by John Brooker | Sep 1, 2015 | Collaborate, Develop Opportunities, Facilitate meetings, Free Articles, Innovate, Overcome Challenges, Tools
“Using a metaphor in front of a man as unimaginative as Ridcully was like a red flag to a bu…was like putting something very annoying in front of someone annoyed by it.” Terry Pratchett. Author. Lords and Ladies. If you want to explore a problem or opportunity well, here are five tools. Imagine that you are sitting in an exam hall with an MBA examination paper in front of you; the subject is Creativity, Innovation and Change. The examiner asks you to turn over your paper, you look at the first question and your mind goes completely blank. You cannot think how to tackle the question. An examination question is a problem to solve or an opportunity to show what you know. It is comparable to exploring a problem or opportunity in work. What are some ways you might structure your exploration? Some of you will know that until recently, I ran an exam study day for students on the Open University, “Creativity, Innovation and Change” course with my friend and associate, Elvin Box. We ran the last ever one in October 2012 (sadly this brilliant course has finished after twenty years) and so that they did not fall victim to the blank mind syndrome, we encouraged the students to structure how they might answer the question. To do this we suggested a number of generic tools that are easy to recall and use. As I travelled home from the study day, I thought those tools might be useful for Creative Gorillas. As a bonus, you can use them for evaluation too. 5 Ws and H Who? What?...
by John Brooker | Aug 31, 2015 | Collaborate, Develop Opportunities, Facilitate meetings, Free Articles, Overcome Challenges
“Be absolutely clear on the outcome (s) wanted and stay out of content. These are my two top tips.” John Brooker If you want to enhance your meeting facilitation, here are some tips I provide people on my courses. This week I had a note from a reader. He has several meetings to facilitate and asked if I could send him a copy of my “top ten tips for facilitation” that he had accidentally erased from his computer. I thought this might be the trigger for a new blog. Unable to find a previous article on this topic, it is with thanks to Tariq that I provide you with those top ten tips and a few more. I trust you will find them useful. Know your outcome and output Be absolutely clear on the required outcome, (e.g. “The Group will have created clear options for improved service in key areas”) and output of the meeting, (e.g. a report detailing those options). Be clear overall and for every session in it. This is the first tip, as everything flows from this. Focus on process not content Your role as a facilitator is to focus on the process. If you get involved in the content, you become a participant and that makes life difficult. If you have a stake in the content, if this project is your baby, ask someone to baby-sit for you! Think PACE Maintain pace As a facilitator you should consider PACE when designing and facilitating a meeting. Process – Attendees – Content – Environment Maintaining pace is important too! Your meeting should pulse with energy like a...
by John Brooker | Aug 30, 2015 | Collaborate, Facilitate meetings, Free Articles, Overcome Challenges, Solution Focus, Tools
“Float like a butterfly. Sting like a bee.” Muhammad Ali, former World Heavyweight Boxing Champion If you hold large gatherings for staff and clients, want to increase engagement and don’t want to create agendas, find speakers, obtain their presentations and run through time consuming rehearsals, Open Space might be the answer. I was one of the organisers of the SOLWorld Conference at Oxford University. This is an annual gathering of Solutions Focused practitioners from over twenty countries. Conference is not the best word to describe the SOL World events. My recollection of conferences is of speakers boring hundreds of people for thirty minutes with presentations that could have been read in five. Mind you, I did attend conferences on payments. SOLWorld in contrast is, as someone fed back to us, “inspiring, stimulating and fun-filled.” If you would like to experience a taste of it, you can download my photo diary here. One feature of SOLWorld gatherings is the use of Open Space, a form of meeting in which people self organise and for which there is no predetermined agenda. Owen Harrison, an organisational transformation (OT) consultant, allegedly “discovered” this style of meeting after the attendees at his first two OT conferences found the coffee breaks the most useful aspect. As he had no part in designing the coffee breaks, he decided to relieve himself of the burden of designing the event and hand it over to the participants. Open Space was born. If you hold large gatherings for staff and clients and are looking for an alternative to creating agendas, finding speakers, obtaining their presentations and running through time...
