You recently discovered the health benefits of singing and dancing and you are wondering why people are still walking in the street rather than taking a moon walk to work. Talking about it has inspired one or two of your friends to shake their limbs more often and now you decide it is time to inspire a larger audience. You call your friends and you conspire on an easy and simple to share choreography that you can teach to 10 more friends. You agree on a time and at which you can show up in a public space blast your favourite song, kick off your dancing, singing, limb shaking choreography together and inspire as many people around you to sing and dance along. Your video savvy friends capture the action that later in the day goes viral online. You have successfully reached your objective of bringing the health benefits of singing and dancing to a larger crowd, had fun in the process, practiced radical collaboration skills with your friends and a bunch of strangers who are now friends in dancing singing spirit. In order to replicate in the future, here the small flashmob recepy:

1. Pick something you want to make visible (benefit of hugging, recycling garbage, planting flowers in the city)

3. Decide on a choreography, course of action.

4. Agree on a time and public place in which you can meet and kick off your routine.

5. Meet and at the agreed time give your all – blast the music, plant trees and flowers, yarn bomb a statue – you name it.

7. Celebrate your awesomeness and debrief with your friends.

via GIPHY

Sometimes being a changemaker feels like being Don Quijotte. The windmill is so big and you are sitting on a trusted but admittedly somewhat malnourished horse. No matter how hard you try to stop the global temperature from increasing the news still report on the opposite. In order to stay out of overwhelm and start creating small wins while going for your big goals try applying the Kaizen principle. Kaizen in Japanese means “change for better”. The principle was first applied and developed in the automotive industry engaging entire companies from leadership to assembly line staff in a process that would eliminate waste and improve the product one tiny step at a time. The principle is now widely used for anything from product improvement to life changes. In order to make the principle work in your favor here a couple steps you can take to successfully apply it to your project. Every time you look at your project or product you will see tiny improvements or be able to adjust your process. To have your small changes add up, collecting feedback in the process really helps. Best is a combination of feedback that you can give yourself, feedback from a trusted group of colleagues and friends and feedback from your customers or constituents. Including metrics in your feedback circle will enable you to see whether you move towards or away from the outcome you want to achieve.

1. Define a clear goal or outcome – what do you want to achieve with your workshop or how is your product supposed to look like and work.

2. Set up a production process and identify different parts or areas in which you can see what works and what doesn’ttrack.

3. For each of those areas create a feedback loop and collect metrics – how well is it working on a scale from 1-10 and needs to be improved.

4. Pick one or two things you can improve.

5. Start running your process and integrate the new feedback after each round.

While the windmill may still be in place you will probably find yourself on a better nourished horse and start tackling the wings of the windmill efficiently.

via GIPHY

Changemaker Toolbox: Flashmob

Changemaker Toolbox: Using the Kaizen principle to make improvements with a big impact