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A cup of teaThe following story is told as a Zen Koan, stories which help the reader to see fundamental truths and gain insights. |
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Opening a Presentation | Pyramid PrincipleIn her book ‘The Pyramid Principle‘, Barbara Minto lays out a powerful model for engaging people from the outset of your presentation or event: Statement … Read more |
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Are ‘board-style’ meetings an antiquated concept?Have you ever wondered about the terms ‘chairman’ and ‘board’? Do they not seem slightly arcane to you? Have you questioned where they come from? |
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Power positioningSeats around a meeting room table are not all of equal influence. The smooth transfer of the conversation from one speaker to the next is … Read more |
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What is culture?How do your meetings influence the culture of your organisation? Culture is defined as the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that are … Read more |
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Facilitation – an introductionFacilitation is about two things. It is about having a process which people will follow, and it is about intervening to enable the people to … Read more |
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Web-Based-Facilitation Maturity ModelMaturity Models are useful devices for building ownership for improvement within a viable strategy of overall change. They basically consist of a number of dimensions … Read more |
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QFD for meetingsMeetings are essentially a series of activities put together to achieve a number of objectives. In many cases these are not a simple 1:1 relationship. … Read more |
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Thinking processes and templatesDecision making, whether individual or collective, appears to be something that we don’t ‘think about’ very often, and yet there is a pattern to it … Read more |
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Kolb’s Learning CycleIt used to be thought that learning was something people did when they were at school or on a training course of some type. This … Read more |
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Meetings selection chart“It is a strange quality of the human psyche how, if the most familiar tool in your kitbag is a hammer, all the problems come … Read more |
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Session PlansReally effective and efficient meetings are rarely achieved by accident. The following diagram shows a small section of an off-site workshop plan which reflects the … Read more |
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What sort of meeting do you need?Meetings are primarily about learning, but the work of Jean Piaget, reported by Arie de Geus in his book The Living Company, highlights that there … Read more |
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Meeting by DesignWeb-based meetings are often seen as an inferior alternative to physical meetings something to fill in the gaps when travel is too expensive or inconvenient. … Read more |
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Icebreakers, questions, creative exercises‘Ice’ in a meeting is the invisible barrier that suppresses individual contributions. It starts out quite normally in waiting for the host of the meeting … Read more |
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Creativity ToolsCreativity iFrames are meeting templates which have been constructed to stimulate and challenge the minds of the group to take different perspectives on a situation, … Read more |
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SCAMPERSCAMPER is a really useful tool (or more accurately, a checklist) for exploring creative possibilities and opportunities around a solution or situation. |
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Tricider, Trello and other online tools for collaborationThere is a huge wealth of on-line tools that can help your team to ‘meet’ without physically being in the same place at the same … Read more |
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Reframing MatrixThe Reframing Matrix is a technique for looking at the problem from different perspectives (planning, product, people and potential, rather than the more abstract perspectives … Read more |
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Problem RestatementProblem Restatement is a technique for looking at the problem from different perspectives (usually more abstract ones, rather than the stakeholder ones reflected in the … Read more |
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Affinity DiagramThe Affinity Diagram is one of the Seven Management and Planning Tools and is deceptively simple. It is a means for looking at patterns and … Read more |
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SWOT AnalysisSWOT analysis is a tool which enables groups or individuals gain a better understanding on the current situation in terms of its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities … Read more |
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Hopes & ConcernsHopes & Concerns is a tool which enables groups to outline and share their positive and negative feelings about an event from the outset. |