- Bill Frisell

(From Bill Frisell Solos DVD)

Yeats labeled our reverence of complexity, a ‘fascination of what’s difficult’. He goes on to say what that fascination did to him: “has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent  spontaneous joy and natural content out of my heart.”

That’s what happens when seek out ‘advanced’ ways of doing our work, of playing music. The spontaneous joy leaves. Sometimes good things come from that. Rumi calls this “rewarding bitterness with care”.

But if you’re looking for more play, then the level of trusting what your unique strengths and passions are – what you bring to ‘it’ – whatever ‘it’ is for you. And to trust that whatever your imagination can come up with. That trumps any experts’ wisdom or standard way of doing things. I write these words both to remind myself – in music and work – and to remind you of what we innately already know to be true.

You can see Bill perform here.

Quixote Consulting helps teams become artists of their work with music team building activities such as Play the Blues harmonica team building, Give the Kids Music, Music of Teams, Build a Team Song, Bang On My Drum All Day, Networking Music Dinner and more.

“After all the intellectual stuff gets out of the way, then you just play. I mean, that’s the state I like to be – or hope to be in – when I’m really playing. I’m not thinking about any technical… it’s just coming out and there’s not… no thought so much really but sometimes it takes a while, learning a new song, it takes a while for it to sink down deep enough for it to come out that way. That’s probably why a lot of the songs I play I’ve been playing them for a long time and… they feel like they’re part of my blood stream a little bit I guess.”

- Bill Frisell

There are so many things that we have memorized, things we long ago let go of ‘the intellectual stuff’ – tying our shoes, brushing our teeth, using cutlery, and on and on. It wasn’t always this way. Repetition leads to familiarity and thoughtful repetition leads to mastery. I know the delight when I’ve taken enough slow time with a piece of music that it enters into me.

We can’t master everything. But we can master some things!

What do you value so much that you want to persist so much that it becomes part of your blood stream? That you play a long time, long enough to sink down deep? It takes a while, as Bill says…then you just play.

(From Bill Frisell Solos DVD)

You can see Bill perform here.

Quixote Consulting helps teams become artists of their work with music team building activities such as Play the Blues harmonica team building, Give the Kids Music, Music of Teams, Build a Team Song, Bang On My Drum All Day, Networking Music Dinner and more.

Bill Frisell @ 41 Bridge Street, Collinsville, CT

This well-attended solo guitar concert was in a great venue right next to the Farmington River, in a quiet town that was once an industrial powerhouse. Here’s what I learned watching the concert with Lou Manzi.

You can listen to Bill Frisell here.

1. Be yourself. He’s a quiet introvert with a humble, self-effacing humor that put us squarely on his side.
2. Trust the audience to follow what you care about. Not every note went down easy. He can get into some pretty dissonant places, but his self-immersion in the music carried us there as well.
3. Know your instruments. It’s not just the guitar. His use of loopers, delay, and distortion were seamless. They were his instruments as well, extensions of his art rather than distractions.
4. Don’t worry about labels or how it’s usually played. He freely roamed through playing Monk, Marianne Faithful, Gershwin, Stephen Foster, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Paul Motian, the Beatles and back again.
5. Embrace the strengths unique to your instrument. Often jazz guitarists play the guitar like they wish it were a saxophone. Not Bill. He used open string chords, a strength of the instrument, as well as bar chords, distortion, string bending, hammer ons and pulls offs, all very guitar-centric techniques.
6. Finish with something people love AND do it your way. His encore was a two-song Beatles medley – Strawberry Fields Forever/In My Life melded into his own freewheeling Frisellian mash-up. People loved it!

Quixote Consulting helps teams become artists of their work with music team building activities such as Play the Blues harmonica team building, Give the Kids Music, Music of Teams, Build a Team Song, Bang On My Drum All Day, Networking Music Dinner and more.

In the Bill Clinton interview, Clinton talked about a key moment as a teenager when he literally looked at himself in the mirror and talked about his future. Up to that point he’d been a pretty good saxophone player in high school and he was considering whether to follow that as a career.

He told himself, “you’re a good saxophone player, but you’ll never be as great as someone like John Coltrane or Stan Getz”. He wanted to be great at something. It was that moment that he turned towards politics and away from music as a profession. He had a sense that he could achieve greatness in the political field.

And of course he did. Whether you loved Clinton as a president or despised him, he’s been unarguably successful in his goal to become a politician. People in a strengths-based team training often ask me how they can discern what they are truly best at. One way is to ask the question that Bill Clinton asked himself: “Can I be great at this, or just good? If it’s only good, then what can I be great at?”

