ARE:A Renewal Enterprise

Sign of the Times

We spotted this sign in a hotel bathroom recently. Talk about working playfully. We bet it's given a chuckle to a lot of weary travelers, too.

 

What have you done recently to bring a smile to the faces of the people in your little corner of the universe? What has made you laugh lately? We know these are tough times for a lot of folks out there. Maybe for you. To be sure, this recession has given us a headache or two. 

But we think that's just all the more reason to create opportunities to play and to laugh. Who can you do that with today?

Love One Another

These are very tough times for a lot of the organizations we care about. Thanks to our friend Colleen for reminding us that the most powerful force in the universe is love. And that love grows when people laugh and play together. She sent us a link to this great video of The Pink Glove Dance. The staff at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center clearly had a lot of fun putting it together. Their goal was to generate breast cancer awareness throughout their system. We're thinking it was good for them, too. And it's just the thing some of us need to be reminded that even when facing the most difficult issues of all, when you come together in love good things happen.

Love one another today.

 

Into The Unknown!

We heard from a lot of readers off-line over the past few days, in response to a previous post, thanking us for a) acknowledging that making the shift to a new, renewable approach to life and work can be lonely and b) giving them some ideas to get started. But we also got an email from someone encouraging us. 

Draw It Today

Remember when you were in grade school and you loved to draw what you could not see? Some days it was a picture of outer space; on others maybe it was what you imagined your family would look like when you were an adult, with your own home and kids. Then there were the pictures assigned by a grade school teacher, of what you wanted to be when you grew up. Pictures, lots of them!, often filling up the front of the kitchen fridge. 

When is the last time you drew a picture of something you could not yet see? 

This is for all the lonely people

One of the things we're finding as we've been out on the road this fall is that a lot of people get the difference between a consumable and a renewable way of living and working together – in other words, instead of acting like dollars and cents are the bottom line, they want to spend their lives doing what matters – but they're not sure how to get started. 

Spiders, Bats, and Monsters O My!

What were you scared of when you were a little kid? Spiders? Bats? Ghosts? Monsters under your bed? Yes. Yes. And yes. And that's exactly why we dressed up in scary costumes on Halloween and went running out into the neighborhood with all the other little monsters out there and dared to laugh in the face of the things we were most afraid of. That's why we made a game of it. Somehow, playing made us less afraid. 

It still does. 

Fun Changes People

Why is it so important for you to learn how to work playfully? 

Here's an excerpt from ARE's newest book The Future Starts Now: The Renewable Organization^TM for Faith-Based Groups:

Recent "...scientific discoveries are impacting the way people think about everything. the universe isn't a machine and neither is the organization you care about. It is organic and, as such, subject to change and chaos, possessing the capacity to adapt and to grow. You cannot successfully control it. But you can co-create within it. 

You can stay aware of what is happening and respond in ways that are smart and brave. 

You can work together, experimenting with new ways of doing things. You can commit yourself to learning from each other, from your environment, from your mistakes. And only people who know how to play can do these things. 

In a renewable organization, work and play go hand in hand." 

Learning the Hard Way (is still learning)

  Phew! After six months of thinking, writing, creating, producing, and preparing for our 2009 "Treasure in Clay Jars" tour, we can say that what we feel on the day after our kickoff is mostly relieved! The fact that it happened at all in this kind of time frame is nothing short of a miracle. According to the 50 or so folks who participated in that first workshop (held yesterday in Chicago), it didn't just "happen"; it was, in fact, pretty good. But it wasn't good enough, as far as we're concerned. We spent several hours pouring over the evaluations last night and debriefing the event. We heard some good things and some hard things from our guests and from each other; we're going to share both with you.

What kind of toy are you?

After Daniel Pink finished his last book he confessed that the experience taught him a lot about himself, including what kind of animal he is: tortoise, not hare – morning lark, not night owl.

As the ARE team finishes up an unbelievably intense period of collaborative thinking, writing, and producing – we've just spent six months of absolute craziness writing the first 7 books in the brand new Renewable Organization(TM) for Faith-Based Groups series – we have to agree. This kind of creative marathon kicks your butt! And it either teaches you some stuff – or it kills you. We're happy to announce that we are alive and well and ready to kick off our 2009 "Treasure in Clay Jars" tour this week! But we have learned some stuff.

So, what have we learned? A lot. We learned that google.docs and other online tools have made collaboration easier than ever (all 7 books were written this way). We've learned enough about the publishing business to start our own publishing house. We learned that the only kind of advertising that matters much anymore is personal and relational. We've learned that we all need a lot less sleep than we thought we did! And, ala Dan Pink, we've learned what kind of...toy... this team is:

Seriously – You Should Laugh More

 We teach people that working playfully is a good idea. It makes work more enjoyable, it raises the sense of safety that provides for space to be creative, and it helps build trust. But many of us still assume that laughter and fun are for after work and that a workplace filled with laughter necessarily means that people must be goofing off and not getting their work done. But the truth is, some workplaces filled with laughter have the healthiest workers and the most productive people!