Learning to love uncertainty

Learn to love uncertainty and failure, say leading thinkers | Edge question | Science | The Guardian.

One of the characteristics of all Doers is to know what you’re certain about and what you’re not. It’s good to have a strong, deep feeling in your head, heart and bones that you’re going to make a difference, and be certain of that. Knowing how to get there is a different question. That’s the joy of learning to work, live and love like nature, using whatever is in front of you as a gift and precious resource for whatever comes next.

Act Naturally

Later this month, there's an interesting three day Applied Improv Network conference in Amsterdam that my colleague Belina Raffy and I are lucky enough to be speaking at, with a workshop that combines biomimicry and improv skills to look at the way that we can find new behaviours and techniques to embed emergence in organisations.

One thing seems certain going forwards - whatever comes down the line won't be at the same speed or scale as we expected, and the more that we're able to deal with the unexpected in positive ways, the better.

Improv provides a framework for working in the moment with a set of skills that build on whatever happens as opportunity, not threat.

The science of improvisation

Firstly, a quick apology to followers of my blog for a lack of postings in the last month - a combination of preparing some exciting work packages on behaviour change for sustainability and climate for the Welsh Assembly, then catching up on some important family time shifted priorities for a while.

Back in the saddle now, it's great to start again with this lovely video sent by colleague Belina Raffy, who I have the pleasure of working with on organisation development and innovation projects. It's all, as Alan Alda says, about the animation that we bring, and having the courage to dive in deep without a script - listening to our hearts, not our heads.

Becoming the thing that you want to be

Marketing experts Eat Big Fish have created an excellent free resource called the Challenger Project to give people tools, motivation and examples of how to make big, good change happen. In the video below, On Your Feet co-founder Rob Poynton introduces Fast Food Stanislavsky, a technique from improvisational theatre to help people find out what it is that they'd really like to be. He's a great speaker, thinker and doer; watch and enjoy:

Fast Food Stanislavsky from eatbigfish on Vimeo.