In the aftermath of the altMBA, I mentioned that I needed to have a conversation about the profound impact the workshop had on my perspective. I had a chance to do that very thing with 11 amazing people on Saturday night (Feb 27). It was a chance to Leap. It was a chance to try my hand at being an Impresario. A chance to see if I could put some interesting altMBA concepts on the table, and then to connect the dots and explain why all of this matters to me. It was a chance to try something that might work OR might not work.
Below is an edited write up I shared with the altMBA class. There are some altMBA specifics that I don’t want to share here, so I’m editing it a touch, because honestly, I’m hoping that some of you will eventually dive in to apply for the program. I don’t want to spoil anything for you. 🙂 But it’s Leap day today. And the altMBA has me all abuzz with Leaping. So I wanted to share a bit about this quirky conversation here on my blog. This was a leap:
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Mission: I’m Possible – A Conversation About Change with Adam Lemmon
These emails I sent to my event attendees do a pretty good job of giving an overview of how I led this 2-hour event. I’ll provide a summary with some explanation below:
Email #1 – Invite
Email #2 – Details
Email #3 – Final reminder
Here’s the folder of photos from the event.
Summary:
My wife and I hosted an audience of 10 people in our home to have a conversation about what I learned and experienced in the altMBA. A 2-hour conversation based event. I wanted to share with them, but I also wanted to make it as interactive as possible – as is the altMBA way: let’s learn by doing. Overall, the event was successful. People did have a chance to hammer for a short moment on their own goals, we did a creative writing exercise together, and then we spent most of our time talking about some of the key topics, concepts and themes from the altMBA. We started on time. We shipped. And we wrapped it up on time too. [edited]
How I chose to configure our space:
- I chose to use a whiteboard as a place where I could write some big words and key concepts that I felt were worth getting in front of us. This gave us a quick reference point to guide our conversation. I debated with myself heavily on whether or not to include the whiteboard. I’m glad that I brought that along. I didn’t use it a ton, but when I did use it, it felt helpful.
- Large paper on the table in front of everyone – the purpose of this was to give people a place to doodle, and write down any thoughts that might come up while talking. Most people stuck strictly to jotting down notes in a notepad or their own paper, but some folks did doodle a little bit on the large paper.
- Handouts: I did bring a few handouts to share. (printed large Canvas from Business Model Generation, 7 part goals sheet for working on our goals, and this blog post from Seth).
- Structure for our topics:
- I got us started by providing a premise and some explanation (We talked about “what’s this for?” We talked about what the event was for, but we also opened up the altMBA topic: It’s important to understand “what’s it for?”)
- Next: Goals. We talked about goals, but then everyone took some time to consider their own goals. And then we had 2 people share.
- Next: Getting Creative exercise – details below
- Next: General Conversation
- Finally: We wrapped up by me talking through some big picture context — and then I ended by sharing some words from Seth. See end of this post.
Key Highlight: The creative writing exercise that we did together was definitely the highlight of the evening. [edited, plus BFD note: this exercise is based on a writing exercise that Cheryl used in her classroom – Thank you Cheryl ;-)] Here’s the quick description:
Getting Creative: “You can produce faster than you think.”
This was a timer led exercise where we all worked together to stitch and produce 12 new poems.
- Step 1: I put a lot of books onto the table in front of us, each person grabbed one book at a time, flipped to a random page, scanned for something that caught their attention, and then wrote down a sentence or two (verbatim) onto an index card. This first part of the exercise went on for 10 minutes. Each time you wrote down a sentence, you passed that book back to the middle, grabbed another book, grabbed a fresh index card, and then kept moving. Write down one sentence, phrase, words, or more from each book that you grab. Don’t over think it, just use the instructions as a guide to quickly grab a bunch of content onto a stack of index cards in front of you.
- Step 2: once the timer dings for the above step 1, it’s now time to swap your pile of index cards — we all passed our index cards to another person.
- Step 3: now read through their stack of selected quotes and put a line through a word that you would like to change. While this doesn’t change the fact that we are starting with words written by somebody else, it does provide one extra little chance for us to insert ourselves and our own creativity into the final outcome. 4 minutes were allotted to allow people to read through their new cards and word-smith ever so slightly.
- Step 4: Time to pair up. 5 minutes were given for you and your partner to take the stack of words you now have in your hands, combine them together in a new order to write 2 “poems”.
- Step 5: Outcome. IT WORKED! Each pair created 2 unique poems and it was a lot of fun. Together we produced 12 poems in exactly 27 minutes. AND, the added bonus was that this exercise gave everyone a short moment to flip through some of the amazing books that were part of the altMBA shared language. It was really groovy! And for me it was just phenomenal to see everyone swimming in all of these books even if it was only for a brief moment in time.
We did produce 12 poems, but poor organization on my part meant that I lost 3 of the poems. They got lost in this stack. Here’s the final outcome of the 9 poems that I was able to keep organized: Dropbox folder here.
Biggest regret:
How did I not properly think to grab a photo of all of us together!? Erghhh! I was briefly upset with myself when I realized that I hadn’t grabbed at least one photo of all of us together. Boo. The good news here was that I was so caught up in the evening, that I didn’t feel like I had much time to be behind the camera. Here are some photos from the evening. (This is the same folder referenced at top of this post.) The first ones in this folder show my dining table before everyone arrived. Most of the photos are from the “Getting Creative” exercise. And then final photos here were from the aftermath, including all my stuff stacked up before I went to bed late Saturday night.
10-speed Conversation
We moved quickly for all 2 hours. Once we wrapped up the core part of the event — I closed it down by sharing the story with everyone [edited]. Everyone’s warm smiles and celebrating energy felt really great. Final moment of the event: I shared some special words from Seth. It was a beautiful place to end the evening, [edited], and it was a beautiful reminder that the altMBA has forever changed who I will work to become next:
“Wherever you go, there you are.
And you can make a ruckus.
And connect.
And do work that matters.
You have more power than you know.”
-Seth
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Happy Leap Day everyone! I hope you had a wonderful Feb 29! 😉 Here’s a bonus pic of my 3 year-old pulling the wagon with her two big brothers. There’s just something about this picture that feels perfect for Leap Day!
