Tea with McNair

• why I wrote hatch! : part two

Over lunch, Tuesday, I listened to the dreams of a remarkable business person. After years in medical administration, he is now on the cutting edge of radically changing the way we all look at caring for the most vulnerable in our society—children.
    Having downloaded and read the FREE PDF of the first chapter of HATCH! (above) he was eager to dive into the rest of the book.
    “This will be great for pursuing my dreams.”
    He is exactly the person for whom I wrote HATCH! He is successful in a challenging field and wants to break new ground in reach a far broader constituency. He has some truly wild ideas about how to do that.

     How can HATCH! assist him? What do the “brainstorming secrets of a theme park designer” have do do with your business—any organization that is NOT a theme park?
    As it turns out the creative thinking principles I used with a team I assemble at Disney to work with Mel Brooks designing a silly, scary Disney attraction (HATCH! pages 92-94) are methods that really are applicable to your work. They have been employed by aerospace engineers, youth pastors, people who make chicken sandwiches in 1700 locations and even law firms?
    After leaving SAK Theatre—based in Orlando—I returned to Southern California to fulfill a life-long dream: I became a Disney Imagineer. Walt Disney formed WED Enterprises (Walter Elias Disney), December 1952, to design, build and open the world’s themed amusement park. A natural story teller, first as cartoonist and then film maker, Walt envisioned a place that would tell stories in engaging and fun ways. Instead of comic strips and movies, Walt would now do it through environments,  amusement rides and live shows.

    On  July 17, 1955, the world rushed to a former orange grove in Southern California to be enthralled by fantasy, adventure, the world of tomorrow, and small town America. From steam trains and jungle boats to “dark rides” through classic fairy tales children, parents, and grand parents enjoyed this place together. That was a key design goal for Walt Disney’s Land: create a place that could be enjoyed by people of all ages together. Walt also wanted a place—unlike most amusement parks he’d visited—that was clean and safe, everyday.

    As I mentioned in Part One, above, Walt and his film designers marshaled their sturdy tools of brainstorming and storyboarding to create this magical kingdom.
    By the time I arrived at Imagineering they had imagined, built, and were operating three parks: Disneyland (Anaheim), Magic Kingdom and EPCOT Center (Florida). I began as consultant in 1985, while still producing street theatre at EPCOT. Two of Imagineering’s luminaries—Randy Bright (perfect name, right?) and Bob Weis—invited my partner Herb Hansen and me to look at Future World (EPCOT’s front half.) 

    “It’s kind of lifeless and cold.” Randy said.
    “We have seen the future and its grey with purple accents.” I agreed.
    Bob Weis jumped in. “We thought you SAK Theatre guys could bring some of your liveliness to Future World.”
    We added three different street theatre teams roaming Future World, engaging guests, daily. Next, Randy and Bob invited for Herb and me to spend a week meeting with concept and design teams at Imagineering’s base in Glendale, CA.
    It was one of the more memorable weeks of my life!
    We visited WDI (Walt Disney Imagineering) one week a month for a year. We found ourselves in secret, unmarked, locked-door, conference rooms, contributing to the creative development of as-yet-unannounced Disney projects (Typhoon Lagoon water park, Pleasure Island entertainment zone, a Disney Studio and movie theme park ...) These were brainstorming sessions ...sort of.
    At every session there were hundreds of ideas thunk up, doodled and push pinned to WDI’s ten foot high walls. Sadly, there were also conversations on current movies, books, concerts, etc. And there was arguing. It was playful arguing born of the camaraderie and raillery of long-time working relationships. Make no mistake, though: it was arguing over ideas that were not yet fully formed.
    Even though these verbal “slap fests” felt negative they were productive—eventually.
    In every session I kept wondering what we could accomplish if the negativity (“That won’t work”)  was omitted, even forbidden, from our day-long creative conversations. What if we could channel that negativity, albeit mostly playful, energy into more productive creative thinking?
    This idea/analysis, idea/critique (repeat) process seemed to be in the culture at WDI and it worked for them. I wanted to try my idea, idea, idea …(repeat) process. I was curious to see what could be birthed, invented, designed using all that energy (and talent) without the foot dragging impediment of over analysis.

