On the Paris run I transferred the basic choreography to Emmanuel Gaillot and Raphaël Pierquin so they could make it their own. We were assisted by a group of local agilista from mostly Octo and Orange. And it was amazing. Their solution was to all focus at the Treasure Island, and get the cap’n from his cabin by using the cabin boy’s access. Filipe played an amazing role of drunk cap’n. Hilarious. When getting the loot, they threw the coins in the air, and declared the problem solved. Apparently their treasure is to make as many crew members as possible happy. The debriefing and tie-in went smooth. Several insights about coping with stress and intent appeared. After that we all had dinner. Good moods all around. Thank you all!

Underway to Bordeaux we transferred the game frame, the wheel we use and that allows for a quick draw of other sculpt metaphors. And Emmanuel and Raphaël facilitated the session well. I particularly loved how Emmanuel played the stances with the participants in a circle, and how Raphaël’s calm affected the debriefing. I could follow more of it than I expected, and in some one-on-one’s afterwards less.

The participants gained the loot, and then threw the cap’n overboard. I later told Colin that the new cap’n had set himself up for more mutiny fear and paranoia than the previous cap’n had. “You are probably right”, he replied with a “I’ve just been hit” smile. In the paid for versions we rerun solutions to check for unintended side-effects. Sadly, in a session on an event with the preset worst case typical plot scenario, we can’t. It’s a teaser in a limited time frame.

A short video with an improv 5 mins after the debriefing was made. Hope to publish it soon.

Marketing Loot

And we received a perfection game! Thank you Luc Mazardo. An 8 out of 10, plus some really useful “perfections”. Maybe we’ll receive some more later. I hope so. I’m greedy for loot! Teach us how to make these sculpting practices meet your needs better please?

We definitely need wapons

In the context of code development, the weapons and ammunition are of course things like version control. In a business setting it is political patterns. Knowing the patterns and some counter tactics that do not turn us in the petty pirates we fight may be extremely useful.

Inspiration is not born in a vacuum; excellent ideas are seeded by other excellent ideas and fertilized by still more excellent ideas.

Controlled folly was originally re-designed from the balancing act, to support consultants coaching executive teams and managers. The demand was taken from the AIM UAW alliance executive coaching webpage, and from exchanges with Peter Schoonens, a local consultant.

Inspiration for the Ship of Fools sculpt idea came when listening to Reinhard Mey – Das Narrenschiff (live) — the lyrics in German and English are included below as pdf’s. Thank you Reinhard.

The concepts used are Satir organisational sculpting (pdf) concepts, and a run up for being able to take in such critical feedback as a sculpt delivers, also uses Satir concepts: coping stances (pdf), ingredients of an interaction (pdf), and temperature reading (pdf).