On Day 2 of our Fixed Meeting Week, we had a fascinating session on the “Future of Sustainability” that featured a speaker from China, an economist currently working for a UN agency in Geneva, who spoke to us about China and how its government and 1.3 billion people are approaching sustainability. You cannot pick up […]
Monday afternoon, a two hour session was held titled, ‘Learn Something New: People and Networking’. The objective was not to provide a taught course on Networking, but to create an environment where people can share and exchange about networking, and do it at the same time. In one exercise people were asked to stand on […]
We have a full week of meetings come up. Here is what Wikipedia says about meetings and learning:Meetings are sometimes held around conference tables. In a meeting, two or more people come together for the purpose of discussing a (usually) predetermined topic, often in a formalized setting. In organizations, meetings are an important vehicle for […]
I have had a few people ask me about the value of facilitating other people’s workshops. What does that contribute to the grand scheme of things? What Facilitators do that is visible to participants (that is, stand up in front of a room and guide discussions/give instructions), is probably about 30% of the work of […]
We are just going into a week of facilitating learning and conversation activities and no doubt we will have some learning to share on this blog. Here is the first post for the Facilitator’s Notebook: Lights, Camera, Action: Working with Star SpeakersHere is a lesson that I absolutely need to learn as a workshop facilitator: […]
Even skype chat offers learning conversation opportunities. This is what you can type in a chat window in four minutes between Portland and Geneva… [10:33:55 PM] Andy says: How can one work situation with all the money and talent be such a torture chamber and another situation with a few fairly tolerable people turn out […]
Recruiting senior staff for a global knowledge organization these days is very much like casting a movie. First you need a good idea of the movie you want to make, then you need to cast it with the right talent. If you have a choice of actor profiles, in order to have a good movie, […]
The participant’s journey at a large-scale conference can be an interesting one. People travel to the venue, they walk into a bustling and colourful conference venue (exhibitions, restaurants, meeting spaces, and all), then they walk into their first of many small workshop rooms and basically sit there (different small rooms of course) for 75% of […]
* A team retreat to do strategic planning for the next 5 years;* A one-day meeting of partners to contribute to an upcoming summit;* A co-development process for the design of a leadership programme with a colleague a country away; What do these things have in common? Each one of them will be more successful […]
Most people who care for you would rather have your undivided attention for a while than anything that you could buy for them. It seems to take a long time to learn this. Enough said…
Today I went ice skating with my 5 year old son. He skated confidently around the hockey rink about 15 times; he ran on his skates and took enormous jumps and landed back on his skates; he skated like mad and then would do a quick turn…and this was only the second time he has […]
We write frequently about informal learning in our blog – that 80% of the learning that you do that is not structured in some kind of course (taught or self-taught). Informal learning is what happens when you are surfing the net looking for something, watching TV, in a meeting, even having coffee with someone that […]
It is a little slow in the office around the holiday season, so I thought I would write in this post about another kind of learning that I have embarked upon recently. I joined a local choir a few months ago with my neighbour because I like to sing and am a fairly competent; I […]
Why do people sometimes find learning so frightening? Even me – last weekend I was offered the opportunity to organize a 4-day meeting of senior scientists, systems thinkers and sustainability practitioners on the topic of climate change and behaviour change. My response – no way! I have worked in the sustainable development field for over […]
I just received a new video I-pod for my birthday as I am very interested in seeing how podcasting can be useful to my work (not to mention getting the latest episode of Lost each week). However, the worrying thing is that I have not yet set it up properly and the papers are sitting […]
When you learned your science, physics and chemistry at high school, could you imagine that the information you were getting was over 30-50 years old already? How old are you now? You do the math – you might possibly be a little bit out of date. Professor Natalia Tarasova, Director of the Institute of Chemistry […]
Did you know that the Earth Charter, a soft law instrument that is gradually becoming “harder”, has the word Love in it? One of the principles of the Earth Charter is to “Care for the community of life with understanding, compassion and love.” Leadership development practitioners, such as those at the Teleos Leadership Institute are […]
On Monday our organization hosted the most fantastic workshop at which 12 staff members from a major multinational bank came to our office for the day to help us think about how to best message, market, and position one of our most important institutional knowledge products. They came from completely different departments in that company, […]
Information is a Flow. Like electricity or water in your house, it is constantly available, you know where to get it, and you can turn it off or on whenever you like. You would never keep buckets and buckets of water around, all over your house, just in case you need it… This was a […]
In his plenary presentation this morning at the Educa Online Conference, George Siemens argued that knowledge has changed, here are some of his reasons (read more in his conference paper): 1. We create knowledge togetherToday knowledge and knowledge products are created together, we are no longer passive consumers of knowledge created for us. BBC is […]
