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…
The Elevate team is lucky to know some amazing humans who have written some of the books we most recommend to help leaders deliver practical, successful, sustainable transformation. What would you ask your favorite business book authors if you had the chance to interview them about the book writing process? Read more…
One of the amazing transformation leaders I’ve been working with recently asked for more good ideas for continued learning: “Beyond the SAFe Community are there other national groups or forums you might recommend I get plugged into to keep up to speed on Agile and SAFe? Looking to stay better 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…
Sometimes when I’m working with a client to design and facilitate a Big Room Planning event [see Christine’s post on the various types of and agendas for BRPs], a client tries to segment the participant list. They want to invite certain people only to particular parts. The intent is kind: Read more…
In looking to help explain how we design and facilitate value-driven, culture-changing meetings, I find I regularly need to explain how I leverage JTBD. (There are a ton of different ways to describe and use JTBD out there and some are much more useful than others.) Have more questions after Read more…
The stand-up meeting, which we get from Scrum, can be one of the more magical, simple agile practices, helping the humans connect and collaborate and work as a team. But most of the stand-ups I observe fail to achieve the magic. As any Scrum trainer will tell you, the stand-up 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…