Okay, well welcome everyone to another learning rebels Coffee Chat. Thank you for joining on a long before a long weekend. It's awesome that you guys had either some free time or decided to make some time for this chat. I certainly appreciate it. As I said, before we turned on the recording that I totally blanked out that this was a Friday before a long weekend. So once again, thank you, everyone for joining us today for this creative problem solving part two. So I'm really excited to get into this because our last Coffee Chat. For those of you who weren't on our last Coffee Chat, we went through some liberating structures exercises did some breakout rooms and it was it was great fun. And now we're going to carry that conversation forward into the so what now what, before we get to the so what now what? Let's see who's new. So if you if this is your first time for a coffee chat, then please let us know in the chat itself so we can give you the warm welcome that you deserve. And thank you, Jason. I always like to see your face because I know you're the one who always makes eye contact with the teacher. Maybe comments, I can always go to Jason, or green. I haven't seen Maureen, I haven't seen you in a little in a minute. So thank you for spending time to join Kendra first time here. Welcome, Stacey. Welcome. And thank you for helping us out with our audio issue earlier. I appreciate that. Yes, thank you. I love seeing the first timers Excellent. And again. What will happen after this is that you'll get all of the recordings, you'll get the audio and all that other good stuff that goes along with this. So if you want to have an opportunity to review. Alright, so I guess we should get to it. Let's talk about the so what now what, when it comes to creative problem solving, and the way that I saw this is that it breaks up into three phases. It breaks up into first getting stakeholder buy in, you know, how do you get people to buy in to actually doing something different when it comes to ideation or any sort of new process? Right. So how do you get by into that second creative problem solving session should be hosted differently than any other type of session. You know. So what does that mean? What are some of the guardrails that we should put up? Lastly, what's the follow up? Right, and I think follow up, fails on a lot of levels. And even just with regular meetings, right? Sometimes we fail in that whole follow up stage, who's going to do what? What's come out of this meeting? What are the action items? And when we talk about ideation follow up. As I said, in the whole, I said it in the next podcast episode, what happens with the follow up is that people don't know what the next steps are. They don't know who is supposed to do what or even why they were even there in the first place. And all it does is it makes them angry at you. Right? And so we want to avoid that. So those are the three parts that I see as the the next so what now what, in regards to create a problem solving. Now one of the one of the things that I put in the blog post, not blog post, I'm sorry, in the email that I sent you was that graph, you know that the four quadrant as to where your stakeholders are as far as the interest and influence level and I'm going to share that with you right now. I just slapped it together. So let me let me get this together here. And let me show my screen if I can Sorry, what is happening?
Murphy's law wouldn't be a law if it didn't keep happening.
Right? Exactly right. We're gonna share this. Nope, that that occurred this. Okay. And so guess I just like I said, I just kind of slapped this together a few moments ago because I really wanted to get your input as to where you saw your stakeholders at. And this would be stakeholders who sit outside the team who are looking for ideas, or even people within the team. So if you're going to have a creative problem solving ideation kind of meeting, and you've got a group of, let's say, 20 people, then where do you think that they sit here? Do you think that they're going to have a high interest in what you're doing? Where do you think their influence is? So in other words, where their influence is, is? Where are they going to take these ideas after the meeting? Right? Are they going to talk? Are they going to be talking about the solutions? Are they going to help you drive those solutions forward? Or the ideas that you came up with forward, right? So where do you think that they sit, so pick a moment and grab the annotation tool, and you can either use the drawing tool or the stamper. And that if you're unfamiliar with Zoom, that sits at the top of your screen, or in some cases down at the bottom of your screen, but if you scroll up towards the top, a little drop down menu is going to show up, you want to click on annotation, and you can click on stamp, or draw. And then you can mark the screen.
So I'm curious, what are we marking the screen for
UHD. So when you thinking about your, when you're thinking about your team, where do you think that they sit in general and you can take you can think about this from a majority of the team members are going to be in this quadrant, maybe majority of them are going to be down here. Maybe it's a half and half. You know, so let's see where the majority of your stakeholders are landing.
Okay. In the middle
seems like most of you have are most of them are in the high interest, low influence. And oh, alternatively, low interest hockey influence. And I think this is really helpful. So this is helpful, because it's going to drive our conversation here over the next hour, you know, you got people who are really interested in what is happening from an ideation perspective, then, maybe their influence is low, meaning they can't really help you move the ideas forward. So what does that mean? So how then are you going to get your ideas to move forward if your team members don't have influence over the areas outside of your four walls?
