Personal Blogs

I try to concentrate during a face to face tutorial but as a MAODE student who isn't supposed to ever meet anyone I constantly feel that doing this elective offers some vital insights and contrasts.

Face to face is very like the online equivalent ( or should that be the other way around? ) the 2 hours 30 I have spent today could have been an Elluminate Session, with breakout rooms combined with lots said in the Tutor Group Forum.

The advantage online, certainly with the forums, is to have everyone's thoughts and ideas as notes.

Think of examples of innovative practice in your workplace and decide where they might fit on Pearson's matrix.

Which type of innovation seems most vital to your organisation?

NOT exploratory like a pharmaceutical company doing R&S, whether big or baby bio.

PROBABLY development engineering in which, like Microsoft bringing out a new operating system, a new module takes years to realise.

NOT finding new ways to use old stuff, like for the most part 3m. Then again, reversioning content for the web, especially for social media is exactly what is going on. Like at the free accountancy course on Facebook.

REFERENCE

Pearson. P48 Book 3 reference pearson a w 1991:22 managing innovation: an uncertainty reduction process.inHenry,J and Wakker, D. (eds) 1991b

I've done an inadequate sweep of the 600+ entries here in order to select 7 entries and have it roughly down to these 27: If I do another sweep I'd find another 27 and be none the wiser. I have another blog with 16000+ entries and some 16 blogs. What interests me is what iWriter next.

I work in an Orchard Emotional intelligence means more ...

Email is a snowball

Is education a problem or a business opportunity?

Grayson Perry and Rose Tremain on creativity

Fingerspitzengefuegel How where and when do you learn?

152 blogs I try to keep an eye on

 E-learning is just like Chicken Masala

Life according to Anais Nin, Henry Miller and Samuel Pepys

100 novels personally recommended

12 Metaphors visualised to aid with the brilliance of blogging

Prensky and the concept of the Digital Native deserves to be lampooned

Love your memories in a blog

The Contents of my brain : a screenplay

We can't help to think in metaphors it's what makes us human

Maketh up a quote at ye beginning of thy book

Personal development planning as a thermal

What makes an e-learning forum tick?

Why Flickr on the Great War?

Social Media is knowledge sharing

Making sense of the complexities of e-learning

Social Learn (Like Open Learn but networked)

Twelve books that changed the world

Some thoughts on writing by Norman Mailer

Visualisation of the nurturing nature of education according to Vygotsky

Woe betide the Geordie linguist

Does mobile learning change everything?

The Digital Scholar. Martin Weller

The pain of writing and how the pain feeds the writing too

Digital Housekeeping and the Digital Brain

My heads like a hedgehog with its paws on a Van den Graff generator

Where's education in technical terms compared to the car?

My preference, having created an @random button for my original blog started in 1999 (and the first to do so) is to do exactly that: hit the 'enter@random' button 7 times and see where it takes me.

In a moment of possible abject folly a conversation that spiralled into something else earlier this week prompted me to set up a discussion group 'Dead Persons Talking' (on Linkedin) and a website www.deadpersontalking.com.

A year ago I set up a Book of Condolences website which drew over 100 responses.

What struck me, on a personal level, is my love for a long gone grandfather and the desire to continue conversations with my late father too.

What if they were still around and could join discussions?

I feel I knew both well, indeed I interviewed my late grandfather at length, transcribed this and put it in the blog www.getjackback.wordpress.com

Let's see.

The idea is to open the blog www.deadpersontalking.com to many authors who may wish to come in.

On verra.

Today’s Creative Problem Solving workshop went well.

Why?

I planned, but didn’t over plan. I kept it simple, doing a combination of what I know, what I’ve done or had done to me, with an intuitive inclination to two straightforward exercises that I stumbled upon in the B822 Techniques Library: ‘Advantages, Limits and Unique Qualities’ is the first exercise in the book. This sounded like my people, something they’d be familiar with. That they could do. I had it down as an opening exercise, then rejigged it to the end of the cession to assess our plan of action. Then there was Help/Hinder, I’m glad to say a ‘pure OUBS’ exercise as if was devised by Jane Henry and John Martin in 1997 for the Creative Problem-solving Guide.

