Summaries are super

In our overwhelm of information, meetings, emotions and the impact of change, to summarise ...is to care. We can’t possibly be listening as well as we might usually.

So don’t just finish your meeting, call or session. Make time to recap and summarise and bring it all together. Spend just a minute, or 3 or 5, summarising what happened, where we are at, what is next. 

It’s ok to repeat stuff. 

We don’t do it enough in ’normal times’, so it’s needed even more in these new normal times. As you bring things together, tying up lose ends for people, reminding and recapping, you’ll help them release some of the mental cognitive load they’ve been carrying.

You help do some of the sorting and storing work for them and their brain. It’s just a smart, leader-y thing to do. 

And it’s a caring thing to do, considering the emotional weights that can fill our mind. A synopsis, a digest ... a nutshell. 

Their brain will say ‘thank you’ even if they don’t. It’s a service most certainly worth the time and effort.

The gallery in your mind

It’s open now ... an exhibition. featuring imagery, clips, videos, snippets, quotes and dramatic headlines and links from all of the stuff you’ve been absorbing lately. 

Oops ... we didn’t realize it but the gallery is now full. And it has not even been curated yet! 

Curation is when the exhibits in a gallery are organised and arranged, identified, sourced and carefully chosen. They present a story, a setting or a theme to gallery visitors as they walk, wander, wonder and experience it all. It flows, makes sense, is a delight. 

It’s time to clean out our current exhibit. 

Time to paint the walls, sweep the floors, and get ready for another newer and fresher exhibition. 

The next one. Let’s make it a better one. 

It’s time to become more of a curator of what you let in to the gallery in your mind. To more carefully choose what you will watch, look at, listen to and absorb. 

We don’t need to let just anything into this gallery of ours. 

More isn’t better. 
More isn’t beautiful. 

Curate, choose and be discerning. It is yours after all. 

What's going on and what do we need to do about it?

These 'two questions in one' can provide us with great focus and purposeful direction. 

They are a better agenda item than the general ‘update’ or ‘status report’. 

And they are questions that get the team gathering insights and learnings about what is actually happening... and then ...identifying, committing to and implementing actions directly related to the insights. 

They are questions that help us move from fear to action. 

And they are questions that are a part of sensemaking and decision making in times of great change and uncertainty. 

Rather than being paralyzed by fear, distracted or drawn down into endless details, or buried in a sand hill of denials, lift up.

Elevate yourself above all of the noise, activity and chaos and ask 
🌕 what's going on?
and 
🌕 what do we need to do about it? 

Whether you’re the leader of a team, the leader of a family, a partner in a relationship, part of a family, community, neighborhood, company or organisation ... take responsibility and accountability to find out what’s going on and then to commit to doing what you can about it. 

This is sensemaking

This is sensemaking. We are 'in it'. Trying to make sense of so many things. 

As we begin to know something ... we 'find out'. Almost like a maze. 

And we think 'that’s it'. 

Then things change. New information comes to hand. 
New information, insights and understanding. 

Because we have more information and experience with that information, we can look back over data, dates and details to connect more dots and make more sense. 

And then we can act again based on what we now know. 

So we're right in it. 
It’s wild, wicked and changing rapidly. 

Keep on making sense as things come to light no matter where you are or what you're doing.  

We are all uncovering, discovering, learning. 

It's this very human activity of trying to 'make sense' of it all. 

Map the steps

When you’re doing some new things with a team or project, it’s worth mapping out the steps so people get a sense of what’s going to happen.

This isn’t a table or list or spreadsheet - although they may hold some useful data about what needs to be done or supporting information that helps with decision making.

Sensemaking when things are unclear, unknown, uncertain or just new for people, requires us to do more than just write a few words, send a few emails or type a few messages.

All those words! Our brains are full already.

Just as a Google map shows us where we are and where we want to get to, we can use a map like that too. Include a few points like:

Here....

The path or steps to ...

There.

Add a few notes about what’s planned as you guide the team from one place... getting to that other place.

If you’ve got more of your team working remotely at the moment, don’t just rely on all the words or talking heads.

Show them a map they can keep referring back to ... later ... when they need to, when the words get lost and the talking heads are offline.