Lately I’ve been really appreciating the growth mindset of Eric, my friend, business partner and–this spring–skiing partner. In this, just his second season of skiing, he’s progressing quickly, and now he’s leading us down some of the hardest mogul runs at Mary Jane (where I’ve been skiing the blacks for Read more…
Look in your calendar. How clear is the desired outcome of each meeting you’ll attend today? How is each meeting setting the tone, the culture of your organization? Often our meetings have grown a bit stale; they often need a bit of a re-think and re-design. (And we’re too often Read more…
Not all icebreakers add value to a meeting. Here are some we love and why we love them. We frequently include icebreakers in our meetings, starting with the basic goals: Get people participating Help the humans see each other as humans (vs the various issues or positions they might represent) Read more…
While chatting with a client over the weekend, I realized how much my time training and teaching martial arts continues to influence the way I engage with the world. We were specifically amused with the idea of a classroom full of aspiring agile coaches participating in a call/response, and it Read more…
One of the most common questions I’ve been asked as both a transformation leader and transformation facilitator is “how do I effectively empower my leaders?”. There are some lovely tools for iterating towards higher levels of empowerment and some small but powerful practices (updates to your own behavior and language) Read more…
As coaches and change agents, we are so often told to ‘start with why’. As someone who’s used Sinek’s golden circle thinking tool for a very long time, I’m a huge proponent of this. However, while there is often unified consensus around the effectiveness of this approach, I have found Read more…
I hear so many amazing humans in F1000, F500, F10 companies talking about having meetings from 7 to 6, from 8 to 6… and then trying to do their “actual” work after that. Meetings are “actual” work, so let’s make sure we’re prioritizing them, and saying no or “not yet” Read more…
My family would go camping up at Turquoise Lake when I was young. My brother and I loved sleeping in the tent, cooking outside, hiking to find wild strawberries, and playing in and around the lake. We would stay for a few days, and just before we left, when all Read more…
Details, purpose, attendees and agendas vary rather widely in BRP. That’s because Big Room Planning (BRP) is a name used to describe several types of collaborative, large group working sessions. These sessions often include some sort of mid-range or quarterly planning, and the steering and alignment creation needed for such planning.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the very practical ways that leaders at all levels can build an amazing organizational culture through practice. Last week I had the great fun of discussing some of those ideas in a virtual fireside chat with Bob Galen. The video recording of that Read more…