It helps that

a) I am a professional (though part time) swimming coach.

b) As a director, often working with members of the public of client members of staff, I can give clear direction and put people at their ease

It matters enormously when you stand up in front of 10, 20 sometimes 60 young athletes that you know, to the minute what you want to do (and know why it has to be done). It matters to your assistant coaches too. This isn’t so different. I will be on my feet for 90 minutes (a senior squad group runs 2 hours, the junior swimmers an hour). A handwritten plan might suffice, often put into a day per page diary. This gets written up on a large whiteboard poolside. With swimmers this is very much for them to see bit by bit what is expected of them, but it also provides for the stressed-out coach with a million things on their mind with an immediate aide memoire. Swimmers perform to the second. At the top level we expect them to swim within the tinniest of tolerances, hitting during training a specific, personal time of Personal Best (PB) + a number of seconds. The expert amongst them do it.

I digress.

This was a different kind of class entirely. Adult swimmers, I could say. Not a group of unknowns though, with strangers I may have thrown them in a the deep end, but I knew with my colleagues that resting their legs in the water, a Jacuzzi perhaps or floating around in the shallow end would be enough. I was right, finger-painting, super-hero role play, or hypnosis would have been the equivalent of Mr Bean on the High Diving Board.

It would be egalitarian, whatever their position (we had directors, managers and officers). In this respect, I would have to take it carefully, advancing them into exercises and responding as they do. In practice each planned exercise came off and with care I kept people engaged in what I wanted them to do, even where I sensed they were feeling a little uncomfortable.

Laughter in the warm-up exercise helped.

WARM UP

It felt appropriate as someone they know to be a swimming coach to do a short ‘poolside’ swimming related practical. My initial thought had been ‘hot potato’ a version of what we did at Residential School and I see trotted out all the time, the throw the ball, say your name add an adjective pass it on. Exactly what I do with young swimmers as they join a squad for the first time and will soon be competing together. In this case, with one exception everyone knew each other very well. To begin to form a bond between strangers yes.

To teach sculling I get swimmers to place their hands on their face, look at the shape of their hands, then describe ‘infinity’ elbows in hands in front of them. They did a bit of this and I added floating off the bottom of the pool, making whirlpools and polishing a bald man’s head.

We did Samurai Mother-in-law, Tiger in a Tutorial. I felt a quick team go of Paper, Scissors, Stone would be a valuable intermediary step. I can see now that I have this set of steps I want them to take with me, and that I have to be the judge of how to place the ‘stones’. Here I am still looking for an easy buy in.

Team Game : Paper Scissors Stone

Two goes at this and we were ready for the next one.

Team Game : Samurai Mother-in-law, Tiger

The first of these drew laughter, the second fits of giggles. I don’t know what the scores were and didn’t want to start thinking about doing it often enough to find a winning team so swiftly moved on.

(More to follow once I have extracted the confidential or the controversial)

I offer these cryptic notes from the post B882 Creativity, Innovations and Change OU Business School, 'Residential School' as an aide memoir and catalyst.

This sounds like an excuse for poor note taking, yet everyone will have their own view or sense of what occurred during the tutorial and more importantly what they took from it or felt about it.

Rather than being prescriptive then perhaps the following will jog your memory and help you think it through. In any case, I could justify it as a technique, 'stream of conscious' or free form writing: getting it on paper. (though these days everything is jotted down on an iPad).

Were this a Wiki it could be added to collectively.

(As a Belbin Team 'Plant' type I love the idea that a 'Finisher' in a group will come into a wiki and 'get the job done' while I dream, tinker and catalyse invention).

PART ONE

Be careful with the term 'framework' which here means metaphors as exploration for problem solving. Whereas methodologies are 'methods for problem solving' such as Buffalo Three Stage Model, Disney (complete method, not technique).

