Category: Communication

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?

Tick the box – pointless surveys

What I am about to share with you has to be one of the most unimaginative and pointless surveys I’ve ever seen. And it’s real. Yes, real people have this inflicted on them (apart from one question I made up – can you spot it?). This survey was designed to measure internal customer satisfaction and every department had to send it to every other department and see how they rated. I can’t share the name of the company, I promised my source anonymity. She has since left and I’m not surprised. If this is any indication of how they work – I’d want out too.

OK then, get your pen out and tick these boxes:

On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being most satisfied please rate the following:

1 – staff were supportive of your needs

2 – staff responded effectively to your problems

3 – staff were helpful

4 – staff understood your needs

5 – staff delivered what they promised they would do

6 – staff contacted you when they said they would

7 – staff responded promptly when you contacted them

8 – staff advised on matters in an appropriate timescale

9 – overall processing times were reasonable

10 – I want to die – this survey is so painful it makes my eyes bleed and my head hurt

What an utterly disrespectful waste of your colleagues’ time eh? And some folks wonder why surveys have a bad name. Can you do better? Have you been asked a dumber set of questions than this?