Please don't throw lollies

Please don't throw lollies. I can walk over and pick them up out of the plastic packet all by myself. Look, watch me, I can.

*Cringe*  I was in a training session last week – or perhaps that should read, ‘boring presentation’ by a presenter who introduced the topic by saying ‘Now I hope you all don’t ‘fall asleep’ during this!’

So there we were, looking forward to a boring presentation and the opportunity of falling asleep. Before the presenter spoke, she held up a large bargain bulk bag of lollies and sang in Mary Poppins style “I have lolllliiiieeeeeesssss!”

“I’ve got bribes!’ she further explained! “This will keep you awake!”

As if a bag of lollies is going to make my interest levels peak through 32 mind-numbing PowerPoint slides in a darkened room. What did peak was my blood sugar level, just by looking at the pink and yellow shapes inside the bag.

Why isn’t she trying to make that presentation more interesting, engaging and helpful? Why isn’t it more palatable than the cheap lollies?

She delivered the presentation. She never needed the lollies. It cheapened the presentation; it lowered the professionalism and it made us feel like we needed to listen or we’d be very naughty. We are adults you know. So are you, presenter.

Some people I have consulted and worked with argue that you need damn good coffee and pastries to get people to some presentations. But surely you don’t need to throw lolllies at us when we look bored!

‘Oh but it’s FUN!’ shouted Amy from the Learning and Design team. ‘Lighten up! It’s fun! You’re too serious!’

It wasn’t fun for Gavin from Accounts who sat in the accident and emergency department waiting room with his eye bleeding out of its socket. No, Gavin wasn’t laughing when a bullet hard lemon barley sugar with kiddy wrap went flying through his left eye. The visual, yes that’s a laugh. The Safety Team said ‘No more throwing lollies. You may hand them around.’

If you want your session, meeting, presentation or training to be fun you don’t need to throw lollies at me or anyone else. What you do need to do is design the session with engaging activities, designed for the purpose, designed for the people in the room. They’re called an audience. Even better when you call them ‘participants’.

What are you doing to make your meetings, conversations, workshops and learning experiences creative, collaborative, engaging and transformative?

*Gavin isn’t his real name. And he didn’t need to go to Accident and Emergency either. He’s ok. 

Collaborate + Improvise = Survival

"In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed." - Charles Darwin

Just loving what Darwin was saying here - we've got to be able to play well with others, and be able to handle what happens... make stuff up! 

That's innovation, collaboration, creation, being responsive, adapting, reiterating, going again.

Working with a client last week and the team needed to truly 'play well with each other' to create a new range of solutions. There were voices from clients and customers, users and stakeholders added into the mix. 

Then it was 'on'. Let's go! Some improvisation games, some creative thinking, some visual thinking and a range of other techniques and tools helped bring the crew together and get the best out of them. 

(Oh, and it had to be fun. They wanted fun. They said 'fun' as part of their working agreement for the day.)

The team wants to take the approaches we used to other parts of the business to shake things up a bit and to get more out of their meetings, workshops and interactions.

It involves getting up off your feet, moving around, talking to people, writing stuff, drawing stuff, playing with stuff and generally firing up your brain. 

Mmmmmm - good stuff!

I'm on this track now... I'll stay here

International women's day and I'm in Adelaide, Australia.

A morning event at the exhibition centre has just finished and hundreds of women head in all directions across the city.

Many of us wait for taxis to take us to our next stop for the morning. My stop was only a few kms away but with a suitcase suffering wheel alignment problems, I've left plenty of 'rubber on the road' simply walking to the rank.

Plenty waiting at the cab rank but no cabs. It happens sometimes. Some of us called cab companies saying there were 10, 20, 30 fares waiting.

Still not a vacant cab came by over the next 20minutes. We were all looking down the road from where the traffic was approaching.

Then I see across the road, up the hill, north a few hundred metres, a cab rank with 8 taxis waiting for fares. What?!

