Improv AtWork and AtLife

Sound Bites on YouTube

By the time the last word left Senator Hillary Clinton's mouth, politicians and pundits were falling all over themselves trying to get in front of a camera to denounce her proposed health care plan that would provide some kind of coverage for every American. And denounce it with the kind of pithy sound bite that would land them on YouTube. (Remember when all pols wanted was to make the 11 o'clock news? Ah, those were the days, my friend.)

Relax, this isn't going to be a snooze fest where we take a serious look at her proposal...although we all should. After all, every other advanced country has some kind of universal health coverage. Here in the good ole U S of A, however, insurance is beyond the reach of thousands of working families. But I digress...which, if you read this blog, you know I do frequently.

This is a rant against how most people greet an idea...any idea...with a big FAT NO! Ask people to embrace a new idea or a different way of approaching a challenge and they come up with a dozen reasons why it won't work. How about coming up with a dozen reasons why it will and going on from there? I spent years as a TV writer and I can tell you from experience, it's a lot easier to rewrite than it is to get something down on a blank page.

So...why are we so quick to say "no"? Some answers next time.

Human Motivation

I've recently been doing time on a committee for a local women's group that's sponsoring a Women's Expo later this month. Part of my job is to get local businesses to pony up sponsorship money...which is how I came to find myself standing outside the office of the Human Resources manager for one of those nationwide big box home improvement stores. I'd made an appointment to ask for money in person - it's usually harder for people to turn you down when you're sitting right in front of them. Unfortunately, the HR manager wasn't there - had I been stood up? Apparently so, although her assistant (who found me standing outside the open office door) assured me it was nothing personal. Appointments were missed on a regular basis. The assistant offered to make another appointment for me and then suggested I call a half hour before showing up...just to make sure that the meeting was still on. I asked for a business card with the HR manager's direct dial number.

As the assistant rummaged through the HR manager's desk to find a card, I noticed a huge bowl of candy on her desk. A sweet freak! I must have said that out loud, 'cause the assistant shook her head and said, "Those are rewards." Rewards? According to the side kick, the HR manager uses candy to reward people for meeting their sales goals and to motivate them to sell even more. I had to sit. I had to catch my breath. I had to believe I hadn't heard the side kick correctly. Surely, the HR manager of a nationwide company didn't pitch candy bars to her employees like fish to a bunch of seals. But alas...she did. Because she believes that humans are motivated by things outside themselves (although it's beyond the pale how you come to conclude that someone would push themselves for a Mars bar).

I made another appointment with the HR manager. But now my focus had shifted. I didn't care so much about nailing down that sponsorship money. Now I wanted to introduce her to the work of David McClelland. I wanted her to know and understand the concept of intrinsic motive drive. I wanted to introduce her to the drive for affiliation, the drive for achievement and the drive for power - I wanted her to understand the three motive drives that live within each one of us and account for 95% of all human behavior. And I wanted her to understand that candy bars are just candy bars.

Conscious Incompentency

I spent all last week (okay, only 4 days but it seemed like more so I've given myself permission to refer to it as all last week) at a workshop on typology. After much thought, I buy Jung's typology model...although if you have some words of wisdom you'd like to share, by all means do so. I wasn't as sure about Jung's claim that we're born with a preferred type. But after watching 9 month old babies clearly express type during a research project, I can't reject that idea. And since these subjects have been followed for many years and still display the same type preference, it seems as if Jung was also right when he said we couldn't alter our preferred type, although we may get more adept at using all the functions. But I'm off track.

My biggest challenge all week was coming face to face with conscious incompetency - the realization, every day, that there's so much I don't know. I've also got to come to grips with the fact that I'm not gonna be able to "catch up" - ever. According to Bowker - the world's leading provider of bibliographic information - the US published 172,000 new titles in 2005. Yeah, you read that right - 172,000 new books hit the street...in one year! I try to browse through a couple of books a week, but even at that rate, I'm not making much of a dent. I know what you're thinking - how many of those 172,000 tomes are even worth looking at? Since I can only get to about a hundred a year, I don't know. But I have a niggling feeling I'm missing one or two that might be life changing. If you've read one, let me know. The thought of so much knowledge alluding me makes me uncomfortable. But my firm belief in lifelong learning keeps me moving forward...all the while knowing that I will forever live in a world of "conscious incompentency".