Quixote Consulting has four paths for your Strengths Quest:

StrengthsFinder – Gallup’s online assessment of unique top five strengths. Learn your team’s strengths and learn how to put them into action.

Strengths At Work – Gallup research says less than 20 percent of us have the opportunity to do what we do best everyday. Learn how to put your strengths in play for consistent, near-perfect performance.

At Your Best – Explore how to give your best and play to your strengths for sustained individual success.

Strong Management – Strengths based training for managers to help their people be at their best.

In the Elton John interview, he talked about his collaboration with his songwriting partner Bernie Taupin. The two have been writing together for over 30 years and he wrote the words to most of Elton John’s hits. Here’s a list of songs with lyrics by Bernie Taupin. The sheer number of songs is jaw-dropping.

Elton John said that people often ask him why he doesn’t write words. He made it quite clear that that wasn’t ever going to happen. When they were young and listening to music together John would focus on the harmony and the melody, while Taupin always noticed the words. His strength, his passion, was clearly in the music. Taupin’s passion was found in the words of a song.

I don’t need to tell you how famous Elton John is. Or how his (i.e. their) songs have touched millions of people. Part of it is the melody and the harmony that supports that melody. And the other part is the words. This collaboration of two different passions is the magic combination for happiness and success.

Strengths-based teams are interdependent. People focus on what they do best and trust the other members to focus on their specialties. No one tries to be well rounded – no one metaphorically writes the words and the music. Instead they each look for the parts of a project that they can reach to the sky with, not just muddle along.

What parts of your work are you passionate about? How can you support other members on your team? And what are unhappy doing that someone else can do for you so that you both are more successful?

Quixote Consulting has four paths for your Strengths Quest:

StrengthsFinder – Gallup’s online assessment of unique top five strengths. Learn your team’s strengths and learn how to put them into action.

Strengths At Work – Gallup research says less than 20 percent of us have the opportunity to do what we do best everyday. Learn how to put your strengths in play for consistent, near-perfect performance.

At Your Best – Explore how to give your best and play to your strengths for sustained individual success.

Strong Management – Strengths based training for managers to help their people be at their best.

“We still are attracted to things that scare us and that represent the possibility for failure. Which is hopefully a good thing because oftentimes you get into a comfort zone of a show doing well, like this one has begun to, and you stop doing that. And we’re not, for better or for worse.”

-David Eick, Executive Producer and Writer of Battlestar Galactica

In the last episode of Season Two of Battlestar Galactica (the newer one) the storyline change radically. Mid-episode it became a year later. Every major character was changed in a major way. It was so shocking to me that I listened to the executive producers’ commentary on the last episode. I heard the above quote in the commentary. I haven’t started watching the third season, so I don’t know if this crazy leap will work or not. But it’s exciting to see artists with a lot of money on the line take that risk.

Part of what makes play so exciting is the mystery of the unknown ending. We watch (and participate in) sports because one team will win and one will fail and we don’t know how it will end. When we do, we often lose interest.

When success happens – and it happens to all of us – it’s tempting to pick safety and repeat what worked. By the end of Season Two, Battlestar Galactica was getting great reviews from unlikely places like Rolling Stone and the New Yorker. They were finally successful. I’m sure it was tempting to play it safe and keep everyone on ships through space, endlessly being followed by the evil cylons.

But they didn’t. They chose to play. They went with something that was scary, that had the possibility of failure. They left their comfort zone and stayed true to the theme of a quest. And in a way mirrored their storyline in real life.

You and I have a choice today. We can play it safe or we can play our work and our life in a fresh, new way. Play is scary, unknown and has the possibility of failure. It’ll always be scary, always. The presence of fear is a good indication that we’re about to play. Fear isn’t to be followed, but it’s helpful to notice that it indicates that now we’re committing ourselves. Now’s there’s some risk. Now the outcome is unknown. Now we’re alive and playing.

Quixote Consulting’s team building activities help teams play. I recommend charity team building, music team building, collaborative team building, group fun and celebration or culinary team building for maximum play opportunities.

Quixote Consulting changes it up with a mix of change management content and action, fun, experiential learning and reflection. Change Up is aimed at you and your team increasing adaptability and resiliency when change happens and learning how to effectively drive change. Change Up also focuses on strengthening and deepening personal relationships throughout – a cornerstone of the human side of change.