    Sooner than I thought—while still consulting at WDI—I was invited to assemble and lead a team for a special project. I invited five of my favorite Imagineers (like selecting the best from a shelf full of great chocolate bars).   
    “I’d like to try something a little different from what we usual do here in the sandbox.” (Walt Disney’s nickname for Imagineering.) “I want us to begin, today by just filling that wall with ideas.” (I chose the smallest wall to start.) “There will be zero discussion as to whether our ideas are good, or if they’ll work, or whether they’re even possible.”
    Silence.
    Stares.
    “Ah ...is that okay?” Their silence worried me. (All of them were key idea people behind the design of EPCOT Center.) They think I’m an idiot. I thought. Then …
    “Sounds great.” Said one enthusiastically.
    “Let’s do it!” From another.
    “Well, that cuts about two hours of bull …loney out of our day!”
    Laughter all ‘round.
    We dove in and never looked back—for several weeks.
    From that day, I would never again “allow” Critical Thinking during the Creative Thinking period of any project I helmed. One day I got into a bit of a verbal scuffle with a senior Imagineer (for whom I had enormous respect.) I casually suggested this alternative universe and he thought it wasn’t important. If one person offers an idea and another has an alternate sense of that idea’s weaknesses, speak up.
    I thrusted, he parried, thrust, parry ...retreat.
    We went on to create a great project, but spent far too much time—and too many brain cells—on the that’ll-never-work banter.
    Just after leaving SAK Theatre and moving back to Southern Cal. to be a full fledged Imagineer, I was  pulled into the principles office. My boss, WDI’s president Marty Sklar, said they’d noticed when I assembled a team we got to lots of ideas, big ideas quickly.
    “Do you have a system?” Marty said.
    “Funny you should ask.” I told Marty about the “6 Agreements of Brainstorming”—some of which were methods Walt Disney used. (In HATCH! there are seven. “No.One” was added after leaving WDI and working with an array of corporate clients.)
    “The main rule for me is separating Creative Thinking from Critical Thinking.” I told Marty what that meant and why it was vital to the process.
    “That’s not what we do here, is it?”
    “I know.” I said. “That’s why it takes us so bloody long to get anything done.”
    Marty told me that Disney University, at Disney Studios in Burbank, wanted some sort of class, to teach the process by which Imagineers imagineer.
    Marty told them, “We don’t really have a system. But I knew you were doing something that was working. Can you teach you process to Disney management folks from around the company?”
    “Are they teachable?”
    We both laughed.
    “I think I might be able to, Marty.” I said. “Sure like to try.”
    Soon I was presenting an hour brainstorming class called “How To Think Like Walt Disney.” (Marty and I concocted the title together as an attention getter.) That class quickly became a twice-a-month, component of the three-day “Disney Way I” course—an in depth look at the whole Walt Disney Co. for top management. One of entire days was at Imagineering for a behind-the-dreams look at current and upcoming projects. And ...one hour learning “how do you guys come up with this stuff?”
[Early on at WDI I had encouraged them to pilfer my long-time friend and SAK Theatre cohort, Max Miller. He was offered a job during his first WDI interview! Max to assist me in refining the “6 Agreements…” as a classroom experience and frequently taught the Disney U class. HATCH! is dedicated to J. Maxwell Miller.]
    While still at Disney there were numerous requests for the 6 Agreements as a book. There were no extra minutes in my life to even think about such a project.
    An interesting and unexpected development in the Disney U classes was the surprising number of Disney execs who sat through the class, taking copious notes (with colored felt pens I insisted they use, on UN-lined paper.) At the end of virtually every hour, one or more would tell me, “I understand your process, but I‘m not creative.”
     At first I was confused.   
    “It’s a process for creating, arranging and deciding ideas for ...anything. What’s the problem?”
