by John Brooker | Sep 3, 2014 | Collaborate, Facilitate meetings, Innovate, Tools
YES! AND… #172 How might your team make better decisions? “When we hear all voices, we make better decisions.” Headline on Loomio website. Four years ago we had to make a decision to buy a bigger house or extend our own. That was a hard enough decision for two people to make. How much more difficult is it to make a decision when there is a group of people involved? Last week, I completed an Inn8 Workshop programme with twelve senior managers, using the Inn8 Model and Tools, to help them innovate. They developed two excellent new service propositions for their company and to achieve this had to decide on the opportunity to exploit, the solutions to implement and whether to proceed. To have twelve people agree on a decision requires them to understand the situation fully (in our case, the opportunity and the solution). This requires a willingness to listen to all voices, a structure and thinking tools. How can you gain that agreement, efficiently and effectively, so that people don’t leave the meeting thinking, “That’s what we agreed, but this is what I will do.” True, if you have enough power, you can force through decisions unilaterally. Strange though how difficult it can be to implement such decisions! So Here are some ideas and links to descriptive articles of tools that should help you to build sustainable decisions in your organisation, in the context of facilitating people to innovate. Most should help in other contexts too. Create Understanding Good decisions are informed decisions. Therefore, you need to create understanding amongst the decision makers (the group). This entails processing...
by John Brooker | Sep 1, 2014 | Develop Opportunities, Facilitate meetings, Overcome Challenges, Solution Focus
YES! AND… Collaborate. Innovate. Transform – Creative Gorilla #171 How might you engage teams using metaphor? This week, I ran a workshop for SFCT UK (Solution Focus Consulting and Training). We used the Explore Metaphor tool and this article will help you to use it. The SFCT workshop was to discuss my Team Impetus Model. This is a model designed to engage teams and shape strategy, using the metaphor of a ski jump. The ski jump metaphor was conceived after some iteration. The original concept was a traditional model with steps that went up. While “up” is a very ingrained metaphor, with positive meanings, I think it is easier to walk down than up! So I redesigned the model with descending steps. After discussing the downward step model with an international group of SF users, the idea arose for a metaphor that went down, but not steps; steps are fixed and don’t provide much impetus to move forward. The “ski jump” model was conceived. The concept is that ski jump has the advantage of taking you down to gather speed and lifting you up to “fly”. The jumper has control over momentum and the flight to ensure a good distance and safe landing. How did the SFCT group view the metaphor? “Explore Metaphor” Tool I introduced them to a tool to explore metaphors, developed while writing an article on metaphors. (Click here to go to a page and scroll down to download, “The Power of Metaphors to Transform Teams”) The Explore Metaphor Tool is based on four questions, laid out in four columns in a table. Here is the table used...
by John Brooker | Aug 31, 2014 | Collaborate, Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Collaborate. Innovate. Transform – Creative Gorilla #170 How to Coach People to Be More Creative “The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.” Oscar Wilde Recently, someone asked me how I might coach someone to be more creative when they think they are not creative? The question provoked a lot of thinking on my part and I would like to share my response with you as leaders so that you can deal with such a situation. Everyone can be creative In my career as a business leader and as a tutor with the Open University, I met a few people who told me they were not creative and I observed quite a few who were not being creative. You probably have too. However, that does not mean they are not creative, it means we have different ways of approaching it. Dr. M. J. Kirton, creator of the Kirton Adapter Innovator (KAI) style profile, says: “Those who are adaptive in style are characterised by precision, reliability, efficiency; seen as methodical, prudent, disciplined. Those more innovative in style are seen as thinking tangentially, approaching tasks from unsuspected angles; undisciplined, unpredictable.” From this description, do you agree that adaptive people are more likely to say they are uncreative? In my experience it is true, but as Kirton explains, “One must remember that adaptors and innovators can have equal capacity, insight and creativity.” So, if someone tells you they are not creative, reassure them that we can all be creative, though we have different ways of contributing to creative outcomes. Four issues that inhibit creativity Having reassured them they can be...
by John Brooker | Aug 29, 2014 | Collaborate, Facilitate meetings, Free Articles, Overcome Challenges, Solution Focus
How might you resolve interpersonal tension between leaders? “Conflict can and should be handled constructively; when it is, relationships benefit.” In, “Who’s Pulling Your Strings?” by Harriet B. Braiker Recently, a company asked me to run a workshop for them. During a fact-finding call to establish the client’s situation and required meeting outcomes, I learned that two senior people involved in the workshop were not working well together. People had noticed tension between them in other meetings. As the client’s outcome for the pending meeting was to build an effective working relationship between three teams, it was vital that the two leaders work effectively together during the meeting. I suggested that I hold a pre meeting with the two leaders and the client arranged this. The following is an outline of the intervention that you can follow. Intervention Outline To establish a relationship with them, and to save time during the pre-meeting, I telephoned each leader to establish their view of the situation in terms of what they wanted. I asked them three questions: Imagine the pre-meeting works really well, what would your outcomes be? What would you like to be different about the situation? What would you and others notice is better if the situation improves? You can adapt these, but note that I did not ask, “What are the issues?” or “Why is there conflict?” These would focus them on the problem and achieve little. Before the meeting I wrote notes of their individual responses, and asked them to verify their own answers. I also wrote each answer on Post – it Notes (use a different colour...
by John Brooker | Aug 26, 2014 | Collaborate, Facilitate meetings
YES! AND… Collaborate. Innovate. Transform – Creative Gorilla #168 What lessons did you learn in the last 12 months to help you in future? “Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets.” Leonardo Da Vinci Out walking recently, I thought back over the last twelve months and concluded it had been really enjoyable and interesting business year for me, with three projects that stood out. As I walked, I considered new lessons I had learned or old lessons reinforced from those projects. Here they are; I trust they might provoke some thoughts for fellow Gorillas. Revenue and bid course I co – designed and facilitated a three – day course for sales and marketing people on revenue awareness and responding to tenders. I ran this for a client in several Asian countries, sometimes with multi-cultural groups, sometimes single culture groups. Lesson 1 – Building the right climate works for all cultures If you encourage people to collaborate quickly, you help to avoid cultural issues. Whatever course or workshop I facilitate, I use a similar process to that you can find in Creative Gorilla 164. While this article focuses on building an innovation climate, you can use the method to build a micro culture in any meeting or course. As my experience in many countries and now Asia proves to me, it works in single and multi-cultural groups anywhere. Lesson 2 – Accelerated learning works globally Accelerated Learning (AL) actively involves the whole person, using physical activity, creativity, music, images, colour, and other methods designed to have people become involved more deeply in their own learning....
