The cost of confusion

How much time do we spend trying to make sense of things, re-reading, scanning, skipping through information trying to piece it all together.

While the world’s productivity gurus are keen on selling us a new app or habit, what if we looked at the cost of confusion and sought to reduce the time we spend confusing people.

Rather than acting like we’ve got it together, what if we set aside a few minutes in a meeting to make sense? What if, instead of saying ’Now, let me give you some context’ and embarking on a 15-minute explanation of the history going back to the 1900s (yes this happened recently) we asked, ‘What do you need to make sense of?’

What if we shut up first.

What if we asked them about the parts they need to make sense of.

Imagine all the unnecessary detail, the overly long ‘context’ monologues and the long-winded ‘let-me-tell-you-about-the-history-of-this-thing’ stories.

Check first. What do they need? Where is their knowledge now; where does it need to be? Don't add to the overload; make sense instead.

Q: What’s a topic you’re confused about right now? 

Leaders need to keep changing

If you've been a leader for a few years, you'd have noticed how leadership and the expectations of leaders keep changing.

The world of work changes and leaders need to adapt, flex, change with it too.

From when leaders were controllers and commanders, to an era where leaders were all about coaching their team members via 1:1 conversations, and now to today...

Today we see leaders better leveraging everyone's time and strengths by using the skills of facilitation.

My concept of the 'Leader as Facilitator' doesn't mean you become a full-time facilitator. It means you draw on the subtle, engaging and nuanced skills of facilitation to help people work together well - when needed. I wrote 'Leader as Facilitator' in 2016 to help people run better meetings, drop corny clichés (like 'I hear what you're saying' or 'Let's take it offline') and work in more collaborative, productive and creative ways.

Work still needs to get done. No matter the apps, software or systems you use, you'd do well to have the complex and impactful suite of skills that are facilitation.

Facilitation. It means 'ease' after all.

Q: How could you better build your facilitation skills?

Visual Mojo : How to capture thinking, convey information and collaborate using visuals

The world has experienced a 'visual revolution' over the past decade.

We see more hand-drawn fonts in the font list on our computers, more hand-crafted signage in stores and more hand-created imagery in the media.

It's no surprise then that hand-drawn visuals are more engaging as they ignite the mirror neurons in our brains, firing up our interest and attention. If you worry you can't draw, I assure you it's less about the drawing and more about working out what you're trying to communicate.

We all need greater clarity among the crazy.

I wrote 'Visual Mojo: How to capture thinking, convey information and collaborate using visuals' in 2013 and it's even more relevant today. 'Visual Mojo' is a workshop in a book with space to draw and write in the book. I know we were 'in trouble' if we wrote in books when we were younger, but I want you to break some rules!

'Visual Mojo' will build your visual skills, your confidence, creativity ... and most of all the impact your communication has.

Q: Do you ever use hand-drawn visuals in your work?

Collaboration, co-creation and working with others

Co-locating, buddying and pairing people can make awesome stuff happen - learning, problem solving, knowledge sharing.

Better than if we have to face uncertainty alone.

Why do we sit in stables, stalls, pods and cells all on our lonesome? Share a desk and go co! There's a reason why software developers sit next to each other and do 'pair programming'. It's efficient, engaging and enlightening!

In the modern workplace, alone time is good, but collaboration is a benefit. It's a 'co-brainer'.

We need to be working with others at some time. I like the Agile Manifesto's: 'Choose interactions with individuals and groups of individuals, over working on processes and tools.' It's easy to bury down deep in the work of designing systems, tools and processes. But could we be more human, more collaborative... not clichéd collaboration, but engaging, productive and enjoyable collaboration?

Working with other humans enables us to find solutions we may never have found alone.

Q: What's a collaboration or co-creation you've worked on that ROCKED?

Could you yield … rather than resist

Of all the skills we can learn and develop, what if we just focused on how we could become more adaptable… more willing to change?

Imagine how this one capability - a willingness to change - could impact our world and our lives.

Imagine how it might help a team learn new things and deliver better services.

The progress we would make, the ideas we would put out into the world, the conversations we’d have, what we’d find out and what could be possible.

The problems we’d solve instead of the additional ones we tend to create.

Imagine how less frustration there might be in the world if we were all a little more flexible, adaptable, changeable.

And imagine how we’d grow, individually and collectively, if we became more tolerable of change, looked for it, sought it out, welcomed it and 'went' with it. Adaptability is the capability.

What if we chose to yield… instead of resist? Look for opportunities to change and adapt; it gets easier.