by John Brooker | Oct 23, 2018 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate, Tools
Yes! And Blog #117 Help your team progress with the Progress Canvas… “I never cry about what I don’t have. I’m always positive. I am happy with the team I have and I am confident that we can do well.” Fabio Capello, former England football coach and optimist On the TV back in 2010, pundits were discussing what had to be done to enable England to win the World Cup, England having gone out in the second round (Round of Sixteen), losing to Germany 4 – 1. Eight years later, having achieved the semi finals, it seems England have made progress. How might England have achieved that progress? In my work, I use a tool called the Progress Canvas with teams. This is based on one known as the Strategy Canvas (see here for original article). The Progress Canvas provides a simple way for teams to describe the future they want, make progress towards it and monitor how they are doing. You use the tool in steps: Step 1: Detail a preferred future by asking, “What would we, our customers and other stakeholders notice when we are successful?” I like to have teams draw a picture and then document this, but there are many alternatives. Step 2: Identify the five to six areas your customers / stakeholders would say you must focus on to achieve success: Discuss if these focus areas really are critical to success and whether collectively they will enable you to achieve success Avoid having more than 5 – 6 focus areas, otherwise they are unlikely to be focus areas. Step 3: On a scale of 1...
by John Brooker | Mar 30, 2017 | Collaborate, Facilitate meetings, Free Articles, Overcome Challenges, Solution Focus, Tools
“Anyone got a Swiss Army Knife?” Construction worker in a TV programme This facilitator’s scaling tool can help your team improve performance very quickly… I am on the way to the airport, stuck in traffic jams in snowy weather. To complete my joy, I have just received a text telling me that my flight home is cancelled and the next flight is in seven hours. So I thought I would do something enjoyable and write the blog in the back of the cab. Recently, I ran a facilitation master class, something I have run successfully many times for MBA students. I go into this class without a plan and have attendees write on Post It notes what they want to know about facilitation. I have two hours to provide and demonstrate all the answers. On this occasion, an attendee wrote that he wanted a multi purpose tool to help him facilitate meetings quickly. This article shares with you the tool I provided to the students. It is based on “Scaling”, a tool from Solutions Focus, a methodology I use a lot. To make it more real for you, imagine you are a creative leader working with a team (I used “facilitation” as the class topic). Here are the steps that I put together on the spot from my experience: Ask them to consider what would be happening if they were performing really badly, the worst team in the organisation, world, wherever. Assign that description as “1” on a scale. Have them describe the benefits if they were performing brilliantly as a team. Assign that description a “10”....
by John Brooker | Mar 30, 2016 | Collaborate, Facilitate meetings, Free Articles, Overcome Challenges, Solution Focus, Tools
How might you use scaling more creatively? Imagine you are a sheep. Your experience is limited to a gambol around fields but now you are in the back of a truck on a glorious autumn day, watching the world zip by at 50 miles per hour (80 KPH). As I overtake your truck on the motorway, the question I want to ask you (as a sheep) is, “On a scale of 1 – 10, where 10 is high, how surreal is this experience for you?” That question came to mind as I was driving back from Coventry recently, partly because my mind was in that engaged / disengaged state you have when driving and partly because I had been reflecting on a workshop I had participated in the previous day, at our SFCT UK meeting. In the workshop I asked, “What ways can we use the Solution Focus (SF) scaling tool in workshops?” Scaling is a way to measure a variety of performance related items like motivation, confidence, understanding, progress, success, etc. Typically SF people use the 1 – 10 scale and I often use the tool with people standing in a line, from 1 – 10; I wanted to explore other ways to use it. Please see Blog 41 and Blog 124 for further explanation of SF and Scaling. With thanks to Jenny Clarke, John Wheeler, David Shaked and James Lawley for their contributions in the workshop. So With a small group of talented people, we elicited a number of interesting ways to scale, which I share here with you. Apart from the first two (me and Cyriel Kortleven),...
by John Brooker | Oct 3, 2015 | Free Articles, Overcome Challenges, Solution Focus, Tools
In this article, you will learn how to use metaphor and its structure. You will see how metaphors help shape your thinking and the thinking of others and how you can use them in practical ways in work and workshops. Please download this PDF article here The Power of Metaphors to Transform Teams...
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...