Right.
So excellent. So thank you for sharing this. So what do you think? Let me stop sharing that you could channel back up on my screen, here we go. So what do you think then when it comes to stakeholder buy in. The other the other image that I put on the newsletter that just went out is that they sent in five categories, right? So they're either infused, they're willing, they're interested. They're committed in those buckets, then how do you manage stakeholders when you want to move ideas forward? What are your ideas, your best practices for getting them on board to do something different?
Conoco hadn't, if that's okay. You know, it just made me think of in our company. Now, we actually are developing training for other organizations. We're not development for our own organization. In fact, we don't train It's important within our organization. So whenever there's, but if there's some, something that I want to move forward an idea, I want to move forward, I know that there's a couple people that have the ears of the executive. And I happen to be one of those people that just really doesn't have much influence, maybe I never learned how to have influence, or I don't even know it's part of its personality. And so I'm not usually the one that's going to bring, I'll bring an idea forward, but I make sure I talk to the ones who actually have influence and get them on my side. And then they actually can move something for me, they can make it progress. So I think it's important to identify those that have influence. And be sure to engage with them. Not that you leave everyone else out. Because they can give you support in other ways. But you definitely have to talk with the ones who have influence. And some, I mean, a friend of mine literally has it. I don't know, she naturally does it, I don't think she's ever not had influence just because of her personality. In fact, she has that personality that has Woo, in it's okay, when you take a personality test. So like the strengths finder, strength finder category. So anyways, I just have found that that's important. If I get her on my side, I have a better chance of something happening.
When I like that, yeah. So what does that conversation look like? It's always great to have the cheerleaders on your side. And even they need convincing, or they need, they need to really understand what it is that you're trying to do. And so are you setting up a meeting with them? Are you just getting them in the hallway? What do some of those conversations look like? And what I put up on your screen right now, were the different categories that I shared in the last newsletter that I sent out. So these five buckets, your stakeholder is in one of these five buckets. They're either confused, they're interested, they're willing, they're supportive, or they're convinced. And when they're confused. That's when they have a lot of questions. And even if it's that question of well, why should we be doing this? You know, I don't get it. That's still the confused stage. It's not the I don't support you stage, it's still a I'm confused as to why we even want to do it this way stage. And so I like where Connie is going with this is that you're talking to the people who are supportive of you. Start there, right, build those cheerleaders up so they can start a word of mouth campaign as it were. And so what other techniques do you all have, when it comes to working with your stakeholders, especially if they sit down towards that bottom area? And you want to say, well, we want to try something different, we want to try creative problem solving, we want to try something from liberating structures. And this is what we want to do in our next meeting. And your stakeholders like, now, let's just flip chart it. Let's just create a bunch of post it notes. How do you handle that?
Shannon? Yes. So I guess I'm not important enough to be talking to the real, real big stakeholders in organization, you know, I mean, I know I know where I am. But, you know, just last week, we had a team meeting and somebody who was with, you know, some of the big stakeholders, there was resistance on something that that we're doing. And he basically did like a quick show and tell and something of her own example, and said, Okay, well, if you're searching for this, okay, look where it comes up. Okay. Now, if you're following, like what we're doing here, you know, you put it in, look at all the things that it populated. And so she suddenly was like, boom, okay, now I get it. And so sometimes, I think it's about involving them, and having them do it. You know, be a part of it. You know, I had put in there kind of like the Dr. Phil, like, how's that working out? Like, what have you done in the past? And what were the results? And so I guess I'm in a good place, because organizationally, it you know, it can be influenced by aligning it with our organizational priorities. And some of those are around innovation, and around kind of approaching things differently, and our strategic pillars and so that's where I would go in, but in the example I just gave with the person who did the show and Tao they kind of switched their, even their communications to be almost about the branding and the marketing campaign about out what something is like. So it has to be flipped. So it's always about the, you know, how is this going to benefit them? How's it going to benefit the organization? And just to, again, invite them, involve them. And also ask for this if they're not there. If there are other participants that are a part of this, use their influence to get that feedback back to the to the stakeholder. Yeah, I just I think, like I use, we use mural. I know you use Miro. But like, when we have sessions that use that, inevitably, people go, Oh, my God, this was like the best, like, we just made more progress in here than we have in however many months or doing something. So it's, you know, they say, like, a picture's worth 1000 words, but a mural or Rio is worth 1000 meetings or 100 meetings, like, you could just make so much more progress by breaking out and involving people, that they can't get distracted by all the other things around them. They're involved. And then when they're having fun, or it's something that's enjoyable. They become believers, and advocates for that.
