was to hang on to the simplest of processes to get our heads around the issues. To everyone's surprise, not least mine, we succeded, and came out the other side with not only clarity, but a few kilotons of energy and commitment. It reminded me how a simple approach, coupled with trust and collective will, can turn apparently intractable challenges into exciting and energising prospects.

MEDITATION IN COACHING

I feel the need to report on some great results from introducing meditation into exec coaching programmes. A very simple regime of 10-15 minutes a day is having a radical effect on behaviour. The technique is very simple, based on body and breath awareness, yet the effects are profound. Why this should be the case is beyond me... though my hunch is it's around allowing the recursive mind to wind down, so creating space for other good stuff to emerge which otherwise remains supressed.

EMOTIONAL STUPIDITY

One of my coaching clients is a very quick thinker and has bags of rational intelligence. He got frustrated recently by his colleagues' inability to pick up some tricky concepts, even after explaining it several different ways. It dawned on him straight after that he could have handled it better. We had a bit of an 'aha' when I put it to him that their lack of IQ was only matched by his lack of EQ in not finding the time and space to allow them to 'get' it. After all, was the issue with the concept, the transmitter, or the receiver?

FANTASTIC TRIP

Have a look at
http://www.scribd.com/doc/201894/Fantastic-Trip
A wonderful journey through the orders of magnitude of the universe. And a reminder of how micro and macrocosm echo each other.

AGAINST ALL ODDS

Derren Brown did it again the other night making the possible look impossible. He threw a coin and got 10 heads in a row. Then he enabled a non-betting person to win on the horses 6 times in a row making serious money in the process. How did he do it? Well he did it by only telling us part of the story. I wonder how much of what we see looks unlikely simply because of the hidden complexity behind it? Or perhaps more poignantly, how amazing is that complexity in its own right?

FREUD ON FAECES

Can't resist posting this gem, for no particular reason:
Freud declares that the miser is invariably constipated, and associates the dream of money with faeces.

C4 GETS IT RIGHT

In sharp contrast to the RSA event (below), Channel 4's 'Staying On' debate provided an engaging, mind-changing experience. It even ended up with the RSA's question - What are schools for? - and unlike the RSA, at least tried to grapple with it.
Samira Ahmed presided over 6 panellists and the 100 strong audience with panache. Each panellist was limited to a few minutes' to state their case whereas the 2 RSA speakers droned on for at least 20 minutes each about... search me.
So well done C4 and wake up RSA.

MISSING THE POINT OF EDUCATION

I went to an education debate at the RSA the other night: "What are schools for?". Two eminent speakers and a high profile chair. The evening failed for me on 2 counts. Firstly the speakers were both firmly entrenched in the paradigm that education is about injecting information into people's heads. Secondly the format locked out the audience, which had far more intelligent things to say than either speaker. Even the worthy chair made no significant contribution.

LE ZERO SUM

Vindication at last: today's Times states:

In derivatives trading winners exactly match the losers.

And so rogue trader Jerome Kerviel's loss of £3.7B is someone else's gain. I've always felt that some financial trading has a zero sum element to it, but my trader friends have always dismissed this as simply not true - giving me the impression that they are adding value in some way. Now it seems that derivatives trading is a zero sum game... with no added value. I'm now trying to think of any other profession where the overall status quo is left untouched by its efforts. Any ideas?

SYNCHRONICITY?

After years of entrepreneurial planning, scheming and fantasizing, in the past week so many possibilities have emerged that completely destroy the notion (in my mind at least) of any sort of linear cause and effect. Suddenly we're meeting the right people, finding the right spaces (see previous post) which could have happened a long time ago...or may never have happened at all. Is this a stochastic process or a tide in the affairs of men?