I found ‘Everything’s an Offer’ on someone’s bookshelf, alongside Guy Kawasaki (Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition), Paul Ormerod: Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics, Fareed Zakaria (The Post-American World: “Not a book about the decline of American, but the rise of everyone else.”), Daniel H. Pink: A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age and Ken Robinson: Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative.

Good company to be in. And you’ll notice that my book was top of the list….(how’s that for a status play?)

Yesterday afternoon I had arranged a call with Gary, but it turned out he had double booked himself. He suggested we do it another time and I heard myself say “but I have planned my afternoon around this”. How insolent of the world in general, and Gary in particular not to submit itself to my plans…. Oh dear. Strong evidence that ‘homo sovieticus’ is still alive and kicking in me (you’ll need to read the book to understand this reference!`). Still, it won’t help to beat myself up (i.e. be in judgement), so best to have a good laugh at myself and set about today with a new enthusiasm and respect for practise and a good dose of humility.

I wrote the last entry before lunch. After lunch I came back to find that Johnnie Moore’s blog had been picked up by Wayne, writing the ideafestival blog. He comments on John’s comments on my comments (does this make you feel there is a bit of accepting going on?). My comment (on his comment on John’s comment on my comment) is that joy is indeed a part of strategy. What I mean is that if you can create the conditions where people are experiencing joy in their relationships with each other, i.e. enJOYing themselves, the chances that they will be much more effective. Or as I put it in the book (page 230):

Uncertainty, not control, opens the door to surprise, discovery and delight. The fresh thought, the new insight, the unlooked-for ca-
ress—all require some measure of doubt, ambiguity or unpredictability.

It is fantastic to see the response to the book spiral out of control. Yesterday I got an e mail from a friend of an ex-girlfriend who I only met once, about twenty five years ago who said:  ”I’ve become an actor since we met, and having had years off for raising kids, am now working again and remembering what it is to have theatre in ones life. And I wanted to say that I find EXACTLY that my life as a mother, publicist, wife, everything, is immeasurably enhanced by the everyday practice of impro techniques.”  

I got a request from someone I have never met asking for more podcasts (an offer I will try and accept this afternoon) and both Johnnie Moore and Mark Earls have started blogging about it. The fact that I can’t determine any of this is exactly the point. I wonder what might come next?