Completely agree with you. And I think that that's a great marriage, Maureen, between what you're talking about, and what Connie is talking about. Right? You know, so those cheerleaders that Connie has dug up and found them to be the case with, they can help push the people who are unsure and uncertain in your group, and then together when they can see how the ideas are unfolding. Either virtually or in real life, then I think people then become more open. Because they see it happening right in front of their eyes. Right. And I think that's what you're saying, Maureen? Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And I completely agree with that. So then it's getting them into the room. Alright, so now, you know, we get them into the room. And how is it then that we're going to say, All right, okay, people, we're going to do something different. And here's when I'm looking through the chat here. Let's see. Yes, Kendra, involve them early. Intentionally. Scope everyone's participation. I like that. It's it is all about, let's back up just one second. Because it is about communication, isn't it? How are we communicating? What we want to achieve? What's your communication plan? You know, so if we're really going to try something different, you know, like what we did in the last chat, which was the TRIZ, which is sort of reverse engineering your problem. It's what are we going to stop doing? Right. So that was a whole exercise around? What is it that we want to accomplish? And how are we getting in our own way? What is it that we need to stop doing? That's a hard exercise for people? Because then you're asking them to be vulnerable in a room, where they are really saying, okay, yes, I do this. I talk over people, I interrupt people or I yeah, I have a tendency to be negative when I should be positive, that puts people in a very vulnerable spot. So now how are we communicating that? So I think that's a big area also that we need to probably focus on. Right, say see if you're not the one who they trust and up. Yeah, right. trust and credibility. That's very true. So I, if you're new to an organization, I don't know if I would start out with that kind of an activity or probably wouldn't benefit you. Yeah, enjoyable plus efficacy equals success. Oh, Donna, look at you on fire. I like that.
I was inspired by Connie
Nilekani at that time is a bull in a china shop and at times tender Mifflin versions. I've done the bull in a china shop. And in my younger years, didn't work out so well for me. And I think that's where I learned that communication really is important. You know, before we go into these sorts of things, and get people on board and influence them. And I'm curious, you're with Joyce. So Joyce, in the chat. The issue I have is that the department within the whole company is new and corporate hasn't really explained how training is supposed to work with other departments. So it's hard to get buy in, when they don't know what the Department actually does. Okay, It
All right group?
What do we say to that?
Well, if somebody if the department was formed, so somebody must care about the department. So I would start there. Who really? Who wanted that department? And brought it out, bring it about, and then try to expand from there? I don't know. That's just my first thought.
I think that's a great first thought. You're right, somebody somewhere cared.
Doc, you pray,
pardon me? I love it.
Okay. So if they don't know what you can do, you have to find opportunities to show them what you can do, even if it's just a little small sum sum, right? And you build on that win, and you build on that win. And all of a sudden, now you're helping, and this person goes to that person. And, uh, you're almost generating a word of mouth. So when I say stalk your prey, it's like, find out what's important to some of these individuals, what initiatives they have going on. And we we went through the same thing, right? We're, they're thinking, everybody's just thinking, Oh, safety training, but there's so many levels of training facilitation, right, even speeches that our people give at conferences, it's like, they had no idea that the people in our department are like, well versed in helping you do that until you help the one. And they were like, Oh, yes, do that. Well, yeah. What do you think learning development, were kinda like, in the face of people were really good at this stuff. So that's what I meant by stock your praise, find your opportunities. And it could be hanging out around the watercooler and just listen to what people are saying and be like, interject. Thus, a little bit of my bull in a china shop, it's like, bust your way into the conversation.
I like that. I like that. And I, and there is a lot of value to that approach as well. I would also build on that. Douglas, is if your organization doesn't quite know what training is supposed to be doing, this is a great place to start. So a creative problem solving sort of session can help ideate the direction that the department needs to go in, it can help filter priorities, it can help you understand what the business goals are, what are the what are the pain points, right? What are the things that need to be addressed? And you can take a creative problem solving approach to that. And when you do it that way, what a great way to start out right, so you're not doing something that is well let me put out a survey, you know, something that is really different, and people can then see your value, right then in there, you know, and your passion for, you know, uncovering what needs to happen.
