5 ways to beat meeting overload

5 Ways to Beat Meeting Overload - or zombie meetings will get you!

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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

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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.

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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. 

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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

‘I love your posts and pictures!’, they said

‘Oh, thank you,’ I said. ‘Now theres a heap of them together ... in the one place.’ 

I’ve curated a collection of ideas, posts and imagery from the last year or so and published them in ‘Better Ways of Thinking and Working’. 

In this era of change, uncertainty and complexity, how are you adopting better ways of thinking and working? 

What are these better ways, anyway … and how do you get started?

In this 180 page full colour collection of practical and mind-shifting essays, you’ll find inspiration, insights and a path to better.

It also features the practical, creative and inspiring hand-drawn visuals that accompany many of my ideas. 

When you need a shot of insight, a change of perspective or a reframing about how you could do things, possibilities are on every page. 


‘Better Ways of Thinking and Working: How Changing The Way You Do Things, Changes What You Can Do’. 

Get it here

Connecting deeper ... remotely

In these hybrid times when people may be here, there and anywhere, there’s a danger we miss the good quality, deep connections. 

Not the login type of connection - nor the break the ice chit-chat connection. 

But rather, the deeper ability to engage with people, to bring warmth, humanity and empathy to an online call with a remote team. 

To say ‘it’s not the same as face to face’ or ‘it’s hard to read cues and body language’ is to try to use the same techniques. 

But you may have to do something different. Many things different. 

How can you better connect with your team no matter where they are? 

Many days of each week I’m working with a brand new team, a new group of people I’ve not met before. Swift and deep connection with them is a priority. 

We’ve got to be able to get close online, to trust and build engagement so we can achieve what needs to be achieved. 

And quickly. 

Consider how you’ll make connections with your team, group or meeting participants. 

Every time. 

Don’t leave it to chance. 
Or think it’s not important. 
Or that you’re already well enough connected. 

How deeply you can connect with people affects everything else that follows. 

Explore your thinking - remember to act

If we’re the only creatures on earth who can think about how they think ... how well do we use that power? 

Because it is a power. It’s one of the greatest reflections we have available to us. 

To pause and think ... ‘wow, I wonder why or how I think about things?’

This can send us into a thinking vortex though, where we just keep thinking about thinking about thinking!

Some reflection is good but then what? 

When we are Sensemaking and not just thinking, we get to shift to some action. 

1. What’s going on here
2. What do I need to do about it
3. Now do it

If we are caught up in the first question of ‘what’s going on here’ ... analysis paralysis can be never ending. 

The second question - now we are getting somewhere - is, ‘what do I need to do about it?’ 

Here is the bias towards us taking an action. 

Thinking. 
Thinking. 
Now do it. 

...

...

...


Umm.... but then we return to thinking mode again to ‘work it out’ or ‘understand what’s going on’ or ‘run scenarios’ - more thinking. 

The ‘now do it’ gives us the opportunity to see what happens as a result of our actions. 

THEN we get some new stuff to think about ... but at least we have advanced.

Think ... sure. 
Now act.