Lizzie and I are at the Educa Online Conference in Berlin which brings together people working with all the weird and wonderful new online tools and technologies for learning. This will be the first of a series of blog posts on what we are learning and how we think it might be applied in our […]
The facilitator of our discussion asked the group to give her bullet points, but the man from Rwanda told her he would only give her stars…
Ginka Tchavdarova from the National Association of Ministries in Bulgaria spoke at the Conference “Capacity Strategies: Let the Evidence Speak” about the conditions for decentralised development. She gave the case of Bulgaria where initially responsibilities were transferred to communities and leaders, and later (10 years later), the rights associated with the responsibilities were transferred. She […]
“When the imagination is unleashed, change happens.” This is what John Samuel, International Director of ActionAid noticed throughout his Stand Up Against Poverty Campaign in India and other places where millions of people joined the antipoverty campaign in many creative ways, from concerts, events, and other cleverly branded activities. Speaking at the conference mentioned in […]
Can it be, Ischomachus, that asking questions is teaching? I am just beginning to see what is behind all your questions. You lead me on by means of things I know, point to things that resemble them, and persuade me that I know things that I thought I had no knowledge of. — Socrates (Quoted […]
You derailed a conversation in a meeting;You made an unfair comment;You spoke with too much emotion and not enough forethought;Was that me?What’s that all about? What was it about those conversations that made me react like that? What does the team leader think of this situation? (www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_86.htm)“Soon, reality sets in and your team moves into […]
Chuck Phillips, a change management consultant for major institutions and corporations in the USA, was a lively speaker during our recent meeting on Deep Change Processes. He started his presentation with an activity that some people likened to strip poker… Two people face each other and take an “inventory” of the other person. Look them […]
In the next few days no doubt we will be writing a lot about a recent meeting we held on “Exploring Deep Change Processes: Learning from Around the World”. As I work through my reflections, I thought I would start with the discussion about how much choice we really have about how we see our […]
Anyone who organizes learning events and meetings knows that often intermingling in the same room are some people who know each other well, and some first-time guests, who are there to contribute new insights, generate some inspired discussion, and generally help enrich the group’s learning about a specific issue. The meeting we are holding at […]
If you read the blog post on 19 October, this title will sound familiar. That blog post was inspired by a discussion with a few colleagues after a staff meeting. Some ideas were already popping up on how these kinds of gatherings could be even more interesting and contribute to good dialogue within the institution. […]
What is the difference between a courtroom and a concert? A courtroom is a place where people are being questioned for holes in their argument, for inconsistencies in their stories. People attend expecting not to believe one side or the other. It is a place where for the most part people’s minds are made up, […]
Some days so much happens that it is a challenge to put your finger on a few things that you usefully learned throughout the day. Today was one of those days. Five different meetings of various lengths, all around the building, up and down the stairs. At the end of the day, tired, yet wanting […]
It is thought-provoking to hear people come away from discussions that they have lead and say, “Why do you think people reacted that way to my ideas?” Another question they could ask might be, “What could I have done differently to develop a generative discussion rather than a debate?” We noticed during a recent meeting, […]
Well, it turns out that many institutions have figured this one out – using blogs for reflective practice. A quick google showed that many environments that are education and learning-based are using them. I found an interesting upcoming conference titled Online Educa Berlin 2006 http://www.online-educa.com/ with a parallel stream titled, “Social Technologies in Educational Practice”. […]
Many people say that they do not have time for reflection in the workplace. Meetings after meetings with two minutes in-between, emails interrupted by visitors in turn interrupted by telephone calls. Forgetting to have lunch? Reflection however is what helps people process the various inputs that they are receiving. It helps them develop their own […]
What are some of the different purposes of a Staff Meeting?-To update and inform staff members of activities in the institution-To profile people who have done good work and let them share their reflections-To maintain transparency and an open environment for sharing-To bring staff together for a shared experience once and a while What is […]
I am currently reading “The Thin Book of Appreciative Inquiry”, by Sue Annis Hammond which is one of the first books written on AI in 1996. One of the 8 Assumptions of Appreciative Inquiry focuses on the questioner herself and the impact of questions: The act of asking questions of an organization or group influences […]
Why do people blog? “Why do you want to blog?” my husband, the software engineer asked me. “Is it for visibility? Is it an ego-thing? Is it to start a discussion on an interesting topic? Is it to gather a community of like-minded people around you?” What good questions. What was it about blogging that […]
We are currently exploring even more ways to “Walk our Talk” within the organization. A meeting last Tuesday was devoted to looking at the assets (experience and expertise) that we already have within the institution in terms of sustainability practices, both individual and institution-wide, and what we would like to know more about. Starting any […]
Last week I ran a short workshop on facilitation for 8 people within our organization. Four days after the workshop, to follow up with them and tap in on their learning, I sent an email with three questions: 1. Have you noticed anything in your work that we talked about in the workshop (that you […]