DISNEY (See Techniques Library)

This used three modes of thinking:

1. The dreamer
2. The realistic
3. The critic.

Dilts (1945).

All three strategies are useful and complementary for a project.

(My successes have utilised three people in these three modes, I am generally the dreamer. Reflecting on this I do see how I can been try to be overly pragmatic and might stall a project and ultimately the projects worst critic ... and so I pull the plug. The trick has to be to find a way back and forth through all three traits, or as I have done in the past, be the dreamer, with a realist and critic part of the team).

Berne (1970) called these:

• Child
• Adult
• Parent

You can role play alone, but best to have others take part so that the 'idea' is given legs.

The technique calls for a FOURTH player:

• Neutral, Chair or facilitator.

You step from Neutral to Dream, Neutral to Realist, Neutral to Critic in turn.

Guerilla activities : Covert creative problem solving.

Can anyone add more to this?

My concern would be that if already outside your comfort zone it would be too easy to duck the issue; instead of using 'guerilla activities' strategically as the best choice of approach, that they would be used to avoid having to confront fears you may have over facilitating such an exercise with colleagues.

Might the answer be to dilute a mix of people with some outsiders, as catalysts or to tip the balance in favour of the exercise?

Even to diffuse any real or perceived problems?

Energiser games

These are in the Techniques Library or Book 2: 82, 86.

Tiger : Samurai : Mother-in-law

This activity, done in teams facing each other is the same as 'paper, scissors, stone' but with bigger, bolder actions. You 'Tut-tut’ and wag your finger as the mother in law. You 'growl' and get your claws out as a Tiger While you shout 'ha!' and take up the stance of a Samurai warrior brandishing his sword for Samurai.

This is an Ice-breaker which gets people on their feet, smiling, shaking of inhibitions and getting their energy levels up. It's one way to help get people into the right frame of mind for things like finger painting etc:

We shared some of the techniques used at Residential School: Hairy Balls

Actually pom-poms, though any item could be used to throw and catch from a beach ball to screwed-up newspaper.

I first came across this at Youth Theatre in my teens, then used it as a warm-up with video production teams and later with 'Mini Squad' our future elite swimmers, in the water to help them get each other's names in their heads, followed with 'hot potato' in which they are pushed further to retain the basic information while they get suitably warmed up.

The most relevance for this is with a group where people don't know each other already.

The next step at Resi School.

Qualify the person's name and remember both this and the person's name. Concentration game around the room

Q.Q. How to do the virtual version?

(Coming from the Masters in Open and Distance Education I should have an answer for this)

And another one:

Privately we thought if we were an animal, what kind of animal would we be?

We then put the word on a PostIt. One at a time we came forward and described ourselves while others based on this tried to guess what kind of animal we are.

This too went on a PostIt and from this we'd gain some understanding of who we are perceived to be.

Finally we put the two animals together.

How did this go? I should know.

I elected to be a Red Squirrel but only because I happened to be thinking about a certain Management Training Centre in the Lake District (actually the Eden Valley) where my late father lived where we had Red Squirrels. I should have related it to my current role or how I saw myself. Actually I had had 'dolphin' in my mind, which was as much about freedom and personality as my professional and personal interest in swimming.

It worked better with someone else who had described themselves as a leopard 'ready to pounce' as we had come up with a leopard or some such. The next step was to introduce two such 'animals' in 'character' to each other, for example what happens when a 'giraffe' type meets the 'panther' or of course the classic of a mouse meeting an elephant.

At Resi School we did 'Super Heroes' and it worked by people finding complementary powers.

This is good at the solution finding stage by asking people who, why and what.

Ask 'what solutions would your superhero bring to the table?' What have we got to lose? (if you are getting nowhere).

PART TWO

If you've got to tackle lots of incremental changes that are not delivering how do you reframe it and do something more visionary?