Many of us also start beginning that that collaborative attitude that you're trying to generate, right. Here, we understand your problem here, how can I help? Let me be a part of your solution, or or help you get it to the next level? And those are, then the questions that you were bringing up earlier, Shannon, right. What are your end results? And then I love the earlier one? How did that work for you? Did you get everything out of it that you want? What would you do differently? How can I help you get there?
Mm hmm. Right? And then that all goes to you know, your goes back to a needs analysis, right. So that your needs analysis question is, well, have we done that before? And did it work? So, so we put our training, we power training again, how's that working for you ain't working. Okay, so now let's take some creative problem solving techniques and make that work for us. Right, and again, it's showing interest. It's showing involvement, it's showing that you are supporting them in the areas in which they feel they need help. I think that's all great. Any other ideas from you as how can we move? Excuse me, how can we move stakeholders from that confused stage where they don't know if they want to be involved with doing something different to moving them maybe even up a notch? Let's say I don't know if I want to participate in this. I'm perfectly happy with the way that we do things now. Why do we need Need to go and do something creative? How do you even get them to move from one part to another part? So we've talked about finding those cheerleaders. We talked about communicating in general, are there any other sorts of ideas that you all might have, that might get stakeholder involvement on a greater level. So
we've just done this, in a way, at my company, is that we did informational interviews with a lot of people in order to build consensus and find out what everybody agrees on that we need and what they don't agree on. And eventually, we'll have a proposal to take to the executive committee and see if it gets approved or not. But I think doing, we did like 20 interviews, and I think doing all those interviews will help us if it gets approved, because we've got advocates because we asked her opinion.
Yes, yeah, people want at least to be asked. I think that's a big part of it. You know, people are naturally going to rebel against something that they don't feel as though they are a part of, you know, so you didn't ask me, so I'm not gonna give you my support. So go on with you. You know, so I think that that happens a lot. And then also, I like, Maureen, you're absolutely right about that, Maureen. And we've talked about that. Changing the way that we approach language many times in this in our gatherings here with the chat and perhaps it is let's not call it creative problem solving. I'm calling it that here. Maybe we need to call it something else there. So maybe it's just problem solving. Maybe it's something else. You know, is there another word that we can put there? I think even ideation is a little squirrely, you know, for a lot of stakeholders, you know, so what? What are other words that we can use?
fact finding, Oh, I like that. We're on a fact finding mission. Let's get together. Figure it out. I like that. Jason. Thank you.
Any other suggestions? What else would you call it? Learning detectives? Were 20 bucks is in the mail that introduces our next learn something new topic. With Kevin Yates the l&d Detective. We're running a Labor Day special by the way. revenue growth from increased training. Yeah. Okay. Just look for reactions. What is your gut say? Yeah, okay. Right. You know, I love that a lot. Donald, let me tell you why revenue growth from increased training. I think if we put it into language, the areas that are important to them, if you can slide in, let's have a let's gather to talk about revenue growth, ideas for revenue growth, or ideas for decreasing safety incidences, you know, so I think if you even just put in there, we're going to gather to generate ideas or generate, you know, thoughts around XYZ. And it directly meets their business pain point. I think they're in. Yeah. And I think and to Sarah's point, yeah, looking for the reactions. And it might take some playing. So to Sarah's point, I think it might take some playing with some of these words and seeing what their reactions are overall. Do a little A B testing with your, your conversations with the stakeholders. Yeah. All right. So now let's talk about the next bit this so the next bit is we got people in the room. Okay, so you've got your stakeholders in the room of various levels. Here's the other thing is that I've recommended this in the past you'll do is that you get a variety of people in the room. Right? You get potential end users, you have managers, you might have some people who, you know, directors, etc. So you have all versions of people in the room. Okay, so now that you have all versions of people in the room, what are some of the guardrails? I'm going to refrain from saying rules because this is about being creative. You know, so What are some of the guardrails that we can put up? That's going to help people from bouncing, you know, against the walls? What are some of what techniques have you used in the past?
