Responsible or accountable?

Who's accountable? Who will be taking the ultimate responsibility? Who do we need to consult with?

These were questions I heard a few times this week when I was facilitating large-scale workshops with businesses and project teams. Sometimes I was asking the questions and sometimes the participants were.

When it comes to the ACTION part of a conversation, meeting or workshop, all the things that need to be done may seem detailed and complex. I like to step through a series of actions that help a team build up to making big impactful decisions.

One tool I use often is known by the acronym RACI - you may be familiar with it : Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed. It's also known as a Responsibility Matrix.

Here's a visual RACI that I use in workshops and notes to help a team segment and separate out their thinking on responsibilities. (A lot of talk time can be taken up trying to work out the broad categories of action, let alone putting names next to them!) And identifying who is responsible and accountable early on in the process is a big help!

I enjoy help a team through their responsibilities and commitments stage of a workshop; I don't make the commitments for them, but I will provide a process that helps them work out the different types of responsibilities. 

Google RACI if you'd like to read up more on the process and be sure to print out my visual RACI (permanently on the Resources section of my website) and use it when you're next working out what needs to happen with actions and responsibilities. Now you're informed about RACI... you'reresponsible to do something with it!

Hey, it looks like this...

In a meeting with a client team this week, we were strugglig to understand the crux of a project, the keystone of a piece of work.

Then one of the managers jumped to his feet.

"It looks like this!" he said. His energy and enthusiasm shifted up a level. He stepped to the whiteboard, picked up a marker and drew a circle with two lines leading to it... he finished off with some smaller circles around the edge of the larger circle.

With this quick image, the talk and questioning of the previous 20 minutes were crystallised. So little effort yet with such a huge impact. The power of helping people see what you're thinking.

You've stepped up to a white board or flip chart before, but when you do, there are problems lurking.

My new whitepaper 5 Ways to more engaging flip charts and whiteboards explains how to avoid the problems and make your visual solution more engaging.

Download the whitepaper here and this week, step up, jump up and help people really see what you're thinking.

Mints, water, agenda. Where are the outcomes?

There's coffee on arrival, mints in little bowls, jugs of fresh water and an agenda on the tables - a gathering of the team for a strategy or team session. Perhaps it's a day or two, or you're fortunate enough to escape off-site in an effort to get fresh perspective and avoid workplace distractions.

The strategy or team session is a big investment of people, time, preparation, accommodation, travel, catering, audio visual support, time away from your role .... and on and on.

But simply getting people in the one venue and heading into the agenda doesn't get the best out of the group or that investment.

There are 7 problems I see with strategy and team sessions and they can all be avoided with pre-planning, creative input and the right resources. When I'm facilitating high-value strategy and team sessions for clients and providing input into agenda design before the event, there are key things I work to avoid. The difference in the feel and running of the session is certainly noticeable ... but the impact on outcomes achieved can be extreme.

The problems are in my new whitepaper - The 7 Problems with Strategy and Teams Sessions... and what to do about them.

Read it and act on it before you get the team together. 

What's your story?

I've just returned from some travels in far north Australia, to the 'pointy bit', the most northerly tip of the country - Cape York.

The main image above I took at the Split Rock Aboriginal Art Galleries near the town of Laura in far north Australia. The history in the area goes back 40,000 years and there are many stories and milestones recorded in these rock art galleries. It's an important way for the culture to survive. The images capture information, convey ideas and tell significant stories. They're like a storyboard of what was happening at the time.

Last century, Walt Disney used storyboards to capture his innovative thoughts and map out the flow of his productions. In current day, it's mainly the advertising industry that makes use of this tool.

What delierate tools do you use to engage and connect with others - to capture your thinking, to convey information, to collaborate? 

A rough storyboard can map out the stages of a project, the desired outcomes, the key people involved, the timelines. A corporate product team I recently worked with created this storyboard and many others around the room. The team was highly engaged, transfixed on the images, contributing throughout the day. 

Help people see the possibilities, identify opportunities and collaborate. I believe we all have 'visual mojo'; we had it when we were younger children, happy to bring our thoughts, stories and ideas to life and put them on show for passers by. 
Where did it go? Get your visual mojo back.  For trainers, speakers, facilitators and project leaders who need to unite a team to a vision or gather group input, storyboarding is engaging and captivating - and it need only last a few weeks or months - not 40,000 years.  

Visualising TEDx Melbourne

It was a thrill to be at the recent TEDx Melbourne event - not on the stage as a speaker, nor in the audience. I was on the sidelines graphic recording as the speakers presented on the topic of Education Leadership.

Three 18 minute talks showing a global, state and local perspective of leading in education. As the room was being set up before the event, and the TEDx banners and signage were put in place, the speakers did microphone sound checks and a had a final run through of their talks.
Then it was show time; the speakers presented, the audience listened, and I listened too... capturing in the moment the key themes I was hearing. Here's the end product - a large wall chart. At the end of the evening I was interviewed for a podcast (the edited link is here) by the guys atEdTechCrew (the full podcast) about graphic recording and using visuals as well as words. 

So... if the stage was yours, how would you structure your 18 minute TED talk? How would you start off? What would your key points be? What stories would you tell? How would you finish?

There were more speakers to listen to this week at the LAST Conference (Lean, Agile and Systems Thinking) in Melbourne. I presented on the topic of Visual Collaboration and also captured several of their presentations using the ipad. Several speakers had more than 18 minutes to fill and so I wondered, how did they prepare? What were their key points? I was tempted to walk over and 'pull the plug' on the data projector and slide show a couple of times! Too much reliance on what was on the big screen, not enough faith that their content and thinking could be delivered even more powerfully without the technology. 

As Leonardo Da Vinci said "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication". It's not always quick to simplify, but it's most effective and most engaging in a busy firehose-full-of-information world.

Get closer to simple before you stand and deliver your next talk, presentation or workshop. Your audience will be engaged and it will be memorable for the right reasons!