Tag: HR

Stop Doing Dumb Things – Available Here

Stop Doing Dumb Things is a deck of cards containing 48 thoughts and ideas designed to help you unlock creativity and make work better. To make it work you simply shuffle the deck, draw a card, then act on it or ignore it.

A set of cards  costs just £25 plus £5 P&P, a total of £30.

Stop Doing Dumb Things is designed by Doug Shaw and inspired by many people, including Joe Gerstandt, Carole Shaw, Meg Peppin, Joe Strummer, Heather Bussing, David Zinger, Keira Shaw, William Tincup and John Sumser.

To order your cards, Use this PayPal link or email me at doug.shaw@wgalimited.com with your order and I’ll send you an electronic invoice. In both cases, don’t forget to include a postal address. Cards will be shipped on receipt of cleared funds, and I’ll also email you a free pdf user/prompt guide.

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How Are People Using Stop Doing Dumb Things?

Stop Doing Dumb Things was first designed as an antidote for people who get stuck in their work. Whether it’s writing a research paper, a sales proposal, an HR guide or a presentation – people often need a nudge when their thinking starts to go round in circles. And because of the way many of us work – getting stuck happens often. This also happens when we’re working in teams. For example, team meetings often fail to yield the desired results because people form and follow patterns that, as they repeat and reinforce, tend to exclude more creative, diverse thinking. In those environments – the cards are designed to break the circle by offering an alternative viewpoint, or a suggested action to take.

Since they began in 2012, Stop Doing Dumb Things have sold all over the world, to individuals and teams in the UK, Europe, USA, Middle East, Australia and New Zealand. These are some of the many things people say they use the cards for:

Coaching
Getting unstuck
Trying something different
Adaptability
Exchanging ideas
Why not? (The intention is to make acting on the cards a voluntary process. So when people draw a card and don’t wish to act on it – what’s stopping them? This discussion yields interesting results about the way people work together).

People also use them a lot to support exploratory work around creativity and collaboration. The cards are a great aid to problem solving, getting to know one another better, changing perspectives – all kinds of things that people need, and often forget.

Stop Doing Dumb Things are a simple, helpful tool to help make change happen, and to underpin the idea that small things can make a big difference.

Stop Doing Dumb Things

It Started in Ohio

I love my conference trips to the USA. The chance to meet people who I’ve come to know via blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram et al is just too good an opportunity to miss.

Ohio is holding its 41st annual state HR conference this week, and though I can’t be there in the flesh this time, I’m there in spirit. Despite United Airline’s best attempts to foil my plans, my USA conference adventures started in Ohio last year, and so it’s a special place for me.

It was in Ohio I first met:

Steve, Jason, Joe, Fred, Erin, Karen, Heather, Dwane, Jennifer, Julie, Mary, Nicole, Ashley, Desiree, Amy and many others too.

And on it goes.

It was in Louisiana I first met:

Bryan, William (king of cupcakes), Robin, Douglas, Christine, Dominique, Crystal, Dwane (no hang on, that was Ohio – and yes, I met him here too), Nisha, Brad, Janine, Sarah, Broc and Cheryl and many others too.

And on it goes.

It was in Illinois I first met:

John, Sabrina, Susan (well OK I first had lunch with these three fine people in Chicago earlier in the year – but you get the point), John (songs about trains are the best!), Abe, Brew, Dave, Paul, Daniel, Dwane (are we following each other around or what?!), Cathy, Kris, Crystal (again – yay!), Maren and Donna and many others too.

And on it goes. Where it stops, nobody knows.

It takes effort to make and build connections and relationships, and it is truly worth it. I learn from these people, enjoy their company, share…you know how it is. Grateful to know you all, and apologies to anyone I’ve forgotten to mention by name.

Connections give us meaning.

Without People, You’re Nothing.

Steve Browne sent out his HRNet email recently with some HR adapted lyrics to London Calling. I’ve murdered them here and added a wee bit more too.

Photo credit: Steve Browne

Creative Leadership – Connections Part Three

This is the third and final post drawn from my recent talk and shared experiences around connections and creativity at the Illinois SHRM conference 2013. The first part of this series is about music, vulnerability, diversity and conversations, the second is about transparency and seeing the whole picture, and this third piece is about presence and art.

Be Here Now

We talked about the importance of presence as a way of reinforcing connections, and about that good feeling you get when you know you have the attention of the other person. Someone in the audience referred to this as ‘Be Here Now’, and as we talked through what this meant to people, other words like focus, appreciate and mindful came up in our conversation. We talked about how crappy meetings get in the way of doing good work and we shared a few ideas about how to make crappy meetings better.

Art for Art’s Sake

I spoke briefly about my ongoing artistic endeavours, and how my experiment with painting started purely for enjoyment. And the more I played – with paints, pencils, and inks…

Art for Art's Sake

Art for Work’s Sake

…the more I began to realise that the very act of artistic expression, is a gateway to better work. Importantly, this gateway is open to all, regardless of the level of proficiency. I am not an artist, but I have discovered and am discovering ways of using art both as an individual and in groups with clients, to help with gaining different perspectives, aiding divergent thinking and improving problem solving.

Art for Work's Sake

The form the art takes can vary. Photography, painting, drawing, mark making, sketching, collage, poetry, and adaptation of the work of others (the head shaped example above is cut from a piece of work that CreativeConnection recorded at a previous event we ran together), are all ways of helping you experiment, think more creatively, and find new answers to problems.

Trust

The curtain came down on our time together at Illinois with a reminder of the importance of trust, and with that we went our separate ways to make more connections and learn and share more experiences together.

The Trust Overlap

I hope this review of connections and creativity has been useful. If you have any questions – or would like to explore anything I’ve written about in more detail, please get in touch.

Additional Resources

Here are the slides I used for my talk in full

Here is a link to the work on Humanizing Employee Engagement that Paul Hebert shared with us in Illinois. This was my favourite session of the conference, partly because it linked to some of the connections stuff we spoke about, but more importantly, because Paul is a smart guy who thinks a little differently. If you’re not already connected with Paul, hopefully this link will encourage you to do so.