From E-Learning V

Our tutor gave a personal example of imagining Charing Cross Metropolitan Police Station as an aircraft carrier.

Sequence of diamonds to have the problem, diverge, then draw it together.

Based on 'systems thinking' Jane Henry and John Martin (2010)

Trying therefore to understand it holistically.

Something 'messy' is when you put stuff together e.g. Hospital, flyover and play park. P.43/44.

(I keep thinking of Engestrom's 'activity systems' and how these were used to think through messy problems in, for example, a live TV production company, or the relationship between a hospital and clinics).

Wicked or Messy problems. What are they?

Wicked: Rittel (1972)

Messes: Akoff (1979)

These have few boundaries

There are Complex systems or sub-problems Mason and Mitroff, 1981 pp.11-13 (p43, B2) All about 'unpacking challenged' 3.10 (pp 42/43)

PART THREE

TMA02 Ask yourself? Why am I dealing with this problem? Use a technique for messy or wicked problems. 3:10 unpacking problems

METHODOLOGIES

Some are techniques, others are complete methods. Eg. Buffalo.

It is an Iterative process

Use 'divergent thinking' first

Remember the 13 precepts as "rules for the environment'

Add Precepts List

Evaluate what did - compare precepts.

If precepts breached, why? What do next time?

Horse shoe and the car story

A company makes great horseshoes then along comes the car; its response is to make the very best horse-shoes. But sales are falling ... So you make increasingly better horseshoes.

You are trapped into doing the same thing.

When around you the world is changing, you need to do something different.

Kodak makes a similar story.

I bought a Kodak digital camera and easy share docking station around 2002.

Both lasted no longer than a novelty Christmas present, the definition on the camera too poor, depends ace on the docking station and frequent, expensive paper fails with the printer.

Other industries that are too stuck in a rut to change?

On reflection I can see that corporate video production companies could fail in the same way if they thought in terms only of video production, instead of seeing themselves as a communications business. I think of how 'Two Four' has, for example, morphed itself into broadcast TV while 'The Bank' went from a record label and music videos, to corporate video, events, commercials and 'experiential' projects.

1) Get as much as you can, so keep diverging.

I recall our Resi School tutor forever pushing, and stepping in wherever (at this stage) someone started to use business terminology (i.e. both converging and becoming glued to a mindset not of your own).

E.g. Don't close down ideas when brainstorming.

2) You want one idea to lead to another.

As soon as you close down you stop the flow of ideas.

E.g Brain writing. 30secs to put ideas/answers on a pad, then quickly pass it around. Interject a game ....

3) Then back to the brainstorm.

4) Do something different.

5) Then back to the brainstorm ...

Converge, Diverge, Statement of the problem.

N.B. One people fully understand what the problem is the following stages follow through quickly.

How you'd do it next time (better when it goes wrong)

Genuinely real problems (nothing trivial)

N.B. Do it in a real context to convince the tutor that you did it.

The Group

Ideally, a group of highly supportive group people at work.

Or virtual. Multiple intelligences. Personalities.

NLP.

Ambiguous problems Activity 6.6  (p107, B2)

Technique Choosing Activity 7.3  (p125, B2)

Facilitation Issues Activity 7.9 (p136, B2)

Non-analytical skills

Manage the context Hamburger or sh1t sandwich : pointing out what went well and reinforcing this to conclude.

How are you going to overcome the constraints of your organisation?

What is the PROBLEM?

The problem is defining the problem.

Problem solving does not mean finding a solution necessarily but finding the most suitable way of dealing with the issues.

Start-up

Exceedingly well educated, but preconditioned on how to solve a problem.

HOW

What people are wearing! Dress down Friday.

Different location (and time)

No hierarchy, include outsiders.

Morning, Afternoon or Evening.

Toolkit (bag of toys)

Party facilitator

Youth Leader (theatre) Swim Coach (pool)

NO IT games! (paid for and restrictive) Role reversal ... In my shoes (personas)

Facing the truth. Lose the passion.

HBS.

