Best Practices

The Positive Principle: Building Your Capacity for Improvisation and Appreciative Inquiry

Submitted by pamelameyer
on Thu, 10/28/2010 - 00:00

In the midst of teaching a graduate course on personal and organizational change where we are exploring the value of developing individual and systems’ capacity for change, I pulled up an excerpt from a longer article on the symbiotic relationship between improvisation and appreciative inquiry (the full article is available at the link below). Hope you enjoy it!

Tags: 
appreciative inquiry
Best Practices
creativity
improvisation

Five Ways to Make Space for People to Play with New Ideas and Perspectives

Submitted by pamelameyer
on Wed, 06/30/2010 - 00:00

As often as I balk at prescriptive approaches to creating playspace, I am asked for examples of how others are doing it in their organizations. Below is a short list of innovative approaches from a wide range of organizations. Some are from “From Workplace to Playspace,” others I have heard from workshop participants and readers around the country. I hope that you will be inspired and “get permission” from them to experiment with approaches that fit for your organization.

 

1) Warm-up Your Day. Umpqua Bank, a thriving regional community bank, featured in the book, begins every day across

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Best Practices
improvisation
play
Warm-up Exercises and Ideas

What if you don’t have leadership buy-in to create playspace?

Submitted by pamelameyer
on Wed, 04/07/2010 - 00:00

In these first few weeks since From Workplace to Playspace has been out I have had the pleasure of sharing some of its key concepts with a wide range of audiences, including creativity and innovation experts, MBA and training and development graduate students, managers and employees, and HR professionals. One of the most consistent questions I have received so far is “What if you don’t have leadership buy in to create playspace in your organization?”



My response to this comes in two, seemingly contradictory, parts:

1) We all can make choices and behave in ways that influence the quality of

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Best Practices
Psychological Safety
Responsibility
Strategy-Planning

Imaginative Variations

Submitted by pamelameyer
on Sat, 11/28/2009 - 00:00

This past fall DePaul’s Center to Advance Education for Adults invited Meg Wheatley to keynote and lead an afternoon workshop at a conference we titled “Thriving in Transition.” (You can download Wheatley’s keynote for free at the CAEA itunesU site in the itunes store. See instructions here.


During the afternoon workshop we had some fun in small groups as we first told one version of our story, and then (after reconvening with new people) told a completely different version of our story.

Tags: 
Best Practices
Provocative Space
Warm-up Exercises and Ideas