So, I know for us like, and this is more thinking about like Design Thinking sessions, which is free to problem solving, had people almost immediately draw, draw on paper, a picture of their kind of superhero trait, or what they brought to the session, like, what was their, like, strength they were bringing. And so then, I noticed that we were immediately in a way, like, one of the things was like, Okay, that was felt kind of uncomfortable, we don't often draw, I want you to know, that's probably going to be the most uncomfortable you'll feel today. But it also sets the stage or tone that it's different from other sessions that they're in. And so in our introductions, then we're sharing what our superpowers are. And so and then that's up on the wall, and you'll immediately get to know people at a deeper level than you would if it was just like, Hi, my name is this, I've been in this role. I've been with the company for this long, blah, blah, blah, like noumenon, right? Like me, but you remember those superpowers and, and it gets people also to think about, like, yeah, I am here for a reason. And I want to make sure I share that strength, those strengths with other people. So it's not about your rank, it's not about your band level, or whatever, it's about your gear here for a reason. And you're contributing your different perspective. But always, for the design session, we're focused on the how might we, and so we're really talking about, like, our purpose for being there. And everything gets, you know, you bring it back to that my people are there, but also have things time boxed. So it's not like you can go on and on, that the agenda is like pretty fast moving. So that it's not like, you know, you know, it goes down all these rabbit holes, and everybody's talking about, it's like, nope, here's what we're doing, we're generating this, you know, you get people up also in like, we're gonna move around today, you know, or, you know, have a buddy or whatever, you just set the ground rules. And, again, people don't have time then to be thinking about what's happening outside because they're so involved, and so engaged in what's happening. And then also, it accelerates getting to a place that it would take so many meetings where you stop, start, stop, start, stop start, you get into a groove, and just really start to think differently.
I love all of that. And I especially like, especially like the idea of drawing your superhero power. Because, yeah, because that's going to put different in a different mindset. And while you may have a director or maybe a senior leader or something like that in the room, sometimes people get intimidated by that person. And that person then is only seen and then also, from that person's point of view, they're only seen from I may, you know, the director of sales or the VP of sales perspective, they're not really thought of as being a human, you know, who has also different skill sets to bring to the table. And I think it sort of democratizes it, doesn't it? It kind of puts people on the same level. Where it's like, okay, I here's my gift, here's my ask. And now, this is where we can see each other. And then also, I think it might be great, wouldn't it if you even put it up on a wall that said, Here's, you know, Maureen's superpower is communication. And so if we have something around communication, we can go okay, Maureen, your superpower, what are your ideas? You know, and you can draw from that? I think that that would be really cool to be able to do. And then I also like Donna in the in the chat here micro talk, is that the same as like a time box sweats, or you know, just making sure people stick to a, you know, a topic. I try to
treat it like a game show and I have a buzzer when they get off topic, just so nobody feels like it's rude. And I'm the world's worst at getting off topic as I'm doing right now. But yeah, but but keeping the energy going and avoiding those people who they don't really have anything to contribute, but they want you to hear their story. They want to be heard, but they're not really necessarily adding value. as lovely as that story might be.
And I think that when you when you keep the conversation going, it goes back to Maureen's point, right? It's keeping that energy. So people are not thinking about out what emails Am I missing? Yes. Right? Because that's really where we don't want them thinking about that. So anything that we can do to keep the ideas flowing and engaged in that, then the better off we are. Let's see. And Donna, she'll go, is it she'll Thank you. We had two daughters in the room. And both of them with SS. So I can't go Donna s, you guys made it hard for me today. To help accelerate the process, have them think or share ideas before the meeting? Let me ask you this, Dan, if you don't mind. So a lot of times I think we do this, we ask people to share their ideas before a meeting, or fill out something, fill out a form or or you know, share something before meeting and then nobody does it. So how do you get people to actually engage in that activity?
I've never had a problem. And actually, I use it because everyone's so engaged in the meetings that we have to have them. I think it was Dan Smith, the who is saying about going off topic, right? You have to force yourself. That's what I usually encounter. So I have found by letting them know, this is what our goal is. And these are the topics we're going to discuss. The introverts, we have several we're in title insurance. So a lot of heads down thinkers don't necessarily like to talk out loud unless they've had time to think about it. So that gives them a time to process. So I have I have not had that happen where they get to the meeting, not willing to share. Now the post it no question, comment I just made, the opposite happens is the ease the extroverts tend to just talk, talk talk and the eyes don't. And so I don't know if you've ever used that post it now where everyone gets post it notes, no one talks, but for five minutes, they brainstorm their ideas, we put them up on the board. That way, everyone has a voice. So I apologize, Shannon, I don't have an answer to what do you do when no one wants to participate? I just haven't had that happen.
