This is a partial overview of my social inventions. It’s a showcase to some of my work and an eye-opener of the possible range we all can have. If  we allow ourselves.

So here’s a list of explorations in many different fields. After each field, I mention one or a few inventions and the driving question behind them. When available there’s a link to a broader explanation. And at the end of the article I link to an article describing my method. Some pictures can be found at the bottom.

Children choose who and how many are behind the counter.

Behind a counter sit children, most often age 8–12, to answer your life questions. The result impresses every time. Children get a boost in confidence and feel they matter. (Some) Adults are stunned, children are not empty vessels you pour knowledge in to get adults. They have a mind of their own and see way more than most adults are aware. Easy concept, yet there are some important aspect to keep in mind when applying this idea. Ask me, if so needed.

Never had one Piano Lesson, played less than 100 hours, yet, thanks to my method, still play for a crowd in Vienna.

Learn to Play Music on the Piano in 15 Minutes and be able to improvise for the rest of your life. Don’t expect sudden technical genius, for that you’ll need additional lessons. Yet this approach lets you play, have fun with mistakes, and contains an important life lesson: the search for the music is the music.

Switchball, Summer 2019, Happy Start Up Summer Camp ©photo by Becky Rui

This sport is crazy fun. Players have to shift balances, change roles, deal with changing rules, alliances. Switchball thus lets you train modern skills, like adaptability, serving the bigger picture, dealing with complexity. It also proves competition is not the only driver for action, as, in this sport, you can’t win at the cost of others. Will you be its next Hero or Buddha?

Here you can also see one of my weaknesses. This could be a foundation, promoting this sport, but running foundations is really not my thing. But I can be hired to come and play.

The dominant focus on knowledge in education has a reason. This way we optimize measuring progress (which is different from optimal learning!). A lot is lacking, like personal development, understanding our relationship with the world as a whole, and acquiring social skills preparing to help you have a positive impact on the needs of your community and environment (this last will be crucial for the future of humanity). This model helped design the curriculum for Knowmads and influenced others.

Education that focuses on knowledge overlooks the importance of other essential aspects is severely lacking. Especially personal development, understanding our relationship with the world as a whole, and acquiring social skills preparing to help you have a positive impact on the needs of your community and environment.

I contributed a lot to the curriculum design of the little creative business school, Knowmads, I co-founded. I made a mix of theory U and the Hero’s Journey in a guiding sketch mixing the personal journey and the tribal journey (each class was called a tribe). Here you see a simple cleaned-up version. The education included the very personal, like healthy work-life balance, pragmatic business projects, global overview, and what you’d love to contribute to the world. The full year education is gone, but courses are still offered.

School mostly offers failing students either one of two options. Either you drop this topic (if at all possible) or you work very hard to get proficient in it. I wondered about this. I find in all weaknesses is a talent hidden. I made most of my money thanks to my weaknesses. Laziness helped boost my creativity. Insecurity made me very sensitive to crowds, which boosted my facilitation skills. Etc. So I designed the workshop ‘How to Make Money With Your Weaknesses?’ In it, participants break through harsh (self) judgments and find hidden powers within themselves and define who might be needing that gift.

Too often self-actualization ends up as optimal self-gratification (even when that is not the intention). We don’t, nor can live in a bubble. Based upon this I designed an improvement that includes our ecosystem and our need that it stays healthy at all times. Thus self-actualization must lead to service towards the bigger whole.

The New Smart (see picture at the bottom)

I worked with artists and entrepreneurship. Many don’t relate at all to the classic business approach. Targets, goals, score, planning, these words mean little to them. The same goes for many other people as well. People are not machines. Hence I came up with the goal-setting that felt more natural and exciting.

Since then I found many variations on this concept, some better, but I tend to forget which. ;)

Workshop Future Proof Leadership

End of 2019 I was asked by Umana Forma, Italy, to design the Workshop “Future Proof Leadership” for business owners in the Veneto region, in hindsight just in time to prepare participants for the arrival of Corona. One part of the workshop was these five ways to deal with complexity or lack of overview.

In our increasingly complex society trying to grasp it all with just the mind is becoming counterproductive. It may help more to be deeper immersed and act with all senses open. Hence these five attitudes explained further in the linked article.

Awareness: Overview through the Body. The body knows so much more than our brain, about what is going on. We can learn to listen to its wisdom.

Responsibility: Leadership by taking part. The body listens when we immerse ourselves. Avoid becoming an entitled out-of-touch leader.

Wisdom: Achieving by not doing. The path of the least resistance and putting trust in others may achieve more than pressure, control, and power.

Co-Creation: Collaboration through diversity. Societies work like swarms. You need many people and ideas filling in gaps you can’t even see.

Glocal: Local actions supporting global impact. When the whole can’t be known, improve local realities rather than spook the mind with assumptions.

Over recent years up to 2020, I’ve led large group rituals (alone or with a partner), to open and or close several festivals. Aside from setting the tone, helping newcomers, clarifying principles, and bring people in touch with their purpose in the festival in less than half an hour, the organization often also wants visual moments. To create such a great visual memory I came up with the Classic Painting Pose. Part of the trick is also to get everyone quickly and for only a short time in a pose. For me, the phrasing, enthusiasm, clarity, (friendly) strictness, and stimulation are all part of the design. Partially that is planned, yet also asks a lot of presence of mind on the spot.

