NEW BOOK

Coming May 2024 

Clever Skills

How to use your greatest human capabilities for the unfolding future 

 

 

AS PUBLISHED IN

 

 

 

 

See Lynne's 2024

Masterclasses & Workshops 

 

 

 

Award winning & Best selling

10 x author

 

 

What people say...

 

 

I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which I live - the Yalukit-Willam - and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging. 

 

 

Entries in learning (35)

Friday
Mar152024

Coping with overload / Status anxiety /Job opportunities / Chunk and Learn and Learn/ Clever Skills coming

Answers to overload

In the work world of too much information, it doesn't take long before we feel the effects of cognitive overload.

The pace and amount of information isn't slowing down, so we have to adapt to cope. Meetings, conversations, presentations, learning, to do lists, project tasks … there’s just too much to carry. Everyday.

The information deluge is forever incoming. And AI is creating more information to review, make sense of and filter.

Our mind space is limited. And when we don’t use that space well, we experience overload.

Conferences, offsites, team days and information-based events (remote or in person) create the perfect — and challenging — conditions for information overload.

I worked with a team recently who want to make this a focus for development this year.

They’re tackling overload and kind of saying, ‘no more; we need to do something differently.’

And our everyday life isn’t easier. We’re frequently drowning in the deluge of scrolling, reading, listening, shopping, packing, travelling and planning.

But we don’t need to suffer … or give up. There are techniques and practices that help give us a clearer mind and an optimistic outlook about all that information and what to do with it.

My new OPENING KEYNOTE for conferences, events, offsets and team days is a winner. It sets you up to get the most out of the day, 10x your learning takeaways, and makes you feel better at the end of the day.

Enquire now about these vital skills for your team, people and organisation.


Where the job opportunities are

The short answer is: everywhere.

The longer answer is: jobs will continue to be needed.

As investment, opportunities, ideas and innovations emerge and evolve, new and additional careers will rise to the surface. And keep on emerging and changing.

As we need more and different things in life, we may outsource, delegate, distribute or invite others to help us with those things. To design them, collaborate, create, make or innovate them.

And we may not know what they are right now. But cycles come and go, rise and fall, ebb and flow.

Keep in touch with what’s changing and how it might impact your career — or the path you’re on right now, and where that path may lead.

Read more from the World Economic Forum in this article.


Do you chunk

Dealing with information overload is a daily battle. Some things are most certainly worth remembering - while others are just … meh. Nope.

To help handle the load, chunking is still right up there with one of our greatest memory tools. Think mobile numbers, account numbers or other memorable details; they’re best recalled in chunks or small blocks.

And while some data doesn’t need remembering these days thanks to facial recognition or fingerprints, there’s some unique-to-you information that is worth retaining. Your expertise.

Don’t be too quick to delegate all of your ideas, information and experience to artificial intelligence.

You have case studies, stories, experiences and know-how that is worth remembering and reincorporating into your work, career and life whenever it’s required. Public speaking, coaching and leading are some situations where being able to draw from your memory could boost results and outcomes. And chunking could help with the recall.

Read more here in this article.

 


Learn … and keep on learning

Our ability — and willingness — to learn really is one of our most wonderful capabilities.

Our capability to become more capable!

The world needs us to keep on learning. Don’t stop. It’s about becoming a renaissance person. Read on.


New book coming - pre order

Clever Skills : How to use your greatest human capabilities for the unfolding future by Lynne Cazaly

Hello. How's it going? As the future arrives faster and faster, with more automation, artificial intelligence and augmentation than ever, how do you plan to adapt?

Do you know … or are you going with whatever happens happens?

While FOMO (fear of missing out) can be strong in life, there is an increasing and real FOBO (fear of being obsolete).

Our desire for relevance, meaning and purpose is strong. But is this default strong enough to handle the dizzying changes as they arrive and unfold?

3 questions for you:

1. How will you stay relevant?

2. How will you adapt your career so you are employable -- yet retain meaning in your work?

3. What will you need to do to stay with (and ahead) of changes in your industry, field and domain?

I am obsessed with picking trends, spotting themes before they are mainstream, and then adapting myself, my business and life to these shifts.

Here’s a project I’ve been gathering and curating over four years : CLEVER SKILLS: How to use your greatest human capabilities for the unfolding future

In Clever Skills I share 25 capabilities that will take you through times of rapid and/or mind blowing change.

With wise counsel and insights and experience from leading in companies, mentoring more than 150 business owners and developing teams and leaders, I’ve curated an in-depth list of clever. It’s presented as an easy-to-follow 'life-side-guide' on what to do now, next and in the unfolding future.