No, that's, that's fine. And I think we can learn from that as well. I think what you're saying here is that one, it's part of the culture, it's part of your practice. So people understand that as being part of the practice. And so subsequently, they do it. And perhaps that's something that anyone who struggles with this can learn from, it's if you try it once and nobody does it, and you try twice, and nobody does it, we have a tendency to give up on it. You know, so maybe it's about tenacity, on our end, you know, so it's insisting you know that we do this, right. And I like the idea to Donna, thank you for bringing it up with the, you know, the post it notes. And that's, that's also another creative brainstorming technique. And it kind of goes along the lines with Crazy Eights, if those of you are familiar with Crazy Eights, you know, where you fold up a piece of paper into eight quadrants. And then you write your ideas, or you make your drawings on eight different quadrants, you have that moment where you're just dropping eight different ideas all at once. And then you put those ideas up on a board, and everybody sees everybody's ideas. And I think those opportunities as well as what Don is talking about, as far as like, free ideas, it does help those people who have a tendency to want to think you know, there are there are processors out there, you know, and we're respecting their process. I think that's another way that you get people to buy in and gain interest and also help influence what happens in the room. When we respect each other's process. They're each other's thinking process. I think that's that's a big one. And so Don, I think, even though you said you weren't helpful, you were helpful, I think this is this is very helpful for some what else? Let's see, as I'm going through the chat, anybody else want to contribute what what else can we do to set guardrails to help people free up I guess their their create their creative thoughts and to really contribute.
So Stacey here having a way to collect their thoughts in writing before or after helps get the ideas out. So they don't feel like they have to talk through it all on the spot. Right. That's kind of what we were just talking about. Would you like to expand on that?
Yeah, well, I was even thinking what was being said earlier is right along the same lines, but even after the meeting, you'll come you know people will be sent times on the spot in a way that they, they might have ideas, but they're not fully formed yet. And you're sort of talking through them. And it's sort of clumsy. And you know, they haven't really had time to sit and think about it. So giving them like, a form or like a collection, you know, some sort of collection mechanism that gives them pointed questions like, What do you think about blank? Or what is your issue about blank? We're actually doing that right now with a project that we're working on. And it's okay, we talked a little bit about some of your issues in this like kickoff meeting. And, you know, of course, when you start talking about issues software, you know, and everybody's got something to say about this software doesn't work, it doesn't do this, it doesn't do that. Well, okay, you know, like, this meeting is not really the best time to just bring up all the small gripes, but let's get them out onto a form, and then we'll start sorting them, and then we'll start looking at them. And then we'll try and figure out what you know, what to tackle first, and have a more pointed discussion about those things, you know, in the next subsequent meetings, but initially, you know, if you just open up, okay, what's your issues?
Here, now that we've got that elephant taken care of, let's let's address this. And I liked that. And oftentimes, I, I would, especially if I have a very, very specific goal for meeting, oftentimes, I'll tell people, This is what we are not talking about today. Just show you know, these, these topics are not on the board. You know, but if you have that I like your idea there, Stacy. But if you have comments about this, about XYZ, because I know that it's a burning thing in your brain, write it down, and we'll talk about it either at the next meeting or what have you. Right. So I like that idea a lot. And then I saw Kendra here, opposing roles and had them debate a topic based on their assignments to solicit all possibilities. Lots of interesting. That's interesting. So Kendra, talk to me about that.
Yeah. Are you able to hear me I was having mic issues earlier. Okay, so I'm, I'm a change, man. Change management person lifetime. l&d or so that was the the first 15 years of my career was l&d. But so in change management, and also what I found myself doing an l&d is kind of what I think you guys were probably testing out in your last Coffee Chat, is, you know, what is going to be great about this solution or about this end goal, and what is going to fail miserably. And so it makes it a little bit freer, because it's not attached to your personal position, or it's more just, what are all the possibilities?
Yeah, I like that. You know, and from an l&d perspective, when we're teaching specific processes or you know, performance, etc. Yeah, often debate comes into it. That's a great exercise, you know, just in general, you know, let's debate the merits of x and y and see what comes out of it. But I think that this could be a fun exercise, just in general, you know, for our creative problem solving techniques is to get in there and see what might be some issues that yet need to be uncovered. Right. And so when you do this sort of debate, debate format, you might find something in there that made you go, Oh, that was unexpected. Okay. How do we address that? You know, so that could be that could be really fun. And interesting. So thank you for that Kendra. All right. So now, where I'd like to go is kind of piggybacking on what Stacey was talking about, is the follow up. So now that we we've got stakeholder involvement, we had people participating in the meetings. Now here's really the so what now what, what, how are we going to now follow up on this? What's our process?
