I’m taking advantage of my visit to Epidaurus to discuss skits. This is the third part of this small triptych on the embodiment of our organizational issues, after Systemic constellations and Protocol words. In my practice of Open Agile Adoption, a kind of open forum focused on transformation, I quickly established (with the amused eye of Daniel Mezick, the father of the practice) feedback sessions after each session. Two problems appeared. First, the topics of the sessions weren’t necessarily well oriented. People often announced answers as a brainstorming topic, whereas an open question is often much more advisable. Second problem, even more important: the brainstorming results didn’t lend themselves easily to triggering actions, to proposals for actionable options. Too many invocations, imprecations, observations without formulation of concrete objectives. The feedback is important, it’s also what we quickly consolidate and quickly provide to participants to make the day’s results tangible.
I invite you to find the slides on Open Agile Adoption from NCrafts 2016 at the bottom of this page. Or to read this article: Stories of Open Agile Adoption.
Feedback format?
In this search for a feedback format, I first asked people to come with something SMART (you know, measurable, achievable, etc.), in any case something concrete, something we can try, implement in the coming cycle. Despite some successes, I realized that this wasn’t sufficient. Either it didn’t interest people enough (the SMART format), they didn’t take ownership of it, or it didn’t necessarily make an impression.
I had to look for something that was more engaging and more memorable. Naturally the idea of telling a story immediately came to mind. So I took up a format proposed by Oana during one of our joint sessions to formalize a kind of response template in story format. Double benefit: it projected people into something very concrete, and it imprinted itself much better in people’s minds. I talked about this output format last summer in this article: The meme space, and the story template was there: Story template. None of the fields in this template was truly mandatory and it included the previous SMART.
Then recently, since we’re going to tell a story anyway, I thought it would be better to act out the story. I watched a lot of Anglo-Saxon one-man show authors like Tig Notaro (whom I highly recommend) or Dylan Moran. I wanted to have fun playing, adapting, one of their staging approaches for my own presentations.
One (wo)man show
Imagine reproducing a scene from Tig Notaro during an agile presentation:
“Agile proposes strong principles! continuous improvement, feedback, focus…” At this moment my mobile phone rings, I take it, indicate to the spectators, participants that I must answer, with a big smile on my face. I turn to the spectators, participants with this big smile: “What was I saying?”; “Oh yes!
Continuous improvement, feedback, FOCUS…” The phone rings again (I hope you’ve grasped that it’s a joke about “focus”). Same thing, I pick up the phone, I laugh again looking at the screen (I try to hide from people’s gazes by turning around), then I say to the audience: “sorry I have to answer, it’s important,” I call and I whisper quite audibly “yes yes it made me laugh, even though I’m allergic to cats! how’s your day going?” The person answers me but we don’t hear anything. Then I add “Me?” I turn discreetly toward the audience at whom I glance, “really not great, it’s boring.”
In short, I wanted to have fun acting. The desire to integrate theater into my activity was growing. Here’s the original scene, thanks Tig Notaro: Tig Notaro’s Lessons In Remaining Present.
Skits
Recently my proposal was therefore: since we’re going to tell a story to give feedback on a brainstorming, we might as well act it out. In my eyes it worked well. In terms of concrete feedback format with SMART things, I lose a bit for now. But on the other hand it enriches the reflection that much more because what I’m looking for is absolutely not improvisation, it’s even the opposite: what are we acting out? What are we showing and why? Important: I don’t force anyone to act, it can bother some people, but on the other hand, it’s the preparation reflection that interests me just as much as the feedback sequence itself, and there everyone participates. I’m not at all uncomfortable proposing that people read during their skits. It’s not the memorization effort, or the improvisation talent that interests me, it’s the perspective and the embodiment.
This idea also came because I wanted to try to untangle a relational problem about trust between a team and its manager and I thought that acting out skits on this theme in a flagrant way, like catching someone red-handed, in front of everyone would be enough to move the subject forward. As usual, I don’t untangle anything, I don’t fix anything, I’m just the medium that can help highlight the question, its context, the leads, etc. (to learn more read: Protocol words, the reason for Saynète and not Scénette is also in this article).
This imagined skit was particularly relevant, so I proposed extending the “skits” to the entire Open Agile Adoption day at this company. It seemed conclusive to me.
I reproduced this idea the following week at another client, fleshing out the skits framework a bit: launching into 20 to 30 minutes of brainstorming, and asking for three feedback skits of one to two minutes. I propose two types of approach: “classic” with three skits: the problem, the solution, the proposal, and a “thematic” approach with three skits: the “drama,” “the victory,” “the laughter.” It was also satisfying.
The following week I used it in the context of a retrospective, we focused on two or three subjects to explore, each small group had to come back with this set of small skits.
It requires rigor and a fairly strict framework, otherwise we can quickly sink only into outrageous comedy. But even there it puts the finger on something and brings it to life.
Why do I like it?
Beyond a story, we embody, we live. These are other sensations, other perceptions that come into play. The messages are obvious, embodied, a catharsis occurs. We purge things. It’s as much a revelation for the actors as for the spectators (not far from “Walk in my shoes” type experiments). We always give too much importance to the left, analytical part of the brain, never enough to the right, intuition, perception part of it.
The prospect of performing a skit organizes the brainstorming differently (be careful that the preparation doesn’t cannibalize the reflection, I must work on this point). The reflection related to the preparation is astonishing. Ideas and observations pour out. We’re anchored in reality.
Storytelling helps memorize, helps project oneself.
As with Systemic constellations, there’s a balance between intuition, perception, physical, and conceptualization, intellectualization, thought. In the body, in the staging, plenty of implicit knowledge is expressed that wouldn’t have seen the light of day otherwise. The body also memorizes what it experiences.
Next step?
Continue to work on the format and framework to improve it. Continue to propagate it to different contexts: Open Agile Adoption, Open Space, Retrospectives, Systemic constellations, etc.
Integrate this notion of skits into my training. Take up the idea that certain people already know pieces of the subject and act them out with others. A training with different acts and different scenes embodied by the participants?
Take up the inspiration from theater and one man show for my sessions. See you in October and November for that, it’s already in the pipeline.
At your next retro, try skits for brainstorming feedback?