10.14.2016

Chicken or Egg

Anne Radford, an outstanding AI practitioner and grand person in general, inspired me to invest in a box of Phaidon Maverick Postcards. They are great to use in Appreciative Inquiry processes, since they provide a new angle instead of using only words. Sometimes I let people introduce themselves by picking one card illustrating themselves and one the task at hand.

I have noticed that many people pick the card with a simple egg on it. They talk about transformation, things that will grow, the start of processes and so on.

Quite a number of metaphors and sayings are associated with eggs. For example "you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs". People can be describes as a really bad egg or an egghead. Sometimes you need to be really careful and walk on eggs but you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket. Alan Wong's restaurants used a nice exercise involving a metaphoric egg in order to develop their business. Read it and find out if you're a carrot, an egg or coffee beans.
 The International Egg Commission introduced the second Friday in October as the World Egg Day. Apparently it's celebrated in many ways in different countries. In Bangladesh 5000 free boiled eggs will be distributed, each in an individual box. In the USA the American EGG Board has published a number of videos featuring the Bacon Brothers (yup, Kevin is one of them) and The Incredible Egg.

In Sweden there has been a competition regarding who could produce the best egg-based course. I think the galette with eggs and spinach looks really tasty and I'm sure you can do it without the ham.

What the people selecting my egg card seldom notice is that the jagged edge around the egg image is actually a sentence in a kind of handwriting: "Contraceptives should be used on every conceivable occasion". This is a quote by the comedian Spike Milligan who also wrote poems.

If I could write words
Like leaves on an autumn forest floor,
What a bonfire my letters would make.

If I could speak words of water,
You would drown when I said
'I love you.' 


Spike Milligan

1 comment:

Martin Börjesson said...

Eggsistentialism at it's best!