So those of you who you know, and it's true for any meeting or any, you know, training initiative, what's what's follow up? How are we going to get? We have all of these ideas, and maybe you even have something you have one idea that you all landed on and we're going to move that forward. What's the communication with that?
communicated seven ways
on that cancer
communicate? Well,
I know, I'm guessing I'm not alone here. And that like it felt like when we all went home for COVID, the expectations of like, productivity really increased, and those have not recalibrated, since some of us have gotten pulled back into the office. And so there's like this mindshare, this, like cognitive real estate that's very limited and has like a lot of competing priorities. So, at least in my organization, if we don't review it before, for alignment, before we all just connect, we don't send it out the summary, via email, if there's some sort of illustration that breaks it down clearly who's expected to do what before, then. And if that's there's an interdependency there for somebody else to do something, then reminders and follow ups and meetings for the meetings. It seems like that's, that's unfortunately, part of our, our cultural norms these days.
I see where you're headed with that. And it's, like that old marketing thing, right, we have to tell somebody 10 times, right before the message gets across. And in this, what I think I'm hearing you say, is communicated in a variety of media, Kate communicated different times, and also in a variety of different ways. So can we communicate it through? Here's our email message. But then also, here's a picture, perhaps, of the flip charts that we created? Or here's a PowerPoint that shows all the different points that we discussed, or what have you. Is that am I getting that right?
Yeah, communicating it. Yeah, I'm packaging up that understanding in several different formats and vehicles, but also aligning on on what the expectation was or what we thought we agreed on before we make that assumption and move forward.
And I think it has to be short. I don't think we need to put out a 50 page report on this, for sure. Yeah, that no one's going to read. So I appreciate it, where you can go, here's, here's an email. And maybe it's you giving a three minute summary, you know, a little video if they want to watch that. And then also, here's, again, here's pictures. And I, and I've done this before, and it seems to have good success, is I take pictures of the different flip charts, and then just post them somewhere. Either it could be in that email, or it could be in a Slack channel or wherever, you know, here's, here's all of your different out all the different outcomes that we came out with, that might be helpful. So what else can we do? Donna? She'll,
so this is, um, it's some of you have mentioned about the cultural norms. And so interesting, I haven't been with this company very long. And I went to headquarters in Houston. And were in a meeting, and there was a lot of us new people. And they were talking about, yeah, we should do this. Everyone should do that. But no one was ever saying, who's going to do this? And by when are they going to do it? Thank you. Yeah, so me, and this other gentleman kind of looked at each other. And he got up on the whiteboard, he goes, so what did we commit to and he, he wrote it on the whiteboard. So people were seeing, Are we all in agreement, this is what we're going to do. And they said, who's going to do this, and then he put and by when so it's really not taking for granted that that stuff happens, because I thought it did all the time, but it doesn't. So it's just making sure everyone's clear on what we agreed on who's doing what and then follow up is my middle name, then someone has to be accountable, and then hold others accountable, like, okay, who's the point on this project or whatever. And then following up with everyone, and the progress that we're making, if there is progress to be made, versus a one and done type thing, so
and it might be a variation that might be a variation of a racy write of a racy chart, at the end, not that you're getting all you know, an hour into it, but it simply could be who's going to be responsible for this? Who's going to be accountable for that? Who do we need to communicate with? Right and so just really, just really quickly, and I think that's a huge that's a huge miss. You know, when we have these sorts of meetings, people want to know, okay, now what, now what, am I supposed to do something? Am I supposed to take action on something with somebody else? What are the next steps? And I think we dropped the ball on that a lot. And not just us as l&d people. But I think business meetings in general, dropped the ball on that a lot. You know. So I think having that process in place is a good one. Any other any other ideas that we can do for follow up?
What about status updates? How should we handle that?
I can share that we actually usually, we put things into a ticketing system, just like the IT people, we all share the same ticketing system. So yeah, we use JIRA. And we actually create a ticket, you know, a project ticket, and everybody sees, you know, the whatever the posts are, this is, yeah, this information has been updated, or everybody check their, you know, task list or you know, whatever's going on whatever type of project it is, but people are pretty used to seeing the ticket notifications come through. And that has worked pretty well on our project managers, and it side, they all use that along with Smartsheet. They keep everything in there, like a project plan. And the Smartsheet depends on how complex the project is, of course, that does help because people are used to seeing them. And they, you know, they know where to go to find the information. If they miss something they know, oh, wait, let me see what's in JIRA if anybody's posted an update.
