Clear the Space for Meaningful Dialogue

In recent blogs, we discussed ways to turn meetings into collaborative, outcome-focused group experiences by discarding standard meeting props: toss out the agenda and presentation deck and forego the conference table. When we’re facilitating pivotal meetings where clients must engage in meaningful dialogue to achieve the results they’re after, we do both. We clear the space—mentally and physically—for dynamic interaction and collaboration. A few years […]

Workshop Wednesday: Drafting Good Scenario Questions

Each Wednesday we post a photograph that illustrates some of our work. This one shows a set of questions generated in a brain-storming session with a team searching for new customer scenarios to explore. This early exploratory work wasn’t to design solutions, but to find experiences worth exploring further in search of design opportunities. Check back next Wednesday for another perspective on how we work.

Workshop Wednesday: Playing With Chaos & Resiliency

Each Wednesday we post a photograph that illustrates some of our work. This one shows an agenda from a one-day event at the start of a year-long effort to strengthen a team under-going tremendous change. By focusing on strength and stability first, we were then able to ‘play with chaos’ (at 11:30am). Since teams often can’t insulate themselves from wider organization chaos, our intent here […]

Workshop Wednesday: Increase Engagement By Focusing On Freedom

Each Wednesday we post a photograph that illustrates some of our work. This one shows a seemingly obvious, but sophisticated message we delivered to a large team after a week-long learning journey. They were accustomed to a command-and-control corporate culture, but new leaders were expecting greater autonomy, accountability, and self-direction from them. There were several “Braveheart moments” during the week (‘FREEDOM!’) that we wrapped up […]

Step Away from the Conference Table

In a recent blog, we made a suggestion that’s practically blasphemous to a well-organized meeting host: toss out the agenda and presentation deck for your next meeting. Instead, start the session with open-ended questions that will invite participants to fill the content of your meeting.  You’re then more likely to get meaningful outcomes from the meeting, not just a list of agenda items crossed off […]

Workshop Wednesday: Make Business & Learning Objectives Simple

Each Wednesday we post a photograph that illustrates some of our work. This one shows how concise and business and learning objectives should be for a compelling group experience. Much of our experience design work occurs on the front-end helping clients get clear what their true needs and objectives are, and then crafting related learning objectives to pursue at the same time. If you’re going […]

Workshop Wednesday: When Illustrators Draw Teams At Work

Each Wednesday we post a photograph that illustrates some of our work. This one shows some workshop participants generating ideas for the first step of an Affinity Exercise. Over the course of several monthly workshops, the artist generated a whole series of these illustrations. We used them each month to reflect on what was done the previous month, and also to identify any non-verbal behaviors […]