Though I'm in prime position at the front of the queue, I drop my "sunk costs" of waiting and head up the street - with my suitcase wheel leaving burn-out marks on the path as I go.

I hop into the first cab. Yeah! We're off! I chat with the cab driver about the busy morning, the traffic and other small talk.

He says he'd seen me waiting down the hill in the queue (in my bright coloured dress) for most of those 20 minutes. He'd been inching his way through a queue waiting for a fare at a hotel cab rank.

Why couldn't he have dropped his sunk costs of waiting in the rank and headed over to where plenty of other customers were?

Making a u-turn at that part of the city to get from his rank to the other rank was too hard, too difficult - 'a nightmare' he said.

Given the direction I was heading, we ended up having to do that u-turn anyway! Oh no!

In my mind, the turn wasn't a 'nightmare' at all. Waiting for the cab was the 'nightmare'. Running late for the appointment was a 'nightmare'.

I laughed it up with the driver that we could have both been on our way and be done - me to my meeting and him to his next job - if we had dropped our sunk costs earlier and gone to where the opportunities really were.

What stuff is your team, project or business hanging on to that could be jettisoned for a fresh start? Ouch! Yep, let it go, fail it fast and move on to an opportunity that will reward you with sweet dreams rather than perceived 'nightmares'. You'll never know until you cross the road!

Toying with an idea

The news was all so serious today - it usually is. And I don't find that to be an inspiring way to 'get creative' and 'be innovative' when I'm working on the thinking in my business. 

So I change the way I'm thinking and I "toy with an idea". 

Toying means to be casual and less serious about something. You see kids doing it so much more often than adults do. 

To get casual and less serious, I have a look around my desk and office and I go from there...

Looking around, close at hand I can see:

• a china cow money box with a Happy New Year headband on;
• a stuffed toy goat hand-puppet that sings tunes from The Sound of Music;
• a small bongo drum I picked up at a conference event;
• a pair of my dad's thick rimmed 1950's glasses with the lenses pushed out;
• a pen with a helicopter on top of it;
• a furry pencil case;
• three juggling bean bags;  

... and on and on. This is not a tidy, neat, everything in it's particular place office.

I have props and cues and creative things that help me toy with ideas. I might take my hands off the keyboard and pick up something, wander around, talk out loud, see something outside, get an idea, write it down, or put two or more of the toys together - kaboom!

Your best creative thinking isn't likely to come staring at this screen. Touch something else and have play, a walk, a think, a talk, and be less casual, less serious. All work with no toy makes the sandpit a big yawn!

A little more conversation - a lot more action

A logistics client of mine is having their senior leaders forum next week - they do this around every 90 days. I facilitate the gathering of 80 leaders to ensure they can all participate, that we stay on track and that there are some serious outcomes after some wonderful collaboration.

So when you have a team gathering scheduled on the calendar and you're busy finding a meeting room, remember this above all other arrangements :

Ask    ________________________________    Tell

You see, it can't be all talk. That isn't a forum. That wouldn't be a team thing.  That would be a presentation.

Any time you bring people together, stop with all the talking and telling will you!

Wander along to the other end of the continuum and be sure to engage, question, ask and have a co-nversation.

Co = together. Bring people together so they can collaborate, communicate, co-create and co-design the changes and activities that will achieve your business or project strategy.
It's quicker and will get you more buy-in than you simply telling them. Seriously it will.

There are still a lot of 'all talk' bad habits out there. It can be a whole new way of looking at things and that can seem challenging at times.

• How do we get their input and ideas? 
• How do we wind people up once they start?
• What if it gets out of hand?
• How will we wrap up the day?
• What if....what if... what if...

I think every gathering, workshop or strategy session needs The 9 Elements of Collaboration. I make sure they are brought to the teams and clients I work with, every time they get the team together.

Let me know about your next gathering of the team - what do you want to have happen?  Let's work on designing an agenda, an event and processes that are engaging, creative and collaborative and most of all... designed to make things happen.

Otherwise you're all talk!