Back in the USSR… Ribbon and Tin for Mr Putin?

4th October Moscow

Another great airline announcement…

It must be my hearing, because I swear the steward on my Aeroflot flight back from Moscow just announced ..

ladies and gentlemen… if you fill in the customer survey form you get a chance to win 150,000 Aeroflot meals…

 

“How to be an Intelligence Officer” This is the headline in the Moscow Times this morning… you too can be like Mr Putin…Back the USSR???

Reading about Ukraine, Economic Sanctions and political posturing you’d think that was the way it is going…

Moscow is cold…

I am on a quick visit to discuss our production of Bloominauschwtiz with Meyerhold Theatre (hopefully will happen next year) and to deliver a corporate workshop.

The workshop is a launch programme for Stockholm School of Economics… 40 students about to enter SSE Corporate University…

A shame the workshop is in a hotel room – not very glamorous – feels like a slightly dodgy wedding is about to take place.

We – me and Ilya – turn the room upside-down after lunch…

Our brief is to launch the programme with a bang and give a bit of a push on communication and team.

My colleague is a drummer – Ilya – great guy – talented and positive – a great find. He is warm and friendly and funny – I guess (I couldn’t understand a word he was saying but every 30 seconds there was a burst of laughter so I guess he must be funny!).

His approach is about learning music – particularly drumming by getting the basics in place then building up improv skills alongside competency. Good teambuilding, fun and not too long, this was one of the best music sessions I have seen…

http://ritmosfera.ru/en/2011-09-21-07-13-10.html

My work starts around this Darwin premise:

In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed…

We explore this idea…

And supported by Churchill’s quote:

I like the idea of learning… but I hate being taught!

I think some things got a bit lost in translation as some of the group think that Darwin, Churchill and Shakespeare were my examples of great leaders…

Maybe but, I just chose them because … well, they said some interesting things!

This confusion was confirmed when one of the participants harangued me during the coffee break as to why I hadn’t chosen Nelson or Wellington as examples – they are apparently much better leaders than Churchill?!

For ten minutes I was given a lecture on the strategies of these two men. I try to explain again that actually I just chose what I thought was an interesting quote from Churchill about learning, but my friend was having none of it.. first he tells me about Trafalgar then onto Waterloo…

I did however manage to gain some kudos as I closed the coffee break lecture by citing Napoleon on winning soldier’s minds by “offering them ribbon and tin..”

PB: laughter…

Sergey: (silence)

PB = “ Ribbon and tin…”

Sergey: (silence)

PB: “you know – for medals – for heroes.. Ribbon and tin!”

Sergey: “ah you mean Ribbon and Bronze…. Yes very good.. yes very funny”

 

Ok break over … and back to exercises

One exercise around a number counting sequence which is meant to demonstrate team instincts totally fails.

I kept trying and …failing. This was definitely lost in translation ..

ah well I came out with the classic trainer answer to why it had failed…

PB “That is the point! Is meant to fail!!”

Actually the game was interesting and made me think more and more around strategy being combined with instinct to create great team results. You get to know each other establish rules then engage..

The rest of the session runs itself, Ilya does drumming, questions are good, team is built.

Bar calls.

Moscow cold…

I find a drink and hear .. “and… now as for Napoleon…”

Oh God.. maybe a workshop on great military leaders next???

I wonder would Putin make it onto this list..?

Ribbon for Mr Putin?

BLOG: The Evolution of Change: Darwin and Juggling Balls

Kosice, Slovakia

You know you have started to be part of the local scene when you are sitting in the window of a pizza parlour and in the space of 20 minutes three people knock on the window and say “hey Paul – what’s going on? You live here now!?!”

My final major intervention in Kosice this week has been working with an organisation that is going through the challenge of being purchased by an international company. The company in Kosice was RWE Slovakia and is now FPT.

http://fpt-software.com/News/FPT-win-new-customer-big-deal-Europe-RWE.html

This was a workshop on Change which I enjoyed lot.

17 participants and I had a great fun exploring change and how to manage it. I focused on interactive exercises including a lot of improvisation and storytelling

The improvisation requires this notion of accept the situation and build on it. The Storytelling allows exploration of how we tell and shape our own stories.

So lots of interactive exercises and lots of capturing of ideas around positive mind-set and challenging thinking.

However I did one thing I haven’t done before which was exploit my basic knowledge of Charles Darwin.

I was thinking about the workshop the day before in the sauna in the hotel and Darwin popped into my mind (I know, weird) but he did.

I guess it wasn’t such a surprise if you are thinking about Change that you might think about Darwin…

We (Menagerie) created a play about Charles Darwin a few years ago which toured the UK and USA. Re: Design by Craig Baxter was about the correspondence between Darwin and an American Professor Asa Gray. It was a fascinating play to work on as the correspondence was sparkling (Gray was a Christian but supported Darwin’s Theories) but mostly because we got to learn so much about Darwin.

http://www.menagerie.uk.com/productions/archived/redesign/

VIDEO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-qViHvIUlU

 

So I opened the workshop with a obvious quote about Darwin’s’ theories which has relevance to a workshop on change:

In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed…

But then I took my workshop crew on a little Journey…

https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/daysout/properties/home-of-charles-darwin-down-house/garden/sandwalk/

I had put tape on the floor of the workshop to replicate the Sandwalk that Darwin would walk along in his home at Down, Kent. From 1842 until his death in 1882 he would walk this Sandwalk every day that he could, often twice a day. This walk of roughly a mile had many functions and proved valuable to him as he ruminated and also valuable for our workshop … to ponder as we walked the green coloured tape-on-floor Sandwalk!

The idea that you do the same thing everyday is interesting because repetition creates intimacy.

Darwin could see the small changes every day – walking in one direction then in another. He could see and feel the real world and observe its delicate transformations. Of course sometimes an event such as a storm would dramatically change the landscape and it would appear very differently in different conditions from snow to sunshine. But I love this idea that Darwin gave himself the space to move away from correspondence, from writing up ideas or experiments and even from family time, to walk this walk. To be out in the real world and to observe…

 

I like this story and will develop more… however the good people of the workshop room at Kulturpark may not be so happy when they go into the space on Monday. As I removed Darwin’s taped Sandwalk a lot of tape remained stuck to the floor – so good people of Kulturpark you have a bit of Darwin to contend with – sorry!

All of our work on our play about Darwin was developed in association with the Darwin Correspondence Project in Cambridge which is the biggest and most important archive of Darwin’s Correspondence. It has lots of great stuff and links to our production too…

http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/

Our workshop on Change included a bit of Shakespeare, a bit of Churchill and of course a bit that other great Englishman…????

My contribution mainly focused on telling jokes doing the odd acting exercises and throwing and the good old juggling balls – hey what change management workshop would be complete without them!??!!

Good luck to FPT…  may the force of Darwin be with you…keep juggling.