Pre-order at a special pre-order price

🥏 Released May 1, 2024 Unless the future unfolds even faster 😜

🥏🥏 Pre order the paperback here


NEW SPEAKER KIT

Looking for a speaker for your offsite, team day, conference or event, get my 2024 speaker kit with details on:

  • Opening Keynote on Cognitive Load Coping
  • Plenary and Masterclass Topics
  • Closing Conference Session - The Co-Creation Experience TM

Get it here

Thursday
Jul062023

HR's New Ways/Asynchronous Work/Beyond Yes and... / NZ Workshops/Tedx Melbourne/See Workish

I'm coming for you, New Zealand 

It's exciting to be planning a return visit to Wellington, New Zealand (August 14 - 18, 2023) for some live in-person workshops! It's been a while, pre-pandemic, you know! 

There are 4 topics to choose from: 

🌕 VISUAL SENSEMAKING

Monday August 14: 9am - 12.30pm

This is one of the most popular workshop training programs I've been delivering over the past 10 years, and it's evolved to give you these highly clever visual skills to help you think, understand, decide, communicate and collaborate better in times of change and uncertainty. The Institute for the Future identified Sensemaking as a capability we'd need for these times, and this session will give you what you need. If you've heard about my workshops that have helped people sketch and draw, this is the session; we'll use visualisation as one of the key tools for making sense of what's happening, helping with your thinking, decision making, collaboration and innovation. 

 

🌕 ADVANCED TECHNIQUES IN FACILITATION

Tuesday August 15: 9am - 12.30pm

Lift your capability to design processes, lead groups and achieve outcomes ... and, handle challenging situations, people, groups and projects. If you've already had some experience facilitating or you've attended some initial training on facilitation skills, it's time to take things to the next level and move beyond the clichés that are too often part of the facilitator's vocabulary and toolkit. Time to step things up! Bring along queries, challenges, questions and curiosities as the whole learning session will be facilitated. 

 

🌕 CHANGE TOOLS

Thursday August 17: 9am - 12.30pm

This has been a popular workshop program for leaders and managers involved in change and transformation - whether by their job title, or as part of the work they're doing. It's not easy to navigate the change environment, communicate, influence and shift people's thinking when you're working with such diverse levels of engagement, interest and involvement. Leading change needs clever, creative, adaptive tools. Use the 10 change tools I'll share and demonstrate in the workshop to better engage, lead and impact in change and transformation. Bring along an example of anything you're working on in change and we'll apply the tools to it.

 

🌕 SPEAKING MASTERCLASS

Friday August 18: 9am - 12.30pm

Take your speaking and presenting to higher levels of performance: more creative, impactful, engaging and memorable. For all levels of expertise. If you've been invited to speak or present at a conference, or you'd like to develop this aspect of your consulting business or practice, or you're just curious to know how you might do better in the world of speaking, this session is going to be a winner. I'll be sharing insights from my journey from not speaking, to speaking a little, to speaking a lot, internationally, and the key things I've learned about the craft, the business and the audiences! Again, bring along queries, challenges and goals and we'll tackle them. 

 

All sessions use accelerated learning techniques so we cover a lot and achieve great outcomes in a half-day session. No waffle. No words wasted. No dull PowerPoints. Only actions, outcomes and acceleration in learning. 

 

Get tickets here

 


See Workish 

This is the new 5-minute video wrap and curation of work and work-related topics I'm creating and sharing. It brings you up to date with work trends, ideas, information and developments related to work-ish things. 

 

Workish Episode 1 features:

Future AI jobs, Procrastiworking, Remote loneliness, Text to music, Human centric lives, Swipe useless meetings ... and some music from Theådore

 

Workish Episode 2 features:

The Business Case for Wellbeing, Designing Offices for the Future, Get Back into the office ... No... it's too expensive !, Async Secret Weapon, Jump on a Chopper

 

Workish Episode 3 features:

Return to office tensions, Integrating AI at work, Replacing managers with coaches, Neuropsychological safety at work, Attracting GenZ talent, New Zealand in person workshops

 

 

 

Improv. It’s more than ‘yes and …’

Ask someone about improvisation and they might say, ‘it’s all about saying ‘yes, and …’ or ‘hey isn’t that when comedians make things up’ or ‘oh my favourite show is ‘Whose line is it anyway’. 

Yet improvisation is so much more than this and has such wide application across different parts of our life. 

While there are many philosophies, principles, schools and practices for improv, know this... 

it is possibly one of the greatest capabilities to have in these times of uncetainty, change, challenge and pressure. 

 

I’m a fan of improv - learning about it from Impro Melbourne over many years, performing it at different events and shows and reading widely about it. 

 

But perhaps the greatest application and use of improv has been in my everyday life. 