    “I’m not creative. I can’t even draw a straight line ...or stick figures.”
    [HUH?]
    “Those are not a test for creativity.”
    Accepting the challenge, I spent months searching for anything I could find that described the nature and characteristics of human creativity.”
    As I continued teaching brainstorming (and designing theme parks) I kept searching, writing, analyzing the characteristics of actively creative people. In the midst of that came a request from Disney CEO, Michael Eisner, to pinch hit for him delivering the keynote address at a law enforcement conference. Their theme: “living on the cutting edge of creativity.”
    That evening in Sacramento, at their banquet (my least favorite speaking setting), I gave my first presentation of “Recapturing Your Creative Spirit.” (Watch a video of the current version HERE.) It was enormously well received. I had actually convinced a room full of cops, para-military, and anti-terrorist experts that every one of them had a creative spirit and could access it any time the wanted.
    I sought out more opportunities to present and refine this presentation. Soon it became the precursor to the How to Think Like Walt course at Disney U. Everyone wanted brainstorming instruction, but what they didn’t know was they needed to be convinced that they actual had their own creative spirit. It is built in, factory installed in every person.
    Outside speaking requests increased while the work load at WDI was decreasing, for all Imagineers. It was the early 1990’s. A week economy, albeit brief, lead Disney management to slow down and stop development on all projects at WDI.
    My boss, Marty Sklar, called me to his office and told me, “It’s time to kick you out of the nest.”
    I cried.
    Marty knew my outside speaking and consulting was growing. Meanwhile, at WDI, I was attending up to thirty hours of meetings every week. ARGH!!!
    I didn’t want to leave the “sandbox.” I didn’t want to give up my membership card as a WDI “Knuclehead”—my pal Bob Weis’s name for the uber creative folks in the WDI clubhouse.
    A week later I turned in my name tag and ID card and left WDI. After a month off I jumped into projects at other theme park outfits that had called on the Monday following my last Friday at Disney. I also began a consulting relationship with Disney corporate facilitating creative development with all twenty-three Disney divisions.
    Over the next five years my corporate speaking grew and included Universal Studios, Warner Bros., and Sony Entertainment—while also consulting at Disney.
    During this period I began to intentionally scribble notes in my sketchbooks for a “How to Think Like Walt Disney” book. I’d thought about while at WDI and even wrote a proposal to Disney Publications, which they rejected. My boss, Marty, a gifted wordsmith himself, saw their response and said, “You scared them.”
    As I worked with a wider and wider variety of clients—attorneys, bakers, educators, writers, theatre artists, medical professionals, pastors, printers, and more—I devised chapter titles with paragraphs explaining each one’s objective.
    In my ample spare time I wrote and had published three other books while writing HATCH! (I had published my first book in 1983.)
    With my first draft I thought I had a complete manuscript. My long time friend and highly successful author/artist Susan Kennedy (a.k.a. “SARK”) proclaimed it a full-fledge book. That was just the first seven chapters of the final book.
    Five full re-writes, two complete edits by professional editors, and a search for my first literary agent.
    Along the way the manuscript was read more than three dozen people who had never heard me teach these principles in person. I wanted to know that the book was effective on its own: without me in the room. (And we are planning to produce a companion DVD: HATCH Live!)
    My agent, Mark O. Sweeney presented it to eighteen publishers. Four editors loved it, but could not convince their marketing geniuses to take it on.
    “This needs to be in print!” Mark said.
     So I did it my self (with assistance from Karen Pickering and Book Villages.)
    As I was editing this post, my lunch companion from Tuesday called.
    “McNair, I need twenty copies for my board and staff. Can you bring ‘em by today?”
    You can’t make this stuff up.
    Onward!

