Dan Bobinski, in this article on more productive meetings, gives some good advice on keeping meetings tightly focussed. In this case, it’s about strategy meetings and how they should not fuzz into tactics.
He goes on to discuss the importance of good preparation, good wrap up, good follow up and how this is […]
Here’s another excerpt from Chip Scanlan’s article on Tools of the Trade: The Question.
Unfortunately, in all too many cases, interviews have become the street theater of news with both sides tacitly accepting their role. The reporter asks questions that may sound tough but provide subjects a variety of exit ramps while the subject pretends that […]
John R Brandt had an interesting article a while ago in IndustryWeek self titled Brandt On Leadership — How To Run An Effective Meeting in which he says:
Every meeting should reinforce the idea that nothing of importance can happen without you.
In the article he offers some tips about agendas, background materials, process and follow-up […]
Carmine Gallo has an article in Business Review Weekly on How to Run a Meeting Like Google. Gallo interviewed Marissa Mayer (Google’s vice-president of search products) about her approach.
In a shop like Google, much of the work takes place in meetings, and [Mayer’s] goal is to make sure teams have a firm mandate, strategic direction […]
Chip Scanlan, writing in Poynter Online [Everything you need to be a better journalist…], has an article on Tools of the Trade: The Question.
Like journalists, facilitative leaders are interested in the gentle art of questioning. The quality of your questions has a critical impact on the quality of what you can achieve.
Scanlan’s article contains […]
The folks at the Achieving Styles Institute have an interesting take on the ways individuals get things done. This is bundled into their Connective Leadership model.
Connective Leadership offers an important perspective for bringing together diverse, even conflicting, groups that exist in an interdependent environment. Achieving Styles are the nine underlying behavioral strategies that individuals characteristically […]
Here’s a post by Merlin Mann at 43 Folders on interviewing with “The Sawatsky Method”.
This is interesting for a couple of reasons. Firstly because Merlin Mann is one of the blogosphere’s leading lights on ‘productivity’. This is generally, but not exclusively, focussed on individuals, their technology and their lives.
So in this vein, the […]
Sandor Schuman, who moderates the International Association of Facilitators list-serv, has edited a new book: Creating a Culture of Collaboration.
In one sense, the subtitle says it all: The International Association of Facilitators Handbook. A glance through the table of contents shows a rich diversity of approaches, situations and learnings. These are all documented […]
One of my colleagues at the International Association of Facilitators list-serv posted this link to a talk by James Suroweicki at this year’s South by SouthWest festival.
It’s pretty good for the “WordSmart” among us. That is, those of you who do well in what Howard Gardner calls verbal-linguistic intelligence.
Poking around the South by SouthWest […]
Here’s another gem from David Tranter’s book Nature & Society:
Communities are not stamp collections, a name for things that are found together, they are the result of countless interactions between one species and another, interactions which generate laws that govern their collective lives.
Some people assert that groups do not create things per se: really it […]