Change Up Change Management Team Building Exercises create experience labs that emulate common changes teams experience every day. Teams play and experiment with their response to these changes in a no-risk atmosphere, honing their adaptability and resiliency changes. It also increases their empathy ability for those affected by changes they drive, leveraging the human side of change. Don’t just change – change up!

Just Like Work: Nine types of Changes Addressed in Change Up: Change Management Team Building Exercises

1. The goal changes (A loftier goal or a different goal entirely)
2. The teams change (reorganizations – more people, fewer people, redistributed people)
3. The team roles change (different leader, different linchpin, different front-line people)
4. The playing field changes (new regulations, new markets, new competitors)
5. The materials change (different types of materials, more materials, fewer materials available to use)
6. The strategy changes (moving from competition to collaboration is the most common strategy shift)
7. The time constraint changes (less time usually)
8. The level of challenge changes (Things usually get harder, markets get more competitive)
9. Everything changes (all of the above, all at the same time!)

Change Up! Change Management Team Building Content Overview (One Day Program)

(Note: One Day is the preferred time most teams invest, but half day and two day options are available)

1. Start off the day with a bang – a mix of short (10-15 minute) and longer (45-60 minute) activities that let your team build relationships with each other and play with change experientially.
2. By mid-morning we move into content. For most people this is the optimal time of day to learn new complex concepts.
3. After lunch we move right into an experiential activity. This removes lunch torpor and gets everyone involved in a hands-on way once again.
4. After the mid-afternoon break, we focus on a mix of activity and direct application to life at work and at home. Statistically this time of day is when people have the hardest time focusing. Research has shown that only action and direct application can break through the mid-afternoon haze. This mix keeps personal interest, personal investment and energy high.

Change Up the People:

Each different activity allows new teams to form and new personal relationships to be forged, maximizing meeting and mixing.

Four Paths to Change Up!

(Examples of each are outlined below.)

1. Short energizing activities about change
2. Short change team building exercises
3. Large scale change team building exercises
4. Content-based change mastery training

Change Up! Change Management Icebreakers and Energizers – Short ‘Getting To Know You’ Team Building Activities

Change Up begins with one or two short (5-10 minutes each) fun team building icebreakers and energizers. These ‘getting to know you’ activities set the tone for interactive fun. They provide a transition from meetings and presentations to full active engagement. Participants strengthen personal connections and learn fun facts about other members of the team. Whether your team knows each other fairly well or has never met in person before, we highly recommend beginning the program with one or two of these activities. Some examples are included below. Some (but not all) can be incorporated into your day of change management team building exercises. These shorter activities are also used as punctuation marks throughout the day.

Change Up! Change Management Icebreaker Examples to Choose From

What Changed? (Change Management Team Building Energizer)

Partners change personal appearance without the other partners seeing. Then it’s guessing time – what changed?

Change You Can Use (Change Management Team Building Energizer)

Partners share personal changes that happened to them recently that they’re really happy about. This activity reinforces the concept that change is a positive thing.

Team Scavenger Hunt Bingo (Change Management Team Building Energizer)

Everyone is given a card with interesting facts and life changes personalized for your team on a Bingo card grid. Meet your people, find out who’s done what, write their names on the cards and get to cry Bingo before your co-workers do! One of our clients’ favorite icebreakers!

Cocktail Party Speed Networking (Change Management Team Building Energizer)

Pairs are given questions to ask each other and report out on later. These intriguing, positive questions speed network your team beyond ‘small talk’ to conversations that are real, interesting and fun.

Commonalities (Change Management Team Building Energizer)

The facilitator gives topics such as favorite music and favorite pastimes. Players quickly find everyone else who shares the same tastes. A mix of high-energy fun and discovering commonalties with colleagues helps participants to expand their relationships beyond day-to-day work roles and gets everyone up out of their seats and on the move.

Change Management Team Building Exercises: Adapt. Grow. Thrive.

Each Change Management Team Exercise is approximately 30-45 minutes long. Each change management team exercise culminates in a debrief so that teams can immediately learn from their successes and failures, link their performance to change situations they’re involved in back at the office, and name focal points for their attention for the next activity.

The sequence of activities is intentional. Each change management team building activity builds on the one before to create an experience that is memorable, fun and has lasting impact on your effective change management teamwork.

Some of Quixote Consulting’s most popular change management team building teamwork activities are included in the following list. These or others (but not all) may be incorporated into your customized program.

