July 26, 2021
If anyone on your team is asking this question, don’t get angry, don’t get bothered, don’t get mad at them. Take a moment to understand why they are feeling that way, what is missing from their narrative and what maybe you need to do (as the one running the show) to reinstill that confidence in them. If they are saying it to you, it means they care now it’s your turn to give them a reason to keep caring and keep investing the show.
July 25, 2021
They do, they always will. Sorry, you can’t beat them (am I really sorry)? The other day I had to review a list of client requirements and get together with them for a bunch of questions to figure out what was what. To date, everyone’s been sharing documents on a screen and we slowly plod through them as we make comments, discuss format, add in pieces, re-add in pieces. This is the new world of collaboration. For this particular meeting, I printed it all out, I marked it up on my own and what I needed to do. The next
July 24, 2021
If you ask this question to anyone they will say no. We are not too busy to grow. We are not too busy to get better. We are not too busy to learn. And yet we allow meetings, archaic processes, repetitive tasks, fires, who needs what more, it has to be done yesterday, I need it now or never and “pick your own thing that stops you from learning and growing” anecdote and put it here. If you are too busy to grow, keep doing what you are doing. If you have asked yourself that question and said no. Start
July 23, 2021
If I’m doing a presentation, I try to line up the time blockage to account for what I think will be the discussion that ensues. Scratch that. I line up the time for the discussion I want to happen. The goal of a presentation isn’t to whip through it and have no questions, it’s to generate dialog and next steps. Sure I might ask for people to hold off questions until the end so they can hear everything that is being said. But that doesn’t mean we are stifling the conversation, it means there is a great deal to cover.
July 22, 2021
At the first sound of a new meeting, there is a sigh (not of relief) but of dread. Another block of time in your day is taken up by a discussion of sorts that may or may not lead to something productive. Over the past year, we’ve been inundated with meetings that have given them the worst name than they already had before. At the first sound of a huddle, your immediate thought is – “What”s that? Is that the sports thing where they come up with a plan and do something?” That sounds cool? Yeah, let’s do a huddle.
