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The biggest conversations

What’s a good way to start to make something happen? Conversations work for me. Yes, we could have a conversation, but what if there’s say, over 80 of us together in one room? Surely that could never work…

Yes. It. Can.

If you’ve never used it before, the World Café method is a fantastic flexible way to allow great big conversations to happen. Small groups gather and converse at tables, discussing the important questions. The groups are encouraged to note down their conversations, insights, and doodles on paper tablecloths. Every ten minutes or so the group briefly convenes to capture the essence of the conversation before separating into new groups and continuing.

As people share insights between the tables a sense of the whole becomes more accessible. World café can be a great way to:

Clarify purpose and strategic intent

Explore critical issues and questions

Engage all key stakeholders

Skillfully use collaborative social technologies

Guide collective intelligence toward effective action

And perhaps most importantly, a World Café is a great way to meet and get to know people.

At the 2012 Stop Doing Dumb Things unconference on June 27th 2012 you will once again have the chance to play with the World Café method. It’s a lively and involving way of sharing and we hope that all the unconference guests will have a lot of fun playing.

I’m really looking forward to the conversation, I hope you are too?

What’s the point?

So you’re too busy eh? Let me rephrase that. So you’re too productive eh? You’ve hit the limit of what you can achieve and you need some help. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

You think carefully about what you can afford and balance that with what you need. You go and find the right person or people and in time, you have it. Your team. You can be confident of their abilities, you chose them. So why do you insist on checking everything they do? Every. Little. Thing. Let’s think about some of the feelings that behaviour produces inside the head of your colleague, sorry I mean victim:

  • Lack of trust
  • Undermined
  • Disengaged
  • What’s the point?

One of the simplest things great managers do is to get the right people around them and then critically, get out of the way and let them get on with it. Show your colleagues you trust them, support them, and engage them. Give them a purpose – show them what the point is. Get out of the way, please.