Yeah, or something as simple as even a Google sheet or a Google doc that's live, you know, where people can see what progress has been made. And you know, you can send an email out, you know, status update Monday or status update Wednesday or something. That's something really short, that at least lets people know that their ideas have legs, you know, that they've contributed to something that is really making a difference somewhere. Excellent, excellent. Anything else that we're leaving out?
Because I think we're I, there's, I've got a lot of good ideas here. Yeah. Oh, a visual dashboard. Yep. And you can do those visual dashboards on a variety of different tools, right? You don't even have to have anything special or expensive or anything, you can just create that, like Google Slides. Anything that you can share would be, you know, beneficial. All right, excellent. I love all of this. And so hopefully now, the idea is that I've given you all of these different resources between blog post number one and blog post number two. So you've got resources, not to mention all that different sorts of techniques that were incorporated in liberating structures, which I think is like 16 of them, and then fall in the last blog post, you have different ideas for guardrails, such as making sure that you're creating that safe environment for people, right? And how to, you know, what do we do when we disagree? You know, so what, so what are some general rules around consensus, so that that's all in there, and I'll add some of your ideas there, as well as well update that blog post. And then as well as follow up. So I've also put in some ideas there, for following up. And I'll add your the different things that we've talked about here to that blog post. So now you have a big giant resource for if you want to start creative problem solving, and I think you should be as this is where we're really going to get some different innovative thoughts, because, you know, like I said, we have these problems, and these problems have been there forever. Every organization has these old issues, but we're not going to solve those old issues with the same mindset that created those issues. We have to think differently about it. And this is the way that you can start. And is there a way to receive the you know what? Yes, we have the recording from part one, Donna, we do, but it was a lot of breakout rooms. So I don't know exactly how beneficial that is going to be but the recording is it's actually on the website right now. So if you go to learning rebels, resources, Coffee Chat, it should be there. It's gonna come down though here in the next 24 to 48 hours. So you might want to boogie and jump on that. For those of you in the community, of course, this is a good lean into the community. Those of you who are a part of the learning rebels community, these resources are accessible 365 24/7 You have full access to all of the coffee chat resources within the community. And also, if you're a community Plus member, you get all of the learn something new events for free, as well as all the resources. So there you go. And speaking of the next cohort, something new, the next learn something new Kevin Yates, the l&d Detective, he's going to be doing his his version, an hour and a half version of walking us through performance measurement. And it's going to be really interesting. He works us through an actual scenario about how to measure performance, the questions that you need to be asking how to get stakeholder involvement. excetera and that's all on our next learn something new. And as I said, we have a Labor Day special going on for that. So you're going to be the Holmes to his Sherlock. So Holmes 15 Gets you 15% off of and that was just like, Oh, now I get it. That's it seems you're inside version to how Shannon's brain work. Why did she make the promo code? Oh, that's why. All right. So I hope you guys have oh, and then also don't forget, we started our new intensive. So learning rebels intensives. The next one is with Mayra in October. And that's two hours of you guys building an actual chatbot and building different AI tools. So that's going to be a heck of a lot of fun. So be sure to check that out on the events page. So who's doing something fun this weekend? Anyone doing anything for the long week? Renee, what are you doing?
This evening, I will be flying to North Carolina to see my sister.
Oh, that's great. How long is it? Had it been a while since you've seen her? Yeah, probably a year, something like that. Very nice. Well, I hope you have a lot of fun with that. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Anyone else doing anything? Nope, I need to I am just I've got some sour dough in the fridge. I might do something with I don't know. I just want to relax a little bit.
Yeah, relax and tend to my very neglected plants because I've been so busy.
Well, excellent. Well, hopefully you all join us for the next Coffee Chat the next coffee chat here in two weeks, which is all about curation techniques, and aligning your curation efforts to business goals. So that's going to be our next Coffee Chat. And I hope to see you guys all there. So in the meantime, everybody stay curious. I look forward to seeing you all next. The next Coffee Chat not next week but the week after. By
enjoy then the grandbaby Thomas.
Oh yeah, Tom is your grand baby. Yeah, one month. Oh. Oh, that's so precious. Yeah. Down in Dan.