This Bank Knows How to Improvise

I'm always looking for articles or short pieces on how companies get outside the box and adapt to doing business in new ways. I found the following in this morning's paper....

"The 14 branches of the Tari Bunia Bank on the South Pacific island of Vanuatu act as traditional banks, but also accommodate local tribesmen by accepting tusks, woven mats, shells, giant rocks and other items for deposit into individual accounts at traditional bartered rates. Bank robberies are rare, thanks to the 'spirits and snakes' guarding the artifacts."

Wow. And I can't even get my local cafe to substitute a short stack for biscuits.

Itzhak Perlman & The Heart of Improvisation

A friend shared the following story with me. It says more about the ability to improvise than anything I've encountered.

On November 18, 1995, violinist Itzhak Perlman came on stage to give a concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City. If you've ever been to one of his concerts, you know that getting on stage is no small achievement for him. Stricken with polio as a child, Perlman has braces on both legs and walks with the aid of two crutches. To see him walk across the stage one step at a time, painfully and slowly, can break your heart.

On that evening, as on others, he walked painfully, yet majestically, to his chair. He sat down, put his crutches on the floor next to him, undid the clasps on his legs, tucked one foot back and extended the other foot forward. Then he bent down and picked up his violin, put it under his chin, nodded to the conductor and began to play. But just as he finished the first few bars, the unthinkable happened. One of the strings on his violin broke. You could hear it snap - it went off like gunfire across the room.

The audience sat in stunned silence and waited. They expected Perlman to have to repeat the painful ritual of traversing the stage yet again to retrieve a string or another violin. But he didn't. Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes and then signaled to the conductor to begin again. The orchestra began and Perlman picked up where he had left off and played with such passion and power and purity as no one in the audience had ever heard before.

It's not possible to play a symphonic work with just three strings. Even I know that. But that night, Itzhak Perlman refused to know that. People in the audience could see him modulating, changing, re-composing the piece in his head. At one point, it sounded like he was re-tuning the strings to get new sounds from them - sounds the strings had never made before. When the piece was finished, silence filled the room. And then...the audience rose to its feet and cheered.

Itzhak Perlman smiled, wiped the sweat from his brow, raised his bow to quiet the crowd and then said, quietly, "You know, sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left."

What a powerful line. Perhaps that's the definition of life - to make "music" with whatever we have available to us. In other words, to improvise.

A Man Named Corky and Other Things I Found While Surfing the Net

Sometimes I surf the net, just to see what turns up. I love that phrase, "surf the net" - I wish that term burned as many calories as it implies. I came across a site on community drum circles hosted by a guy named Corky - from his picture, he looks to be in his mid-fifties and I had to wonder, what kind of man of a certain age invites others to refer to him as "Corky"? I don't know - but I think I might like him.

I landed on another site, its sole purpose being to provide an avenue by which its writer could rant against drum circles. Seems like an odd thing to rant about to me...but maybe it's a backlash against some of the stuff I've seen written about drumming like "it gets us back to the time before technology separated us from our soul" or about "how it enhances the activity of cellular immune components" (both of which I think are true by the way but read a little pretentious when you see them in black and white). The bottom line is, this guy thinks group drumming is a waste of time. Point taken. But why spend so much time and energy and wit (yes, he has wit...an all too often rarity) dissing it? Behaviorists say that when we have an unreasonable negative reaction to something or someone, it may be because the something or the someone reminds us of an aspect of ourselves that we dislike or find distasteful. It's a way to put the distasteful part of us at a distance and attack it. As Shakespeare wrote, "Me thinks thou doth protest too much." I try to remember that and check my own strong reactions...do I need to look inward...or do I think somebody's a jerk simply because they are?

I Need A Coach

I just checked into my blog and am ashamed that I haven't written anything for a month. I promised myself after my last two entries that I'd sit down on a regular basis and put forth my thoughts. It's not like I don't have opinions or that I'm shy about sharing them. My problem is accountability...which is exactly what I provide in my role of executive coach. People come to me to help them achieve success - and it's vital that I hold them accountable. I hold their feet to the fire so to speak to do what they said they were going to do. Maybe that's the issue here. I didn't promise to blog on a regular basis to anyone but myself...and as any of us know who've made New Year's resolutions only to kiss them a sweet goodbye within 6 weeks knows, it's not enough to strike a bargain with ourselves. We have to shout our intentions to the world and hope (know) that someone among the great mass of humanity is going to call us to task when we don't do what we said we were going to do. So consider this my shout out - you'll be hearing from me at least three times a week on this blog. And I know I'll hear from someone if I don't follow through. Which reminds me of something else - I know people read this because they e-mail or phone me privately. They get to the blog through our website and get my e-mail and/or phone number and ring me up...which I love. But it's also okay to talk to me here. Enough on that subject.

