by John Brooker | Mar 3, 2012 | Facilitate meetings
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 63 If you are flexible about meeting outcomes, you can be much more successful.… “I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I’m in a cabinet meeting.” Ronald Reagan, former President of the USA Are you flexible enough in your meetings? Recently, I ran a workshop for a team of engineering managers. The team had a number of issues to discuss and we had designed a very full agenda. At the end of the first day, it became clear that some of the early issues required more discussion than anticipated and needed to be resolved. We could have shelved this discussion in order to achieve the planned outcomes. Instead, I sat down with the senior manager in the evening and we redesigned day two to develop and resolve the issues that really concerned the team. Yes, we had to shelve some of the other issues; however, the workshop ended with lots of energy and had a 96% satisfaction rating, which would have been unlikely if we had pressed on with the original design. So What tips might you gain from this about designing and running workshops? Here are my thoughts: Involve the group in the workshop design. Often the sponsor sets the agenda alone and the group has no ownership. Involving the group can help you avoid changes to the agenda during the workshop Limit agenda items to key issues and leave time for more discussion on these. You can always have a couple of discussion ideas ready if the meeting looks like it will...
by John Brooker | Mar 2, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 62 Encourage people to think they are innovative and there is a good chance they’ll innovate. “If you can put the mind in a healthy place, you can have dramatic physiological consequences.” Ellen Langer, Professor of Psychology, Harvard University Could you improve your business by encouraging a change in mindset? One of the pleasures of travelling is that I get to read the newspaper at breakfast. Reading the South African version of the Sunday Times the other week I came across an article about a piece of research conducted by Harvard University. In essence it said that if you imagine that you are losing weight, you will, as long as you do some exercise. The researchers noticed that housekeepers in hotels were less healthy than expected even though they exceeded the daily recommended exercise limits. To establish if a change in mindset might make a difference, they divided the staff into two groups. They told Group 1 that their work gave them enough exercise to lose weight and keep fit and explained how many calories they should burn a day. They told the Group 2 members nothing. People in Group 1 lost an average of 1kg each in a month with other significant benefits. The Group 2 individuals had no change. What a great result, albeit with the caveat that just changing the mindset is not good enough, you do have to do some exercise as well. (Sorry to all of you dreaming away 10 kilos of surplus energy stores whilst stirring your tea). The cynic may say that by focusing a person’s mind...
by John Brooker | Mar 1, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 61 There’s always a stimulus for creativity, random connection can help find it “For every living creature that succeeds in getting a footing in life there are thousands or millions that perish. There is an enormous random scattering for every seed that comes to life. This does not remind us of intelligent human design. “If a man in order to shoot a hare, were to discharge thousands of guns on a great moor in all possible directions; if in order to get into a locked room, he were to buy ten thousand casual keys, and try them all; if, in order to have a house, he were to build a town, and leave all the other houses to wind and weather – assuredly no one would call such proceedings purposeful and still less would anyone conjecture behind these proceedings a higher wisdom, unrevealed reasons, and superior prudence.” John W.N. Sullivan Science Writer (d 1937) “Just as well you won’t read this article John.” John Brooker Are you stuck for an idea? I sat having a beer and a toasted cheese sandwich in the bar of my hotel in Luanda, Angola, earlier this month. It was a slightly surreal experience as I was eating in the dark, breached only by the dim glow of the myriad oil industry PC screens on battery power. Luanda had suffered another power cut and we waited for the emergency generator to kick in. The pianist played gamely on and I mused that sight reading of music is obviously not the principal qualification for a pianist in Angola. As he...
by John Brooker | Feb 29, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 60 With the right climate in place you can make your workshops outstanding. “Away from home our fans are fantastic, I’d call them the hardcore fans. But at home they have a few drinks and probably the prawn sandwiches and they don’t realise what’s going on out on the pitch. I don’t think some of the people who come to Old Trafford can spell ‘football’ never mind understand it.” Roy Keane, ex Captain of Manchester United. (Type “Prawn sandwich” and “Keane” in to Google for some more Keane rants, if you don’t mind bad language!) Are prawn sandwiches spoiling your workshops? Have you ever walked in to a workshop room and your heart has sunk? Mine hit the bottom of the Atlantic recently. The room I entered had no natural light, barely any space around the tables and a ceiling so low I have a picture of a delegate with his hand through the tiles during an exercise! The temperature fluctuated hot and cold and the artificial lighting was dim enough to make me stand under a bulb to read my notes. I put on my music, put some cheerful posters on the wall and made the best of it for the two days. The most constant complaint I see on feedback forms is about the environment. A bad one tends to make energy slump and demotivate people. The other side of the coin is to pay for a fantastic hotel and pack so much into the schedule that people can’t use the fancy Jacuzzi, spa pool and four poster bed. See the complaints...
by John Brooker | Feb 29, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 59 Sometimes people accept second best solutions because they don’t take the trouble to explore a little more. “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” Martin Luther King Are you satisfied or satisficed with some of your solutions? In the Netherlands last weekend, I ran an Open University course on creative problem solving (I hope that’s triggered good memories for the many of you who are OU MBA graduates). I had a brilliant group, very friendly and ready for some fun. Our venue was great, however, I found a problem; it was a long way to the rest room. It was en route from the hotel reception to the classroom, but a long return trip from the classroom. If I had to take a quick “comfort break” during an exercise (those of you who facilitate will know you often get no chance for a break at break time), I would exit the classroom, turn right and make a mad dash, sometimes a very mad dash! A most inconvenient convenience. A couple of hours before the end of the course, I sent small teams out in search of space to draft giant maps of their learning. Ten minutes later I went looking for them, turned left, walked through a set of double doors and almost fell in to a rest room, just five metres from the classroom. I burst out laughing and used it, just because I could! OK, going to the rest room is...
by John Brooker | Feb 28, 2012 | Facilitate meetings
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 58 When you communicate an important change message you must repeat it often to make it stick. “I expected…more.” Durza, character in Eragon Do you blame those who resist change? Do they resist deliberately or do they miss your message? Today I took the children to see the film Eragon, a tale of a young “dragon flyer”. I went with some trepidation, imagining it would be similar to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. These were films I watched without comprehending the plot (ok, I figured the ring had something to do with it), baffled by the characters (so whose army is this then?) and lip reading as I strained to hear their mumbled lines. With that in mind, Eragon was a pleasant surprise. The words were clear, they kept the plot simple and repeated the character names often enough so that even the older generation (i.e. me) could understand who was who. True, there was some dialogue to make you cringe towards the end (courtesy of the Dictionary of Clichéd Clichés) but it is a film aimed at children. Before Christmas I co-facilitated a workshop. The participants were a group of change managers involved in a serious piece of change management. They are experiencing strong resistance to their change efforts and so my colleague and I were asked to help them reflect on their efforts and provide guidance on good change management practice. We had them elicit their issues and it was no surprise that communication came up as one of them. Specifically there was a lack of a clear vision from senior...