Gap analysis: where we are ...

Where we would like to be.

Steps BACK from the end putting in place the steps. Make in convergent, divergent.

Have a pack of colour discs. (To do Timeline)

Lay them out to diverge, then converge.

Physically walk it through.

(Human sculpture) ... Even as a person not the organisation.

TMAO2

Why is the group composed the way it is?

Pace Planning Dress down, especially military.

Don't think the technique will work

View the technique library as a recipe book.

Have back up techniques in your back pocket

See DVD for Facilitation.

Bring your pet to school day (Steve Jobs)

QQ what are you doing differently compared to 2011?

Insightful commentary on the decisions '5W and H' to structure TMA. If you cannot define the problem early on start by looking at the symptoms.

• What to do with the dominant participant?
• Judgemental people need the rational
• Take them back to the process
• Keep it positive
• Don't let them close it down

KAI if 10/ 20 apart can cause problems.

REFERENCE

Ackoff, R.L. (1979) The Art of Problem-Solving, New York: Wiley

Berne, E. (1970) Games People Play, Harmondsworth, Penguin Book.

Dilts, R.L. (1994/95) Strategies of Genius, Vol 13, Capitola, Meta Publications

Henry, J & Martin J (2010) Book 2 Managing Problems Creatively

Mason, R.O. and Mitroff, II. (1981) Challenging Strategic Planning Assumptions, Chichester: Wiley

Rittel, H (1972) 'On the planning crisis: systems analysis of the "First and second generations"', Bediriftskonomen, No8. pp. 390-6

I relate to this. How, when and where I am 'in the flow'.

How either stress or boredom can throw me.

In the flow: live TV production, live events, scriptwriting, presenting, directing, most location production work, singing (performing), editing, drawing, creative problem solving, networking and many written exams (+ observational and life-drawing)

Stress includes getting ahead of my experience and skills or finding out too late that expectations have changed whilst boredom results as much from having nothing to do, low levels of responsibility or no challenge. As well as an exam that I have not prepared for or forgetting lines in a play.

There is a health warning with these activities as they could bring up deeply personal memories, emotions, feelings and responses.

I offer a different kind of health warning having persevered with this over the last few weeks: be prepared to wake up several times a night wondering 'what on earth was that all about?'

Having got my head to alert me to dreams and bring me into a state of semi-consciousness I am now able to remember anything (so far) between one and three dreams every night. I haven't the time, energy or circumstances to deal with any of them. To do one justice I would give each two hours, this is a combination of getting the detail down then working through a set of 27 questions to analyse what it means directly to you, your circumstances, the problem or problems, feelings, anxieties and so on.

I'm still recalling a dream from two nights ago! Vivid not for where I was , what I was doing or who I was with, but how it in the way you get from watching a movie I came away feeling x, y & z from the protagonist.

B822 Techniques Library : Random Stimuli of Various Kinds

1) Identify what it is you want ideas for.

2) Grab an idea from a paper, from looking out of the window, or by throwing dice. (In our case the facilitator had a collection of odd items for this purpose).

3) Connect this idea back to the issue, if necessary using Free Association or Excursion.

4) If it doesn't work try something else.

Could pick a fixed or specific element of the problem and do the same.

* Select grammatically appropriate stimuli: noun+verb, adjective+noun, but make bizarre combinations (which is how David Bowie often wrote song lyrics).

* Deliberately do something different, or speak to someone new or travel home in a different way.

* Allow the idea to incubate while going about your normal day.

CASE STUDY

We took a business problem and defined this in a way that was clear.

WRITTEN UP ON FLIP CHART

Various items were picked out from a selection brought to the workshop by the tutor for this purpose. He picked out a small, smiling lobster ornament as the stimuli and passed it around.  We then played collective word association writing our word onto a PostIt note that the facilitator then put onto a set of double doors.

Once we had around 70 ideas and we had fairly exhausted our thoughts we stopped.