I facilitated my first community drum circle 3 weeks ago. Fourteen women showed, many of whom I hadn't met before. They were a diverse group - from all walks of life. And they didn't know each other, either. An hour and a half later, we were bonded...not in a "we're best buds" kind of way but in that "it felt good to wail on something after a long week" kind of way. We'd gotten into a rhythm together - although not effortlessly at first - and just jammed. I ended the session with them drumming to a guided imagery I put together. No one left stressed, so mission accomplished. I've heard from them all wanting to know when we're going to do it again. Soon...I said.

The Power of Entrainment

I was having coffee with some friends this morning (actually, I was having a V-8. I don't drink coffee. I've never acquired a taste for it and frankly, the idea of drinking coffee gives me the distinct feeling of being imprisoned, which no doubt goes back to my childhood when I was forced to dine out with my parents. In and of itself, dining out wasn't a bad excursion...except that it included my father, who was - and I'm not exaggerating - the slowest eater that has ever sprung forth from a mother's loins. And he insisted on ending each meal with the perfect cup of coffee which he lingered over forever...this after I'd already spent an eternity at the table watching his practiced utensils keep the various foods on his plate from touching one another, a habit I've picked up myself, although it's a preferred way of eating and not mandatory). But I digress...again.

Anyway, while we were having our respective beverages, one of my friends asked me what I found so compelling about drumming. I could answer her in one word - which for me is unusual - entrainment.

The word "entrainment" is linked to Dutch scientist Christian Huygens, who used the term in the mid 17th century to describe the tendency of two oscillating bodies to vibrate in synchrony. In humans, our biological rhythms are often entrained by external cues - women know what I'm writing about. Remember in college when everyone in your sorority or on your dorm floor or in your apartment got their periods at the same time? That's entrainment...although I remember hearing it referred to as something much less melodic. In short, it's all about rhythm - biological and musical.

When a group of people drum together, they reach entrainment - they follow each other's rhythms. It's something you feel, you know when you're there. Drummers call it "the pocket". I call it heaven. Rhythm is a language that can unite diverse people. Rhythm can succeed where words fail. Drumming creates one powerful voice out of many. It's....magical. And that's why I love it.

Rhythm is the Mother Tongue

"Rhythm is the Mother Tongue." I wish I'd said that first, but I didn't. Gabrielle Roth did. Or maybe she didn't, but when I came across the quote it was attributed to her and since I don't have any info that would dispute that, I say you go, Gaby. I loved the quote but didn't have any idea who Gabrielle Roth is. So I googled her. She's the originator of something called the 5Rhythms Meditation Movement practice. I won't go into detail about what that is here, but check out her website. If nothing else grabs you about the meditation thing, the music is hypnotic. And rhythmical...and full of drums. Which brings us back to drumming which is where I left everyone.

I'm back from Utah having now been trained as a HealthRHYTHMS drum facilitator. People who know me would say that although I'm open to new experiences, I'm not the type to jump on the bus of just any old thing simply because it's new or cutting edge or might make the rest of my family question my sanity...again. And I'm more often than not circumspect in my reaction to something, perhaps fearing my capability of going off the deep end. I was expecting to find group empowerment drumming mildly amusing and somewhat helpful in giving me an outlet for my own musical cravings. I was not expecting it to be almost life changing...and it was. Life changing in the sense of igniting a passion for new direction in my work. Life changing in the sense of finding a key to a level playing field. Life changing in the sense of opening up a closed place in my heart. Okay, that sounds a little too touchy feely even for me but suffice it to say that I've got new energy around what I think is important in life - creating communities of practice (CoP). In CoP's, people come together to share their concern and/or passion for what they do - and they learn to do it better by sharing knowledge, resources, experience, tools and stories. Maybe we can create a human CoP, where we learn to live together in more productive ways simply as people. Just a thought.

The Irony of It All

Research into the healing effects of drumming are ongoing. Won't it be ironic if the wisdom of the indigenous world leads to relief from the stress of the 21st Century?