Money Game

The object of the money exercise (or game*) is to create an experiential field for people to observe themselves and gain consciousness, primarily in regard to their relationship to money but also in a wider sense. This goal is made explicit to the participants at the outset and, if necessary, repeated during the game.

The observation is in respect of:
– My behaviour in the game
– The recurring habits I discover while playing
– My thoughts and feelings during the game
– My energy levels in the course of each transaction

*Definition of Game: “Where what is not real is more important than what is” (Robert Hargrove, Masterful Coaching). In the context of this definition, one might say that where the money is restored to its original amount at the end this is a game, but where it is not restored – as in the Findhorn Money Game – this is not a game, but real.

Prototyping

A prototype is a practical and tested mini version of what later could become a pilot project that can be shared and eventually scaled.

Use the following principles to determine what you need to do to stay connected to your vision and translate your idea, concept, or sense of possibility into action.

PRINCIPLES
1. Crystallize vision and intention: create a place of silence for yourself every day. Clarify core questions that you want to explore with your prototype and get to know your own role early, so you can adjust.
2. Form a core team: five people can change the world. Find a small group of fully committed people and cultivate your shared commitment.
3. Iterate: “Fail fast to succeed sooner”, as David Kelley from IDEO says. Do something rough, rapid, and then iterate. Design a tight review structure that accelerates fast feedback.
4. Platforms and spaces: create “landing strips” for the future that is wanting to emerge.
5. Listen to a bigger purpose: listen to what is emerging from others, from the collective, and from yourself. Take a few minutes each day to review your quality of listening.
6. Integrate mind, heart, and hand.

Pro Action Café

The Pro Action Café is a space for creative and action oriented conversation where participants are invited to bring their call / project / ideas or whatever they feel called by and need help to manifest in the world.

Dare to Ask

The intention of this exercise is to a) open up and dare to ask any kind of questions concerning your project/enterprise and b) receive as many suggestions as possible in a short period of time. You will be surprised and overwhelmed about the collective wisdom of a group.

Disney Method

In the daily practice of Walt Disneys work with his creative team, it turned out that three different perspectives play a key role in creative processes: The dreamer, the realist and the critic. Disney had the ability to keep all three well balanced and recognize each aspect to be important and valuable for the quality of the creative product, in his case animation films.

If one aspect is missing, creativity cannot come to life:

“A dreamer without a realist cannot turn ideas into tangible expressions…A realist without a dreamer and a critic however is merely a robot. A critic without a dreamer and a realist is just a spoiler or a killer. We could even say that a dreamer and a realist while they might make good prototypes and could be a good research and development group does not enough critical thinking to really finalize the ideas into a perfection of expression. A realist and a critic without a dreamer maybe makes a good bureaucracy but not much else. And of course a dreamer and a critic is simply going to be a rollercoaster ride of manic depression. The point is that creativity itself is a synthesis of all three phases of processes.”  (Robert B. Dilts: Strategies of a Genius Vol. 1)

Disney provided different rooms that were dedicated to each of the three phases in order to give space to each of the aspects:

In subsequent turns, the developing team visited the different rooms and refined the ideas as long as they were satisified with the grade of perfection.

We found this method extremely valuable not only to give the possibility to totally immerse into one of those three qualities, but also to productively host the different preferences of team members: Idea givers will be happy there is a place for their fresh thoughts. Builders will have their time. Spoilers can relax, confident their pessimistic view will have their space. Instead of fighting against each other those aspects can build upon each other.

We played with this idea of Disney rooms and tried out different forms and variations. This is one possibility, feel free to adapt it to your specific target group and purpose.

Make sure to have 3 different rooms. The quick way is just to define the spaces with the purpose for each phase and hang up signs at the doors: dream room, realist room and a critic room.

The way to do it with love and care is to furnish and equip the rooms according to their purpose.

Just to give you some inspiration,  Walt disney had pictures and inspirational drawings all over the wall of the dream room. Everything was chaotic and colorful in this room. The realists rooms were the normal workspaces with daily prototyping equipment, and the critics room was called “sweatbox”.

Play with your own creativity to create an appropriate atmosphere and supportive surrounding, using equipment and decoration that fits to your team and purpose.

No matter how you decorate your rooms: Make sure you set a clear intention to each of the rooms. You can do that by a mere clear dedication or by spending some time in the room remembering moments in which you perceived yourself as a powerful dreamer, realist, critic and anchor the positive emotions related to those phases to the rooms. You can also do it by using those rooms as often as possible with that very purpose – if you have the possibility to permanently use the same rooms, try to stick to that purpose and add to this specific quality. Each lively dream enhances the dream quality of the dream room  etc.

Empathic Interview

“’Kindly let me help you or you will drown,’ said the monkey putting the fish safely up a tree.” –Alan Watts

In this short example you see that a good intention for helping is often not enough. Real solutions require clarity about what exactly is the core of the problem, how the problem is interwoven with other stakeholders and what the real needs or already lived best practice are. So a big part of innovating is about understanding the situation and asking the right questions to find good solutions that bring real benefit.
Empathic interviews help find out about that in an easy way, supporting connection and trust towards the people you design for and with. Empathic interviews are not meant to be used for statistics or scientific studies, therefore they don’t need to be precise or representative. They are led with curiosity and the wish to get to know your interviewee, to understand their lives and very subjective perspectives.

Empathic interviews are

Thanks to IDEO for this graph and helpful tips

Consent Decision Making

Consent decision making is a facilitated decision making method that’s used when groups want to make relatively quick decisions collaboratively.

It is faster than consensus, and more inclusive than other decision making methods (top-down decision making, advice decision making, mandated decision making, majority voting, etc).

Group members are invited to voice any concerns they may have about a proposal in a series of rounds, in which everyone is given the opportunity to speak. The group then works together to fine-tune the proposal to accommodate those concerns. A decision is passed by consent when it’s considered ‘good enough for now’ and ‘safe enough to try’, and when no one in the group has a valid objection. 

Although unresolved objections prevent decisions from being made, objections are not seen as blocks, but as gifts, which enable the group to foresee and evade potential problems. An objection is only valid when it can clearly be demonstrated that it may prevent the group in some way from achieving its shared aims. Objections cannot be based on premises like ‘I just don’t like it’, or ‘I wouldn’t do it that way’. This prevents decisions being blocked because of personal likes and dislikes.

Decisions passed by consent are subject to a review date, when they can be revisited and reassessed. This helps group members to trust the process, as they know that decisions made quickly can later be overturned if more information becomes available, or if the decision doesn’t work out in practice.

Graphics from the Hum

Design Sensing

Design sensing is a good alternative to Design Thinking or the U process of Theory U as it combines the advantages of both approaches. The Design Sensing process guides an innovation team from the perception of a problem or challenge to the tested and implemented idea. It is a very structured and straightforward process yet  at the same time gives space for intuition, sensing and refined perception. 

In order to call it Design Sensing, the following are important in the process:

The process can be run through several times, each cycle with more focused questions, based on the insights from the previous cycle. The pace of one cycle can vary from one day to several weeks, depending on the complexity of the challenge, time and resources of the innovation team. Generally we recommend to run through the cycles several times but at a fast pace.

Co-Creation Sprint

An online sprint is an intensive development period, for instance of a book or course materials, conducted at a distance with a diverse and dispersed group.