The role of the facilitator was to ensure that everyone offered ideas, that no one dominated. Collectively we put the words into groups and labelled these groups.

We took ONE theme and put it on a triple A1 sheet of paper.

We drew, collectively, a mind map still trying to generate ideas.

Finally, from these ideas the person whose problem it had been was invited to see if any answers had been offered.

The solution that was of most interest was indeed something that would not otherwise been thought of.

REFERENCE

Whiting (1958), Taylor (1962), de Bono (1970), Rickards (1974) and VanGundy

In the right context with the right people role play can be used to help see or experience a problem from a different perspective. Here however, Virginia Woolf and friends pull off a hoax and a treated as royal guests on one of His Majesty's battleships.

So many people describe this OU Business School module (B822 : Creativity, Management & Change) and the residential school I am currently attending as something that changed their lives; I've been waiting for that moment, or for a series of insights to congregate and like a celestial choir sing something special.

I was up at 5.00 am and writing (of course), taking a swim at 6.45 am in the pool here at the Heathrow Marriott, into an Elective at 8.00 am and the first Tutor Workshop at 9.00 am.

The second workshop kicked in after lunch at 1.30 pm then from 7.00 pm three more hour long electives in a row.

At no stage was I ever tired or bored, indeed I feel embarrassed even writing this, the very thought!?

Too much new, too important, too interesting, too interested. Like my second week at nursery school: amongst friends, secure, allowed and expected to have fun. Alert.

It was in the very last cessation today, during an hour of guided relaxation, shoes off lying on the conference room floor, lights out, soft music playing that  my unconscious gave me a two word tip and did its best to visualise the love my children have for me and I have for them. I'm still trying to see what love looks like: white, a slightly crumpled unopened rosebud the size and shape of chicory but made of paper, or tissue. I tried (in the semi-conscious dream-like state that I was in) to cup 'love' in my hands as if I was scooping up water but it proved illusive, like a cloud.

After we were brought out of our semi-unconscious state (I fell asleep momentarily three times) we were all asked to share what we experienced; I eventually chirped up with the word 'profound'.

The detail of the day is here too, all typed up with pictures (courtesy of iPad and iPhone) of flip-charts, post-it notes, finger-paintings and slides. This will take a week to prepare as posts.

I wrote one of these for an end of Module Assignment.

I got carried away with a single thesis. Not only did I stick to the topic, but I illustrated it. It was the image of a thermal on which career development was built. Problem was I hadn't given myself time to qualify my thinking, indeed, despite a heap of work I barely mentioned it (and barely got any marks).

Here the essay has been bought online.

Sometimes it is easy to spot the pot. These days software does it for educational institutions.

To the right or to the left; if the essay shows any political bias it is going to score less well.

The essay that's going nowhere.

No idea, no essay plan, contemplates where it would like to go then reflects on where is would like to have been without saying very much at all.

Performing as Dracula in the 'Dracula Spectacula' at the People's Theatre, Newcastle December 1979

Who are you?

Is the problem deeper than 'making things work better' ? Are there issues regarding your 'identity' or 'life strategy' ? (Techniques Library, 2010)

Who am I?

or from a team perspective 'who are we?'

Write as many answers as you can.

When you run out ... keep going.

Put down anything that occurs to you, play word association, until 'something emergers'.

Working with a partner

Sit opposte a partner and give each other five to fifteen minutes each before the other takes up the 'call'.

The listener does no more: no comments, nods, smiles, frowns, just attentive listening.

(Sounds like a form a therapy to me, whether cogntive behavioural therapy or even psychiatry).

The listener can review but DON'T GIVE ADVICE.

Life Review

St Ignatius Loyola suggested looking back on your life from your deathbed.

Imagine your infancy

Imagine being five

Imagine being:

• 12
• 25
• 40
• 65

Imagine being very, very old

Imagine your death

Imagine being reborn

Return

REFERENCE

Adapted from Vaughan, F.E. (1979) Awakening Intuition, New York, Anchor, pp. 1987-9