Change Management Team Building Exercise Examples to Choose From (Each lasts between 30-45 minutes)

The Change Maze (aka the Cheese Maze) (Change Management Team Building Exercise)

Your team navigates a simulated maze in search of “cheese.” Participants must rely on each other to cross a maze that is too confusing for them to get through on their own. At a critical point, the maze changes unexpectedly – participants must regroup, uncover the change, overcome resistance and frustration to change in order to find the new path to get everyone on their team across. Will your team be able to assess the change, overcome their old way of looking at ‘the way things ought to be’ and find the new path? Transform your team to scurry through the change they are faced through the power of action learning!

Type of Change Addressed: Playing field change

On Target (Change Management Team Building Exercise)

In this multi-round activity, the group is separated into groups and given a task: deliver a maximum number of balls into specific buckets within strict time deadlines in the midst of a rapidly changing environment. As the activity progresses, the participants find that they must challenge their own assumptions about competition, problem solving, and “the way it’s always been done,” in order to reach their goals. Innovation, team collaboration and team communication skills are emphasized.

Type of Change Addressed: Goal change, team change, team role change, strategy change

Picture This (Change Management Team Building Exercise)

You have some of the information but can you communicate what you know? Who will see the big picture?

Each person gets images that are part of a larger sequence. Together the group must decipher the sequence and get the images laid out in order without any person seeing anyone else’s images while the clock ticks! Will the group see the big picture in time or will they get bogged down in details…or worse yet, fail to notice a crucial part of the image in time? This complex verbal communication skill builder has a powerful “aha” factor that makes the grand unveiling unforgettable!

Type of Change Addressed: Team change, materials change, time constraint change

Make the Connection (Change Management Team Building Exercise)

This puzzling challenge requires the whole group to collaborate and communicate – quickly. Twenty five pieces link in innovative ways. Can you make the connection? This collaborative team building activity challenges groups to communicate with impact, listen actively, foster teamwork and collaboration and get engaged – quickly.

Type of Change Addressed: Team change, materials change, time constraint change

Sharing Best Practices: The Big Info Swap (Change Management Team Building Exercise)

Two sub-teams must work to achieve success in two separate activities; however, each team’s success is directly connected to their abilities to share their best practices with the other team. This collaborative team building activity challenges groups to not only collaborate in small groups but also actively collaborate and root for other departments in their company.

Type of Change Addressed: Goal change, strategy change

Aces High (Change Management Team Building Exercise)

This giant card game has everyone on the move and communicating quickly. Incredible times are achieved as teams compete head-to-head. The challenge is doubled for a wild finish in a collaborative grand finale! This collaborative team building activity challenges groups to realize how compelling and exhilarating it can be to collaborate when given a challenging deadline.

Type of Change Addressed: Goal change, strategy change, time constraint change

Better Get Better (Change Management Team Building Exercise)

In this high-energy, collaborative team building exercise, teams are given a task with a tight deadline. They must develop and improve a solution through successive attempts. As the activity progresses, participants find that they must assign roles, clarify rules, and find ways to improve their scores repeatedly. They also learn from watching other teams, and must decide whether competition or collaboration with others will achieve their goals more effectively.

Type of Change Addressed: Goal change, team change, team role change, strategy change

Change Up! Change Management Team Training

Change Up! Change Management Team Training modules help your people view change as a blessing and not a curse by exploring powerful content, practical tools and techniques to transform your team into change agents. And your team will be able to practice changing immediately with Quixote Consulting’s proprietary Forty Days of Change For Good activity.

Change Up! Change Management Team Training modules help you avoid the pitfalls that too many ineffective change initiatives fall into. We’ll examine your unique change situation step-by-step as well as examine case studies of successful and unsuccessful change initiatives. And we’ll look at the big picture by discovering how to both lead and manage change for maximum effectiveness.

Change Up! Change Management Team Training Content Modules to Choose From

40 Days to Change For Good

The core of the Change Up!’s change management training content is Quixote Consulting’s proprietary change ritual 40 Days to Change For Good. A change ritual is a pre-decided repetitive action that combines practical and symbolic value. You decide what you want to change, what your change ritual is about before you begin, and then you do it repeatedly (in this case every day for 40 days). You get practical value from doing it daily but it symbolically shows your commitment to your change. This powerful combination re-wires the synapses in your brain that creates lasting positive change.

40 Days to Change for Good change management training is packed with the latest research from positive psychology, change experts, scientists, personal experience, poets, musicians, religious traditions and people just like you. You’ll learn what makes change stick and why it usually doesn’t, why ritual trumps self-discipline, key ways to support your change for good, why 40 is the magic number and more.

