In 2023 I will continue exploring ideas about how relationship-building works in the increasingly hybrid working environment in which we now find ourselves. Whilst there is a wealth of information and people talking about how organisations embrace the new world of office work, the coverage given to inter-organisational working is not as explicit. Many professional … Continue reading Brown Bag Conversations
Category: collaboration
As we enter into the fourth calendar year of the great global hybrid working experiment that began with the pandemic in 2020, here are some of the things bouncing around my head about how we are currently and going to be working: In-person isn't better or worse, just different. But we need to optimise for … Continue reading Year 4 of the great hybrid experiment
A quick set of field notes from a retro we ran this week to talk about an adapted facilitation technique called Brainwalking. This approach is perfect for allowing all involved to have a say on issues without having to talk over one another. Brain walking Brain walking was introduced to me by my wonderful colleague … Continue reading Brain walking Retro
Last week I spent a bit of time with some of my Executive colleagues thinking about the way in which we understand and foster relationships with people who work for our clients. Our business, like many in the professional services space, depends on relationships between people. The ways in which we establish, foster and maintain … Continue reading Tracking client relations
After a long old journey, I've made the decision to stop working (Deviate: Disrupt yourself) on the book that's been my pet project for the past few years. If it had been meant to be, it would have happened by now. Being busy at work is part of the issue, but more broadly my thinking … Continue reading The Play Book is Dead. Long Live PlayCards!
Eight or so years ago, I found myself at a software developer event organised by the US company Twilio. If you are not familiar, Twilio provide software that allows other people building apps to connect their products and services to the telephone system. They enable you to integrate with voice and text messages without the … Continue reading Evolution, not intelligent design
People are getting overloaded with meetings. There's no two ways about it. A combination of the lack of informal conversations in office environments plus the ease of organising meetings with online diaries multiplied by there no longer being the limiting factor of "no meeting room available" means that for many of us there is no … Continue reading Back to back
It's not often I get properly excited about new software. Maybe that's a function of age. Maybe a function of a cynical outlook. But when I started up the PostIt app yesterday, I was genuinely excited about the new feature that the app (which is free) has added - handwriting transcription. If you aren't familiar, … Continue reading Transcribing workshop outputs – the PostIt App
Would Microsoft Teams be used more effectively if customers had to pay for it rather than it being bundled for "free" into Office 365 packages? Here's my logic... The successful adoption of any software depends on good change management around its introduction. The amount that is spent is directly proportional to the overall cost of … Continue reading The problem with “free”
Look at the picture above. There are about 150 or so people in a room. But notice how they are interacting. There are many small groups, and a few loners. It's not 150 people in a room interacting, it's a series of groups of people who happen to be in the same room. (The room, … Continue reading Why interactions won’t scale.