 

Sometimes the sh*t hits the fan. At different times in life, things happen, and you’re confronted by the stuff of life that is painful, difficult, tough or challenging … to say the least. 

How do you cope, handle or deal? 

The learned principles and practices of improvisation when applied daily to life can help. 

Don’t dismiss. Don’t laugh it off. Don’t think there’s something wrong with you. 

With an improviser’s mindset you’ll be able to tackle, respond and cope. Well. This is possible by using improv tools, principles and practices that help us:

▫️adapt

▫️be creative

▫️trust ourselves, and 

▫️move ahead. 

These benefits make improvisation way more than a skill for the stage. 

Read more about it in this article from Psychology Today about Keith Johnstone.

 


TEDx Melbourne - a night of AI

5 x AI speakers … at TEDxMelbourne

An insightful bot view into artificial intelligence in creativity, health, education, the future. 

 

Jon Yeo shared the comprehensive and detailed process of the last 6 months, coaching and curating the artificial bot speakers and their content, tone. 

The extensive prompts, iterations, output, experiments and lessons were outlined. There were many questions and comments from the room of 100% human attendees! 

 

Some quotable quotes: 

- This was a complete experiment. We didn’t know what we’d get out of it. 

- If it’s boring, blame the source material. 

- Does art require a soul?

- It’s not human. Do we want it to be human? Are we ok with that if it is? 

- It’s more binary than granular. 

- The law of averages exist in large amounts of data. 

- Who gets to choose the deployment of AI?

- It’s an intelligence … but it’s not artificial. What kind of intelligence is it then? 

… and thank you to the sponsors and volunteers who helped make the event happen. 

 


On Asynchronous Work

Watch this session I presented for the Remote Agility Framework community on my book Sync Async: Making progress easier in the changing world of work

 

 

Over the past 18 months I've been working with several Human Resources teams, helping them boost their capabilities for the new world of work. 

That means, newer ways of working, working in different ways, trying new things, evolving their processes and ways of thinking. 

Join this complimentary session if you're an HR professional and would like to learn about new ways in HR. 

It's on July 20, 2023 from 2 - 3pm AEST. A recording will be made available. 

 

The session outline : 

As the world of work keeps evolving, there's so much that's changing in every workplace. 

And Human Resources practitioners are so often involved with that change: initating, guiding, advising, championing, advocating and innovating. 

So committed to the support of people in the organisation, the HR function can often be left behind in capability development and innovation ... while the rest of the organisation forges ahead with the new and wonderful!

Newer ways of working are sweeping the world and bringing changes to workplaces across every sector, field and industry. 

🌕Is your HR team evolving and adapting to be able to respond to the changing world of work? 

🌕Or are you using the same tools, methods, practices and process of the past?

🌕What is the cost when the HR team aren't leading -- or at least up with -- the evolution of new ways of working? 

 

⭐️Case studies and insights⭐️

I'll present case studies from working directly with HR teams, what capabilities they've developed ... and why.

Join this complimentary masterclass and I'll share the new ways of working that HR teams are adopting to ensure they're able to handle the changing world of work. 

Registrations are free; sign up here

 

 

Wednesday
Oct202021

5 Tips for Better Thinking 

Here they are … because better thinking leads to better decisions and results and outcomes. 

1. Think about thinking
2. Be aware of loops
3. Add to your mental model toolbox 
4. Make diversity the rule not the exception 
5. Remember emotional agility (and Susan David, Ph.D. book ‘Emotional Agility’ is a beauty!)


Read more about each of these five tips in this Entrepreneur Media article by Aytekin Tank from JotForm

Thursday
Sep232021

Brighten up your creative mindset

Creativity isn't just for artists, painters, sculptors and creators. It's helpful for problem solving, opportunity making, perspective taking. 

Check out this quick video tip on how to build your creative mindset. 

Thursday
Sep232021

So smart ... but making silly decisions 

As we try to cope with the overwhelm of daily information, our brains work to protect us ... from ‘over-arousal’. 

When it’s all too much, we create oversimplified ways of thinking. It’s easier. But this means we can slip up in our decision making. 

WATCH OUT for ways of thinking that are: 
1. Binary (yes/no)
2. Intuitive (based on the past)
3. Confirmative (aligned to our biases)
4. Primary Effect (we overlook the ripple effect). 

If we can ‘overwrite’ these easy, existing pathways in our brains, we’ll make better choices and smarter decisions. 

How to ‘overwrite’ the brain? 
🏃‍♀️ Exercise. 
💤 Sleep. 

And this has huge implications for when you’re trying to learn new things

Read more in this great article from Worth Media and work on overwriting those simple pathways to progress towards better thinking and decision making. 

Now, when can I take a nap? 💤