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....
by John Brooker | Feb 8, 2012 | Facilitate meetings
YES! AND… Facilitate. Innovate. Transform – Creative Gorilla # 39 A lot of training is ineffective because companies don’t encourage people to consolidate their learning back at work before sending them off on the next course. The learning organisation is useful. The learn and dump organisation is not… “The process of learning requires not only hearing and applying but also forgetting and then remembering again.” John Gray Do you or people you work with find yourself on another training course before you’ve had time to consolidate the last one? Out running the other day I was thinking what training courses I might do this year. It then struck me that perhaps I might spend my time more constructively if I implement some of the things I have learned in the last couple of years. Now that doesn’t mean I have implemented nothing. I use a lot of the facilitation and training material I have learned, in my day to day work. But I know I could use a couple of days to review the course materials and identify some of the subtler points. When it comes to marketing though, I know I have not implemented a number of the ideas I have identified in the self study courses I have bought. In fact I know a couple I haven’t read! That led me to think about the concept of the “learning organisation”. Talking to the Head of Training for a client the other day, he mentioned that he had just sent out a note to fellow attendees on a course he had attended a year before. He asked them...
