When the 'doing by not doing' let's nothing undone
6 AM on a Saturday morning and my alarm clock starts to buzz. All of my body was begging for more sleep but my mind's commanding voice was adamant - let's get up fast or we miss the 7:06 AM Alfa service to Oporto, a Culture Cake will be served today and I have a book copy promised to the conference host that is getting dust on the cover.
24 hours after (almost half sleeping) and I am now relaxed at home and grateful to have witnessed one of the most genuine and authentic themed conferences this year.
#1 Venue matters, period
No matter what your CFOs or association's treasurer may tell you otherwise, the choice of venue is a very important landmark if you want to make your conference memorable and the decision to choose it should consider other criteria besides cost. In this case, Anje headquarters was an ideal venue that has created the right kind of 'temple' for this gathering. Not just the location, but the whole premises, the building architecture, the conference spaces where a perfect match for the character names Bubbles, Blossom, Butter cup and Bliss as you can check in the conference program
here.
During the outdoor activities and lunch we could enjoy a magnificent view and this has certainly made an impact on this group's creativity during the battle of ideas, a number of interesting insights were shared and the wisdom of the crowd that has emerged.
#2 Speakers mix and participation
It's a rule of thumb in the most innovative conferences today to abandon the traditional 'sage in the stage model' and to involve the audience in the production of the conference major output - the sharing of knowledge. This can be done by using a number of techniques such as asking participants to find a stranger with whom they have never met in the audience and talk for 5 minutes about the presentation. The book -
Fearless Facilitation
- offers a number of techniques that anyone wishing to host interactive conferences can find useful and worth reading.
In Culture Cake, all the presentations were followed by lively discussions in pairs and the difficult part was to find someone with whom you have not yet have shared your thoughts before.
#3 Battle of ideas, workshops and fishbowl
The innovative format of Culture Cake included plenty of opportunities for participation and totally lived up to its claim of being an 'interactive conference'.
In the battle of ideas I deliberately picked a theme against the current otherwise we would never had a battle on this subject. Besides me, only
Monika Wojtasinska-Felicio a colleague facilitator, felt inspired to discuss how "management overpower" could be interpreted in a neutral sense. Of course, if the manager knows how to win the trust of her team and lead by being authentic and speaking from the heart, then she will be no longer 'overpowered' and will be seen to be part of the team. This new leadership power becomes facilitative and no longer hierarchical (see below).
With a less than perfect night sleep and after an intense friday just before, my intention for this conference was to relax and become diluted in the crowd, intervening the least as possible. Yet, Culture Cake was such an inviting conference for participation that I could not help and took my seat in one of the empty chairs at the stage. It felt awkward because, as a facilitator, I was just dying to ask the audience 'what's the cherry on top of the culture cake?' and start a lively debate that could enrich our collective wisdom on the subject of leadership and organizational culture. Yet, the subject of 'performance appraisal' was gaining a lot of traction and I thought about to contribute from my experience as a former start-up founder. I do recall when our company become +50 with a 17M EUR turnover we tried to implement it but the effect of creating such an 'old school' management systems in the company has produced a lot of unnecessary noise.
By then, I was not aware of cases such as the
Morning Star that established a compensation model that fairly compensates employees for their performance and provides a broad incentive to hold others accountable, while being consistent with self-management. The conference hosts -
Lemon Works
- specializes in this field and its founder
Luis Alberto Simoes
(first from left in the picture at the top) was actually at Morning Star, so they are the right go to resource if you are interested to become a self-organized company, where work is meaningful for everyone.
#4 The golden nugget of the unexpected
When you open the Pandora Box of participation in a conference you are almost certainly be facing surprises. Everybody knows that to become a great horse rider one must fell at least 7 times and to become a good facilitator you must fail as often. In the end, you will learn to welcome surprises with tenderness and find the opportunities to expand the learning and enrich the experience of your conference.
This also happened in Culture Cake, and I am sure Luis felt from the horse at the conclusion of the fish bowl conversations, when everybody was expecting to watch a video about the conference greatest moments and the technician in the control room said 'we need 10 minutes'. I sensed disturbance in the room. What shall we do to 'kill 10 minutes' with 100 people in the auditorium? Anyone can tell a good joke? The crowd was a bit restless. Of course, the next and final act was 'Cake time' served outside with refreshments. Luis feared to dismissed an audience that would never be back just to watch the video.
I was controlling myself not to jump in and propose a last resort activity such as the 'speedy networking' that everybody liked in the conclusions at
FNAS. But then, I remembered my intention for the day was to be diluted in the crowd, so I did.
I guess that the 'doing by not doing' finally emerged. The crowd asked
Artur Carvalho
a musician, an invited speaker, and workshop host to take the stage and his refusal has started one of the most precious and in depth moments of conversation. I had the chance to attend Artur's fabulous workshop and this guy is for real. He works with deprived communities and handicapped people, so he laugh at this thriving startup community complaining about the workspace design when there are still so many unemployed that would be happy just by having the chance to work. The community reacted and many startups in the room, if not all, have a minded culture about doing the social good. Lots of examples were shared. It was good to see this totally unexpected conversation to emerge.
Finally our host said, 'I know that it will be difficult to have everybody back after Cake time, but I invite you to return here after enjoying the cake, so we can have the chance to see this video that has been taking a lot of time and effort to be edited before the end of the conference for our viewing.' Everybody returned and we watch a great short movie about this unforgettable day. Nothing was left undone.
#5 Last but not least
According to Lao Tzu, “all streams flow to the sea because it is lower than they are. humility gives it its power. if you want to govern the people, you must place yourself below them. if you want to lead the people, you must learn how to follow them.”
This is the reason I liked so much attending
Culture Cake. It was designed from a humble position. The invitation for participation was genuine and because of this the collectiveness of being at this conference was authentic and I am sure everybody felt engaged and connected.
6:00 PM in the afternoon and I am saying goodbye to an old friend Eduardo Espinheira (cutting the cake) from
Human Management, to a recent friend José Antonio Silva from
Devscope, and to all the new friends at the conference. I got inside my Uber ride to the airport with this pleasant feeling of being exhausted but also recharged. My driver was silent. Perhaps she sensed I was not that much in a talkative mood after a busy conference. But when arriving at the airport she could not help but ask - 'sorry, were you in a conference about cakes?' I then realised I was still wearing my conference badge with the Cake logo and I kindly replied 'Yes I was, we had 4 different types of flavours'. I was not lying.
About the author
Paul Nunesdea is the English pen name of Paulo Nunes de Abreu, Facilitator, Master of Ceremonies, Author, and Publisher of the book series - Architecting Collaboration, his LinkedIn profile can be reached here, or in Spanish here, or Portuguese here.
Paul is an IAF Certified Facilitator™ who designs and hosts events for clients ranging from large companies to municipalities and regional governments.
His academic background as a PhD researcher combined with +15 years of experience as a former CEO and entrepreneur has sharpened a client-serving mentality eager to co-create win-win solutions. As an NGO founder, he co-founded Digital Health Portugal and hosts the Health Regions Summit, the Health Data Forum among other initiatives.
As both a GroupMap™ and Howspace™ certified facilitator he co-founded the Digital Collaboration Academy with renowned facilitator Peter Seah united by the vision of creating and sustaining a new emerging field -
Digital Facilitation - augmented by the core competencies of the IAF - International Association of Facilitators.
