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Posts under ‘facilitation’
Making Change Easy
Change often feels anything but easy …
Ever ask with that popular poster, How can you fly with eagles when you work with a bunch of turkeys?
It feels as if your brain is hard-wired more for chipping away at endless daily routines that tank your talents. You suit up to lead lofty adventures, yet too often ruts keep you pecking away like turkeys, day after day. Do you ever wonder why you slide back so easily into doing the same boring things that spin your wheels but go nowhere? It may seem reasonable once or twice. But over and over again?
Some people blame their supervisors, others say lack of funds keeps them down in the dust.
Are you aware though, that blame robs creative oomph, drowns change and leaves you stuck in ruts? Fault finding blocks focus from seeing those game-changing horizons that complainers only crave.
It doesn’t have to be that way, and your success often depends on how you handle detractors. When Gordon, a British Columbia School Superintendent, tried to involve parents in the daily interactions of his large district, several secondary school faculty threatened to quit.
Cynicism trumped his changes at every step …
Protesters insisted that when outsiders (namely parents) try to control their classrooms, they can no longer teach effectively and test scores suffer. Critics countered even small suggestions to include parents, with anxious retorts that parents know nothing about secondary school content, yet act as if they’re in charge.
For months Gordon tried to win over detractors, while a vocal few spread cynicism across schools averting any progress toward collaboration. Nothing worked and gloom spread across change suggestions like the aftermath of nuclear fallout spreads across a once-vibrant village.
Allies opened spigots of hope …
Then Gordon called a meeting with four highly-respected teachers.
After a few hours of brainstorming they’d integrated four disciplines under one umbrella topic – LIGHT. Each of the four classes met learning standards and yet lessons also included student-led topics that teens enjoy.
Enthusiasm carried that first meeting into shared pizza and late night noodling ….
Do Devil’s Advocates Win?
Would cynicism and other workplace toxins decrease if we challenged broken systems by proposing innovative opportunities?
Brainpowered Breakthroughs or Design Thinking?
Design thinking’s defined in many ways, usually related to a process of problem solving that brings talents together, engages diverse thinkers, and creates innovative prototypes. It doesn’t work for most innovators. Why so?
Stack the Deck for Creative Risks
Imagine a workplace where you design & implement an innovation the world craves. Meetings where you play with what if … kinds of challenges. Yet innovation isn’t ideas delivered in talks, but it’s a design you invent, lead, and perfect. How will you stack the deck today for more creative risks?
MBAs Lead Innovative Brainpower
Check out MBAs at The Bittner School of Business at St. John Fisher College who led innovation with the brain in mind. Dynamic innovation story over at Forbes and at Brain Based Biz. The exchange differed from one-way talks, presentations, or illustrated ideas. Community leaders and MBA leaders-in-training integrated novel ideas together, through overarching questions [...]
Brainpowered Leaders Invest Soul and Spirit
Brainpowered leaders invest soul and spirit with vulnerability. Leaders who invest in practices that offer space to develop soul, also tend to facilitate innovation with spirit. That takes the kind of vulnerability that only the most successful leaders risk! We found that out first hand in the MBA Leadership course, Lead Innovation with the Brain [...]
Lead Differences with the Brain in Mind
Lead Differences with the Brain in Mind (MITA Brain Based Mentoring Interventions) To motivate all employees to out-perform themselves, is to provide tools to lead across differences with impact. In October 2010, McKinsey Quarterly, Aaron DeSmet, Monica McGurk, and Elizabeth Schwartz, wrote: Companies around the world spend up to $100 billion a year to train [...]
Less Art for More Science?
Few disagree on an urgent need to increase America’s science and math proficiency in order to compete in our fast paced world. But how can a call for less art increase top science capabilities? The opposite is true. Only when you engage both sides of the human brain, can you significantly raise motivation and achievement [...]
From Poor Tone – to Brainpower for Innovation
Luckily we can overcome our brain’s default for ruts that foster poor tone as evidenced in many conflicts – to create instead – tone for an innovative world order forward. 1. Affirm another person’s thoughts before sharing your views on the other side – to show that you really heard, sorted, and valued them. (Notice [...]
5 Keys into New World Order for Work
Imagine the windfall if today unlocked a brilliant segue into a global life-changing career shift. Look again – it’s almost here! Can you see yourself leading employment opportunities, in a new world order? One where jobs move from tired traditions, into dynamic workplaces with secret gardens and mind-bending adventures for every enterprising worker who enters. [...]
Genius Transparency to Lead Innovation
Gridlock feeds ego and shuts out brainpower while transparency fosters innovation and increases trust. The more gridlock we see, the more open exchanges get lost. Have you seen bullies and cynics keep ego alive by banishing transparency through backdoor deals? Flawed leadership, whether called democracy or dictatorship generates gridlocks that block creative brainpower. Never before [...]
5 Brainpowered Freefall Stoppers
A panel of experts on NPR just warned us again that US organizations free fall daily, while developing countries advance emerging takeovers. All through squashing or boosting innovation and discovery. Have you seen it happen? Invention will reignite broken bureaucracies, only if novelty parachutes back into profitable interventions. Only if your organization reverses tumbling markets [...]
Call Meetings that Brains Run to!
For years I attended toxic meetings where one guy yammered on and one fellow worker turned off his hearing aids. It’s the only time I can remember wishing for Gordon’s hearing disability. That’s how bad these meetings were. People moved back and forth from bored to bitching, while Gordon slept with his eyes open and [...]
Innovation, Design and the Human Brain
The human brain comes with unique equipment that links tone and talent development – to build and sustain innovative cultures across silos. When mentoring leads to mind-guiding then design leads to profitability. How so? 1. Kindle and design an idea. Just as the iPod started with an innovative idea, Steve Jobs and other mindguides continue [...]
Urgent Call to White House – Help Teens!
Government Funds Promote Failing Secondary Schools People say stimulus money simply creates new layers of bureaucracy that prolong broken secondary school programs. My question is: How will the White House Campaign to Promote Science and Math Education support teens to climb new mental peaks? Will successful schools proliferate through fast growing charters? President Obama’s recent [...]
GE Lead Brain Based Way?
Great news from GE leaders today, according to WSJ’s Paul Glader. Any organization willing to change and grow, after a fall, also holds potential to create a prototype for global change and growth. Both qualities urgently needed in the broader business community. Bravo! Let’s get behind GE’s initiative and begin to move in new directions [...]
Urgent Call for Innovative Interactions
Have you noticed that when innovative insights predominate, peaceful resolutions seem more attainable? Creative ideas flit through brains like broadband connects internet to computers, then sadly tend to flee as fast. Why so? The human brain craves action to convert innovation into realities that work. Take all the recent talk on civil discourse. You hear [...]