Classic Painting Pose (developed before it became hot for families during Lockdown) Here the Permanent Beta Festival 2015, photo Daniel Maissan.

With this and other questions in hand, I invented the Collective Wisdom Dance. My starting conviction was: The fundament is that we can shine in accordance with our society as a whole. All we need is conscious dancing in a certain state of wakeful flow. This dance form will help you to get there and reflect when you shine. After all, we can see all of society as an informing dance as well, where you can take up your best role or keep bumping into people feeling lost. This dance reveals and speeds up that process in a safe environment.

What started as group exercises for large group improvisation in theatre and dance, became something more. I found I could use the same principles to clean up a festival, after the event with volunteers. Andwaddoyeknow? It saved us immensely on time. Instead of team leaders getting (new) assignments while volunteers wait, everyone swarmed the terrain as intelligent ants, knowing what to do. It also led to workshops for managers who have way more trust in people wanting to do the right thing. Follow the link to find out how it works.

Due to Corona testing this concept has yet to start, but due to experience with all ingredients I have high hopes.

The ‘Reality Gap Formula’. When numbers seem to add up, but the people don’t. This Formula was 1st created by Floris Koot, then improved with help of Predag Končar.

This formula shows us that calculations never represent the full story. “The Tao we talk about isn’t the real Tao.” What we consider normal math is purely trained disconnection from context. €1 euro on a table is not 1€. It’s also a table and the relationships of those involved. $5 isn’t the same $5 from one person to the next. To treat it as the same will reward some and hurt others.

I’ve been a theatre improv teacher for 30 years. Many exercises have been designed, often on the spot. This one was always a favorite.

Deathball is probably the most photogenic (because of slow-motion) and the most ‘violent’ (nobody gets hurt) collaboration game in the world. It’s awesome cooperation and concentration exercise and it’s almost a sport. The paradox in the game is that: In order to win you have to overcome your inner competitive ape!

(link to earlier workshop) (link to article on applied fooling at protests)

What started as a playful workshop (series), can be considered as a Spiritual Path in itself. I always had a high interest in the archetype of the (holy) fool. Me, often being a little bit of an outsider, more lighthearted and playful than most, felt at home here. I also found that the archetype can play a huge role, in group settings as a social acupuncturist or corporate/festival fool. Since there’s not a large request for this role, I mostly keep it low key. Yet it has played a liberating role in my own life and for participants in each workshop about it.

This irreverent concept arose from a joke, that turned out to have great meaning. It combines the concept of (rap) battles with guru teaching. So I had a chair, wonderful assistants, and a tent full of people. Everyone could become Guru and offer teaching (Satsang) in the chair. And every 3 minutes we voted someone in our out of the chair. The one who stayed longest in the Guru chair would be declared winner. This ‘joke’ led to deep insights on how to listen deeper within. We learned what makes a Guru, that most people have a sense of ‘knowing’ that can be activated, whether as Guru and or as audience, listening to who has ‘it’. (NB: Do not copy this concept without asking more, it’s more tricky than it seems to get right)

This dirty little game exposes a fundamental flaw in democracy. This flaw is being exploited by those who profit most from it. The current voter suppression within the USA has made this game’s message more urgent. Play to understand, win to corrupt, corrupt to win. This can be played with 3–13 players and with materials one often already has at home.

Inner Leadership Game (currently in development)

This game can be played with groups ages 16+ to help develop personal leadership and self-reflection in groups, classes, teams. It’s still being tested, but initial experiences are very positive.

The full pack of cards and questions is about 80 cards. Each contains a positively framed question boosting your observance and understanding your impact in the world. These are just test cards, as some pictures have copyrights we currently can’t afford, so new cards are being made.

I love how new words can help to see or understand things you couldn’t before. Here are a few examples I came up with:

Gaudi Factor: The distance people will travel to see the ‘frivolous useless art’ in your city determines the Gaudi Factor. Like Gaudi’s art draws millions.

Play Design: Developing ideas by making them directly experiential in the ‘here and now’. Innovation the way children improve their games; playing.

Possibility Rush: The awesome moment when new ideas tumble over one other and everything seems possible and people go “Yes, yes, yes, and…”

It’s a Victory in Iraq (saying): Winning so that it creates a bigger mess. Like on a personal level, you win the argument, but it ends the relationship.

I was wondering, can I make essences clear in the ancient art ‘funny’ little stories with several layers of meaning? Here is one example.

This time Mulla Nasruddin is dancing wildly in the city square. People gather and wonder what this is about. “5G got me, 5G got me, 5G is killing me!” He shouts with anxiety and desperation in his voice. “But Mulla,” one of the villagers who actually read a newspaper tries to stop him, “Don’t you know they haven’t even started building them here. The closest one is more than a thousand miles and 3 years away!” “You see, you see!” the Mulla cries out, “You see how strong its radiation is! It’s not even close and it’s already upsetting my life!”

Aside from these, I’ve developed quite some management role-playing games for training purposes, over 50 different workshops, filmed commercials, wrote short stories, poetry, theatre shows, dabbled in (common sense) science, and more.

If you’d love to be creative in any field too, then this blog post I wrote about boosting your creativity may help: Play as Innovation Tool You’ll find that the ‘Tree Technique’ mentioned in it is quite present in the starting point of the concepts presented above.

And if you need a creative who can step in almost any field and add something new, look no further and call me.

by Floris Koot

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