November 20, 2021
We all have them. We also don’t like to talk about them because admitting that we aren’t the best in our meetings would be tantamount to admitting that we are part of the problem when it comes to every meeting that we attend. And that’s the point. Every meeting you attend that goes sideways, you are part of the problem. You are also part of the solution if you’re willing to admit what has gone wrong.
November 19, 2021
How often do you take a training course, never to use it again? Or go to a conference, drink from the firehose, and leave it all in the city that you visited for that one great week? The purpose of training is to take what you have learned, apply it and reap the benefits from it. Learning is great, but implementing what you have learned, applying it? That’s growth.
November 18, 2021
I used to work with someone who had an email signature that read – “Your failure to plan does not constitute an emergency on my part”. When I would be up late fixing bugs, I would come back to this line and think about this line – “whose emergency is this?”. You can’t plan for everything, but you can plan for your need. I recently finished a month-long planning and strategy session with a client. At the end of it, they wanted all the answers, all the plans, everything laid out from them from A to B. I sensed this,
November 17, 2021
When people were absolutely fed up with a meeting, they would physically get and leave the room. That was a sign, a sign that the meeting was so far gone that there was no point in continuing. It was a physical action and reaction that made people pause and wonder what just happened. We don’t have that in remote meetings. People are always disconnecting – because connections everywhere are strained. People are always turning their video off – because there are kids and family running in the background. People mute themselves – because they are trying to get a bite
November 16, 2021
I’ve been in a few meetings over the past few months where a question is asked (a simple one, i.e., where we are at), and the responses are varied from all points of the delivery. This is good to have varying responses, however, the problem is that they don’t have anything to tie each other together. What are we releasing? When are we releasing it? What are the most important issues? Does the customer agree? These are the core threads that can pull those responses together so that when the discussion goes around the room another time, we have a