• why I wrote "hatch!" : part one

My first brainstorming memory is sitting around a table with a a group of four people making lists of ideas for how we would spend a long—four day—weekend. The other three were my brother, my mom, and my dad. We spent several minutes generating ideas. No one said, “Nah. I don’t like that.” or, “We did that before.” (Especially if the idea was to check into the Disneyland Hotel for the weekend.)
    There was more brainstorming to decide how to get everything done on Saturday (chores, errands, shopping) and have Sunday as a day of rest (and homework.) There was brainstorming in high school with a remarkably creative youth minister who pulled together teams of teens to plan and create unusual Sunday School classes and Sunday night “shows” that taught and entertained. Dick Sherman gave his life to professional ministry (mostly as a youth pastor.) Dick could easily have been a movie or broadway producer. With Dick we also created lists of ideas and then storyboards to plot and execute our dreams.
    When I was a kid, I saw a photo in a magazine of Walt Disney standing in front of a big bulletin board covered with drawings. The caption said it was a storyboard used to plan scenes for an upcoming film. I had been in plays since age five and drawing and doodling longer than that. The idea of creating a visual script—storyboard—was just about the best idea I’d ever seen.
    My freshman year at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design I auditioned and was invited to join the Children’s Theatre Co. of Minneapolis. One of the senior actors and I became good friends over the course of rehearsing several plays. John invited me to work with him developing an original script for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He had learned that I was a big Mark Twain fan and we set out to stage this great American tale. We reread the book, aloud, with a group of actors. That reading would have made an entertaining evening for an audience. John and I decided in advance we would each make a list, during the reading, of key scenes we wanted to stage. He wrote on the long pages of a yellow legal pad. I wrote on 3”x5” index cards.
    When we compared lists, it was surprising how similar were our choices. We used my index cards—and new ones for the scenes John added—and pinned them all to a big sheet of plywood that had been a part of a wall in out opening production Rip Van Winkle.
    “How can we tell this very familiar story in a new and surprising way?” John wanted to be faithful to Twain, but with theatrical surprises.
    We brainstormed—more ideas. We imagined everything from doing a musical, updating it to the 1930’s, the 50’s, even thought about setting it in there Minnesota. (Eventually we did publicity shots with the cast on Minnehaha Creek in the heart of Minneapolis.) While discussing Huck and Tom in the 1930’s we hit upon the idea of staging our production as a radio play. The announcer, couple of actors, and sound effects guy were in a side stage, next to our main stage. After opening music of the period, greeting the studio audience, and a couple of period commercials we wrote, the story telling began. The voices of the actors in the “booth” quickly faded to the laughter of boys [LIGHTS UP ON MAIN STAGE] running down a long, crisscross series of raked docks, six feet high at the back and just a few inches off the stage floor in the front. They jumped of the platforms on to the stage floor, three feet below and water splashed up onto the docks. So began our magical storytelling experience created first through brainstorming and storyboards, before we set a single word of the script to paper.
    Brainstorming—creative thinking as a team activity—and storyboards continued to weave through personal projects, jobs, and theatrical adventures all of my life. I have used these tools to craft all five books I have written and several that are in various stages of “done-ness.”
    I created almost 100 index cards (lower center in photo) for possible scenes when (last year) I adapted Jerry B. Jenkins’ novelized account of the life of the gospel writer Matthew (Matthew’s Story) as a stage play with a cast of more than sixty.
    I, WITNESS premiered in April 2011 to a sold-out run. I was editing and re-writing up to ten days prior to opening. As often as not I went back to my index cards to make scene adjustments before editing the script.  I will be re-writing and publishing that script with a smaller cast size to make it available for more churches and colleges to produce—not everyone can marshall a cast of sixty. The new I, WITNESS will likely have two dozen speaking roles, with opportunity to add more as each group chooses—more brainstorming. I already have some of the key scenes for the re-write on a storyboard, using my original index cards.
    For several years I was privileged to serve as artistic director of SAK Theatre. A street theatre and custom entertainment company I co-founded with a handful of friends. Originally we presented improvisational storytelling at Renaissance festivals from San Diego to Maryland and Florida to Minneapolis. Our “scripts” were developed through improvisation, the theatrical version of brainstorming. We carried burlap sacks full of old costume pieces (hence SAcK Theatre) to place on audience members whom would enlist to fill the roles of our stories. We grew from five “saktors” and two festivals to a roster of more than forty and two dozen festivals annually. In our our sixth year we were “discovered” by the VP of live entertainment for Walt Disney World. Peter Bloustein was assembling international performing groups for the soon-to-open EPCOT Center. They loved our “comedy without a net” style that appealed to all ages. We loved their offer of full-time employment.
    SAK retained complete artistic control over auditioning, training, and script development. Hundreds of young (and not so) performers came through SAK during our eight years and more than forty-thousand street theatre performances at EPCOT. At our peak we were performing forty-five shows everyday in five areas of EPCOT—plus themed convention shows year ‘round. Every SAK “script” began as an improv, an on-your-feet-make-it-up-as-you-go storytelling exercise. Thus SAK’s trademark style gave avery performance an improvisational feel. The big secret was that even 90% of our ad libs were built into our “scripts.”
    When we selected a male senior citizen from the audience to portray Romeo and a female from the other side of the audience (the Capulet family) to be Juliet, the fun ratcheted up several levels. They joined in the improv/brainstorming. We’d give them a line or an action and if they did it, great. If they didn’t do it, or did something different, better yet. Our task was: whatever they did, make it work. That’s the Yes, and … of improve and it is No.3 in the “7 Agreements of Brainstorming”—the process I’ve been teaching to corporate and faith based organizations for more than two decades now. It is the heart of HATCH!—and the first seven chapters of the book.
    It is the process I took from SAK Theatre to Disney Imagineering ...and that’s Part Two of Why I wrote Hatch!  - - coming Wednesday to a Tea Blog near you.

Meanwhile, if you have not yet ordered your copies of HATCH! Brainstorming Secrets of a Theme Park Designer you can still get the pre-release, reduced (from the cover price) price if you order before Nov.1st. Go to the online bookshop: Book Villages

The first 500 copies of HATCH! are signed!

RIGHT NOW, you can download a FREE PDF of the first twenty pages of HATCH!—including the complete opening chapter, I Love the Smell of Felt Pens In the Morning ...here:

Download Hatch Sample

• hatch! sale price extended

To give everyone an opportunity to stock up for Christmas gift-giving (especially for co-workers who could use a creative shot in the soul), we are extending the "pre-publishing," reduced price for HATCH! until November the Oneth (11/1/12.)

After that the regular cover price of $25 will kick in. Think of this: if you get HATCH! now, for every four copies you purchase at $20 you are saving the price of a fifth book—get five.

We still have some of the first 500 signed copies—while they last.