by John Brooker | Aug 25, 2015 | Collaborate, Facilitate meetings, Free Articles, Overcome Challenges, Solution Focus, Tools
“One does not have to be a mad scientist to travel in time.” Authors of research paper: “Back to the future. Temporal Perspective in the Explanation of Events.” Need to run a brief post project review including remote teams? Post Project (or phase of a project) Reviews are a regular type of meeting that organisations run. However, there can be some issues: Often, people are keen to get on with the next project or phase of the project; time is short amongst the team Projects don’t always go to plan; there can be sensitive issues to discuss leading to friction during the review Some parts of the team are often based in different locations and must participate via teleconference or video conference A client asked me to run a workshop to review one phase in a project. I expected this to be a half-day with all participants in London, no issue. However, my brief was to complete the workshop in two hours, be sensitive to some challenging topics and ensure three people linking in via videoconference would feel part of the workshop. Luckily, I enjoy a challenge. My first thought was that two hours was too short, however, it transpired that an extra 30 minutes extra were available if all agreed on the day. This was still not a lot of time, so I decided to use Solutions Focus (SF, please see Improve Collaboration With Solution Focus for a PDF article on this), which is very efficient and invaluable when there are sensitive topics to deal with. Even though I am highly experienced with SF, with a challenging brief I decided...
by John Brooker | Aug 17, 2015 | Develop Opportunities, Facilitate meetings, Free Articles, Overcome Challenges
“The client workshops have been a real success.” Director of Global Strategic Marketing How to improve client relationships The Director of Global Strategic Marketing in a large multinational company asked me if I could help them enhance a number of information gathering workshops during their annual corporate customer meeting? They told me that the intent of this day of the meeting is to: Provide customers with an overview of the product roadmaps and gain their feedback and input Explain the potential enhancements to products and gain a sense of customer priorities The workshops are run by Product and Relationship Managers more used to presenting and gathering information in smaller meetings. When running workshops in previous years, they had found it difficult to obtain the quantity and quality of advice they need and involve and interest all of the customers. Consequently, they wanted guidance on how to design and facilitate the workshops. To meet this need I ran a one day development workshop to highlight the importance of creating the right climate, show the value of a participative and interesting approach and develop facilitator confidence. So It was a very successful workshop and I thought it would be useful to share the learning with fellow Gorillas should you need to run multiple client (or staff) workshops. Due to space limitations I have limited this article to key points. If you would like to read the full case study with full learning points, please click here and download “Obtain Better Advice From Clients” from the articles page. Create the Right Climate If you are running a workshop that lasts one...
by John Brooker | Aug 13, 2015 | Collaborate, Develop Opportunities, Free Articles, Innovate
“They bartered, they smuggled and some sneakily stole from the opposite side to get a taster of the forbidden food.” Rachel Khoo TV Chef What might the benefits of innovative thinking be in your organisation? Recently, I came back from a walk one Saturday morning and the TV was on. The show was “The Little Paris Kitchen” hosted by Rachel Khoo. Rachel is primarily a culinary events organiser, many of which you can see on her site (of interest if you are looking for something different for your next corporate event!). In the show, chef Rachel used her 21 square metres Parisian flat as a restaurant with one table and a kitchen so tiny you can’t fit a full size chicken in the oven. It was innovative. It set me thinking about innovation and how, if it can be done in a tiny kitchen, it can be done anywhere, with often minimal resources. When you mention innovation there’s always a tendency for people to think of Apple and its products, or Amazon and its business model; innovation does not have to be that large scale or confined to products and delivery channels. Neither does it have to be the domain of the “expert”. Rachel Khoo was working in London as a PR for a fashion brand before she picked up her case and moved to Paris. She signed up to learn French and patisserie making when she got there. SO People can apply innovative thinking anywhere across an organisation. Why would your organisation want people to do that? Here are three reasons: Financial Organisations tend to introduce new...
