I am grateful that Warren Lamb was an independent thinker.  As Rudolf Laban’s chosen protégé,  Warren respected what he had learned but not unreflectively or slavishly.

Instead, Warren tested Laban’s ideas in the crucible of giving advice to hard headed businessmen.  He honed Laban’s theories against his own observations of movement.  Over a dozen years, he tried to make sense of what he saw and convey this in a meaningful way to his clients.  Movement Pattern Analysis was the result.

Warren’s inclination to be private and independent in making decisions did not make him the easiest colleague with whom to collaborate. … Read More

The formal elements of line – straight, curved, twisted, and rounded – identified by Laban are now called “spoke-like and arc-like directional movements” and “carving.”  Yet beneath these fundamental forms a more essential mode of shape change has been identified by Warren Lamb and Judith Kestenberg – shape flow.

Shape flow, the amoeba like growing and shrinking of the body, is a mode of shape change present at birth.  Shape flow allows the nearly helpless neonate to grow towards what it needs and to shrink away from what is hurtful or noxious.… Read More

Just like peanut butter and jelly — “Effort goes with Shape organically,” Warren Lamb observed.  “We cannot move in making an effort without an accompanying movement of shaping.”

To support this assertion, Lamb would give an everyday example: “It takes effort to get out of bed in the morning.  But you must also shape your movement, or you knock over the bedside lamp.”

It is a curious fact that to rise from bed successfully, we need not painstakingly calculate either the amount of effort needed or the directional trajectory of our limbs. … Read More

There are three important values embedded in the practice of MPA that are as much a part of Warren Lamb’s legacy as his Seven Creative Concepts: respecting individuality, fostering diversity, and encouraging tolerance.

Lamb felt there was more than one way to do any job. Therefore, we do not have MPA profile templates for CFOs, or research heads, or other positions.  Since each individual has strengths and challenges, there is no right or wrong profile at the individual level.

We do have a model for what makes an effective working team.… Read More

In his final book, Lamb noted: “The Seven Creative Concepts were formulated in the years immediately following Laban’s death in 1958, when I was focusing on finding a workable framework incorporating everything I had learnt during my apprenticeship with him.”  Here is how Lamb delineated these creative concepts.

1. Effort Factors and Shape Qualities relate to a three-stage decision making sequence, emphasizing process as distinct from content.
2. Posture-Gesture Mergers reveal the relatively enduring features of a person’s movement pattern (as distinct from transitory features).

After his apprenticeship with Laban and Lawrence, Lamb set up his own consulting business in 1952.  Over the next dozen years, he tested what he had learned in a variety of applications – giving advice on short-listed candidates, career counseling, even executive head-hunting.

Warren took Laban’s ideas seriously, but he was also capable of thinking about them independently.

For example, Laban and Lawrence had applied trait and factor theory to their industrial work — define the effort factors needed in the job, identify the effort traits of the worker, and see how they match.… Read More

Warren Lamb made two ground-breaking discoveries.  First, he found that every individual has a movement pattern as unique as a fingerprint.  Secondly, he confirmed that these patterns are related to cognitive processes used in decision making.  This led to his creation: Movement Pattern Analysis (MPA).

The basis of MPA can be attributed to Laban’s insights, who seemed to have a knack for giving useful advice to workers and managers.  Lamb had to provide more detailed explanations, leading him to admit that what Laban seemed to do through inspiration, he had to do through perspiration.… Read More