This morning, I spoke to the annual gathering of "ACE" (the Academy of Christian Editors ...mostly book editors). It was the first opportunity to share & sell HATCH! with a live group. One of their members, a good friend, was excited to tell me that her five copies had already arrived. (They started shipping just this past Thurs. 9/13 while I was at the fulfillment center signing books.) She bought copies for her creative co-workers as Christmas gifts...Oops. I may have said too much.)

Who do you know (or work with) that could use a creative boost around Christmas? Or a great gift for the Autumnal Equinox—next Saturday? There's a link to the publisher's (Book Villages) online store in the post below - - and another link to a Christmas countdown clock. Glad to help.

• books are here

"HATCH!" has landed! My books hit the fulfillment center today. I will begin signing the first 500 books and they will start going out in the next few days. If you have not yet ordered your copies, now would be an excellent time to head over to the BookVillages online bookshop.

Consider ordering more than one copy because:

    a. You will loan it to a friend and never see it again

    b. Christmas is closer than you think. Christmas Countdown Clock

    c. The current price is a special "pre-publishing" price

    d. Your competition WILL be reading "HATCH!"

    e. I will be signing the first 500 copies!

Meanwhile, here's a FREE PDF, including the opening chapter: "I Love the Smell of Felt Pens In the Morning!"

Download Hatch Sample

This is the full, graphics-filled, art & doodles by McNair, first 20 pages just as they appear in the book—to give you a taste of the full 208 pages.

Business leaders: "HATCH!" Is a great team-builder. The "7 Agreements of Brianstorming" (the key proces in the book) will change the way your team, staff, group, and family communicate on a daily basis.

“Since we began to apply McNair Wilson’s creative thinking process on a national basis, we have blown the lid off of our sales! And our customer satisfaction has never been higher. We have used him year-after-year to train and inspire our executive team and sales staff.”
  ~ Marc McBride, CEO, McBride Electric National

HATCH UPDATE | Thurs. 13 Sept. 2012

Spent a couple hours today in the Denver fulfillment center signing the first 500 caopies of HATCH! They came and grabbed a box to start shipping while I was signing. Get yours NOW. (Use the LINK above to Book Villages online store.) I really like the "striped spine" we came up with to get people's attention when it is on a book store shelf but not facing cover out. (See photo of me with  Stack o' Hatch.)

• lest we forget ...brushing off the dust

Eleven years ago ...three days after the attack ("Ground Zero" 14 Sept. 2001)

covered in dusts

(originally poster 9/11/2006)

9/11 Again, Again

[Photo: Edward Keating/New York Times]

Where we you, when they raised the price of freedom?
Where were you when our family disappeared?
Are you glad you weren’t there?
Did you lose a friend that day?
Are you as changed today as you felt on that Tuesday or did you change your mind?
We all changed our minds, but did it last?
Are the changes we now live with making our lives safer, better?
Will we need to change more and are we willing to make the toughest changes?
Do you like taking off your shoes at the airport and not carrying water or shampoo?
Is that worth being safer in the air?
Are we?
What cost Freedom?
What price Liberty?
We are willing to let others die in far away places, that we’ll never see--Fallujah and Takrit--so why do we whine about having our library records examined?

What have YOU done since 9/11, 2001?
What will you do?
Have you changed?

[Photo: Shannon Stapleton/Rueters]

Watching TV that morning, I saw a man in a suit and tie, carrying his briefcase, come out of the great fog that was the dust storm of the fallen Towers. He walk right up to a news crew and said, “There’s a reason why my life was spared and I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to find that reason.”
Did you hear him?
Do you know the reason he was spared?

Are you aware that the reason for his life has been the same since the day he was born.
So, too, there’s a reason you were born--did you know that?
There’s a contribution your life can make. Are you ready to make that commitment?
Are you ready to be a contribution?
Will it take an attack on your life to get your attention ?
Are you aware that whatever your circumstances, you are NOT covered in dust?
What, then, will your contribution be?
You can make a small change today and a bit more tomorrow.
Did you know that if you pick one area of your life to expand on, to improve on, just 1 % a day, that in 70 days you will be twice as good as you are now?
If you haven't started the change you wanted to make, you can start now. You know it's only too late if you don't start today?

[Photo: Alex Fuchs/AFP] 

Did you know it took three months to completely extinguish the fires at Ground Zero?
Did you know they never even discussed not finishing the job?
Can you, today, brush off the dust on your imagination and start making your contribution?

Did you know the rest of us need you to that--now?

[ BELOW :: Ground Zero, New York City, time lapse video of construction through 2004- 2011 - click enlarge icon to view FULL SCREEN ]