40 Days to Change for Good change management training was written to help you make a change for good for life. You’ll be guided through the process of creating and leading a ritual that you and your team follow for 40 days. We’ll help you to get ready and decide what you want to change. We’ll guide you step-by-step to craft a change ritual that you’ll love. We’ll help you to lock in support for your change ritual and to complete it elegantly. And you’ll walk away with tons of resources to support your change ritual and a clear blueprint to bring it back to your team/family/organization.

Type of Change Addressed: Changes You and Your Team Want to Make

Adaptability: Resiliency When Change Happens To You

The Adaptability change management training module provides a simple, effective and easily remembered tool for being resilient when change happens to you. First, we’ll help you list the stressors of change in your life. Then you separate them into two buckets: what you can and can’t control. We’ll encourage you to focus on the one bucket that you can change. And we’ll help you to be resilient when change happens by guiding you to list what is changeless for you in the midst of change and list how to return to those things in the midst of change.

Type of Change Addressed: Changes That Happen To You and Your Team

Large-Scale Change Management Team Building Exercises

If your change management team building session is going to include 35 people or more, a large-scale change management team building exercise can be potentially incorporated. These larger scale change management activities focus on a large goal that requires many people to collaborate and plan over a longer period of time, just like work.

Some of Quixote Consulting’s most popular large-scale change management team building teamwork activities are included in the following list. One of these or others (but not all) may be incorporated into your customized program.

Large-Scale Change Management Team Building Exercise Examples to Choose From (Each last between 90-120 minutes)

Catapult (Change Management Team Building Exercise)

Catapult your team to success with this design and build programs where participants have to design and build a full functional catapult and test and compete for challenges of distance and accuracy. Following the brainstorming on the plan, testing the prototypes is the first test launch. Then come the team refinements, more negotiating and bartering and we put the teams together for a measured challenge.

Provided with a unique set of materials, a budget to buy or negotiate with other teams for more, teams will first test themselves against other teams and then come together to work with the other teams to create the most effective and efficient Catapult.

Type of Change Addressed: Goal change, team change, team role change, playing field change, materials change, strategy change

Charity Bike Build (Change Management Team Building Exercise)

Teams build bicycles for under-served children in their area. From the creative mind of Quixote Consulting founder Rob Fletcher, our consultants have helped hundreds of companies just like yours build more than 10,000 bicycles for under-served children around the world. Teams complete challenges that test their knowledge of change, resiliency and adaptability to earn bicycles.

Type of Change Addressed: Knowledge of change, team change

Ultimate Change Game (Change Management Team Building Exercise)

Travel around the giant game board, furiously completing wild and wacky trivia and team challenges in the craziest team building program ever. The Ultimate Change Game is a fun, high-energy way to finish a day that includes a lot of people by directly addressing a challenging topic. This is the icing on the cake, the dessert at the end of the meal. Teams test their adaptability and resiliency knowledge.

Type of Change Addressed: Knowledge of change, team change

Primary Benefit:

Change Management Team Building

Secondary Benefits:

Practice changing immediately with Forty Days of Change For Good activity

• Learn why some change initiatives fail while others are successful.
• Discover how to create a sense of urgency that energizes people.
• Find out how to empower your people to take ownership and be change agents.
• Discern what you have power to change and what you don’t.
• Uncover ways to help people with the emotional side of change.
• Learn what kind of communication is key to successfully navigating change.
• Develop a change action plan that leaves room for unexpected change.
• Overcome ‘change weariness’ and spark excitement around change initiatives.
• Craft change initiatives that really work.
• Get people “on board” mentally and emotionally for change.
• Help everyone take ownership of change initiatives.

Formats Available:

• Half-Day Workshop
• One-Day Workshop
• Two-Day Workshop

Change never looks as beautiful as it does in May. If April is the cruelest month as T.S. Eliot proclaimed, then May is the reward. The bounty of spring blossoms, the tender air, the fragile unfolding of citrine green leaves, so young you can see right through them – it’s a lovely month to be alive.

I find this the most reassuring month to try to play the work, to change up the way I assume things need to be done. It’s hard to grimly plow through the day when I can hear birds singing again and smell and see flowers blooming.

It can be scary to make a change, even when the old way isn’t working. And there can be tremendous energy in that change – something Quixote Consulting leverages in this month’s featured change management team building program Change Up! This is the month when you can get some real support from the natural world to muster the courage to step into whatever better world is waiting for you and the people around you and…change up!