The Paradox of Planning an Improv group

I remember my first time attending an AIN session. It was the San Francisco conference in 2004 and Thiagi gave the keynote speech about paradoxes. I remember clearly having him say (somewhat tongue in cheek) how important it is to have a plan, if only so as then you can abandon it when the need arises.

And now we have the paradox of our own organization. How much planning or structure do we want or need? I’ve never been a great planner myself. However I count myself lucky that in certain areas I am fortunate enough to be around enough people who do plan to ensure that things get done. I attended the organizational meeting at the conference in November and thanks to Karen Dawson helping us through it we captured a lot of feeling about what the group is and what it wants from our organization. A question came out at that session about who leads the network and a phrase appeared that I love. It would seem that we are run by an ‘Open Inner Sanctum’. Inside the inner sanctum is where decisions are being made by some shadowy group who run things for us. All any of us need to do is step into there to join it.

So I took the step and decided to join the leadership. It was painless, at least until I got a phone call from Karen who asked me if I would like to help with some of the logistics for the Leadership Offsite that was identified at the meeting. With a view to maybe having Chicago host the 2008 conference it was decided to try and have the offsite here, and as one of the locals I called a few hotels, and we got a good deal. Unfortunately as you may have heard there was insufficient interest from others for the meeting so we have decided (we in this case being the whole organization) that this isn’t the way we want to organize and plan for the future. But it leaves me a little troubled as I think I want more than just a great conference every year. So with both feet firmly planted in the Open Inner Sanctum I have decided to ask a few questions of our group and try and see what the rest of the group feels we need to have and more importantly how we can get it.

To try and find out where you want us to give our energies I have created a survey using some free survey software (Zoomerang) and would invite you all to take a look at it and let us know your thoughts on what came out of that meeting. I see this as the first step to deciding where to go next. The survey could only take a few minutes but it does invite you to add comments a lot and it even gives you the chance to volunteer to help implement some of the ideas that were identified. As the software is free the survey can only remain open for 10 days after it’s made available (and it that time I have to get the answers off it). So please take some time over the next few days to complete it and tell us your thoughts.

The survey will close on Thursday February 15th.

So I invite you to dip your toe into the Open Inner Sanctum. You never know you might like it in there.

Click HERE for the Survey

Alan

Posted by Alan Montague on February 6, 2007 08:44 AM in Events
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