How do you keep a workshop of 30 people focussed and engaged when exploring a complex issue such as climate change or explaining dry internal procedures an organisation must adopt? What are some effective ways to highlight collaboration or performance issues and opportunities in a team’s work together? We as facilitators regularly face these types […]
Project Manager at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development My day-to-day work requires a lot of moderation, facilitation and – at times – mediation. Meetings, workshops, webinars or just plain conference calls fill my day – sometimes more than desired, which can be challenging. There is simply not enough time to get the actual […]
How many of you have been in meetings or workshops that veer off track and become ‘talk shops’ that have little chance of reaching the outcomes that were agreed at the start? Are you often left wondering how relevant a meeting’s topic is to your day-to-day work? As process facilitators we are called on to […]
It seems so simple. A deck of post-card sized cards, printed on both sides and connected with a ring. One side or each card has a question: The other side has the answer: The whole exercise takes just 1-2 minutes – to read the question, think about it and have an answer in mind, and […]
That last blog post tipped it over – 500 blog posts, written since 5 October 2006. With an average of 50 per year (nearly weekly) that’s not too bad. In this celebratory blog post – I reread our first ever blog post and, using our stats, link to our Top 10 of all times. Here […]
I had the great honour and pleasure to be the process steward for a multi-stakeholder consultation recently around a complex new idea (which is exactly when you want and need a multi-stakeholder consultation) in the sustainable development field. The issue was one that had significant potential environmental, social, economic and political implications that people and their […]
You put out a call for proposals for your large meeting coming up and your enthusiastic community responds with many ideas – way too many in fact for the traditional parallel break-out session format that was envisioned. What can you do about this? This is a good question and an issue for many large-scale gatherings. […]
I facilitated a big global workshop last week- some 190 people attended- where we used music in a number of different ways in the event. First, as it was a large group, we used it for crisp starts and stops to our sessions: the music stopping gave a subtle audio cue to people, signalling a […]
I have recently been working with a team on training design for a rather technical three-day workshop to be piloted soon. Once the course has been tested and further refined, the next step is to develop a Training-of-Trainers programme to support the capacity development of a number of trainers who can disseminate this learning workshop […]
(I love the fact that I really do learn or re-learn something new every day…) You might be the Facilitator, in charge of weaving together threads of themes, helping people make sense of complexity, ensuring time for reflection and assimilation of concepts, framing and debriefing activities that will help participants share their thoughts or co-create […]
I didn’t wear a helmet, riding boots or a crop when I spent three hours last Sunday morning with Mr. Bean and Frederica- two former polo ponies living on a farm in Bavois, Switzerland. That’s because I didn’t ride them – I spent my time leading them around a chilly arena, slaloming cones and over […]
It has been great to work with my co-authors Dennis Meadows and Linda Booth Sweeney on a book of 22 games that help people learn more about climate change. The three of us have been working in the sustainability field and on related issues for many decades. We’ve enjoyed building on some of the games […]
I am enjoying being the Learning Expert for a very innovative programme (Learning and Knowledge Development Facility) that aims to promote, capture and share learning from a series of international public private development projects (PPDPs). The objective is to create a platform and a process for sharing learning among all the project stakeholders and with […]
In June I had the opportunity to work in Sweden at a wonderful event on the seaside. I got the job because a friend of mine who usually worked with this group was unavailable. Unfortunately I had another event scheduled until 6pm the day before in Switzerland which meant that I needed to leave my […]
The conference centre staff were confronted this morning with the following appeal – PLEASE DON’T TOUCH THE PAPERS – written in foot-high capital letters, and strategically placed in front of the door to our workshop room, the walls of which were plastered with flip chart templates, timelines, prioritised project lists with actors designated – the […]
There I was, prone, my nose the requisite hand-width from the logo on the waxed board. Then, on command, execute sequence: paddle the air like crazy, then up on one knee, then two knees, stand up, body turn, arms out and ride that imaginary wave. Surfing seemed pretty straight forward there on the sand. Side-by-side […]
This is not a holiday snapshot, it’s actually a photograph from the balcony of one of my recent workshop venues – the Bellagio Center, in Bellagio, Italy, on the shores of Lake Como. I had long heard of this venue, but my first visit was only recently, for a scoping meeting of an interesting new […]
It is always interesting and fun to swap personal productivity systems tips and techniques with others. How do other professionals organize themselves, their information and workflow? How do they keep their tasks and “to do’s” up to date? Do they combine home with work projects? All great questions that we have all pondered at one […]
There’s nothing like a conference with short presentation after presentation to remind you what makes a particularly good one. I facilitated two Awards ceremonies recently where 18 people in all presented their cases and proposals in 6 minutes each. These were critical opportunities for the speakers to share their ideas and convince the jury and […]
I have been working for the last few years as the Learning Expert on a very interesting partnership project called the Learning and Knowledge Development Facility (LKDF). This project focuses on “promoting green industrial skills among young people in developing countries”. The focus is on developing Public Private Development Partnerships (PPDPs) in selected Vocational Training […]
They cost millions to put on and convene the best and brightest of a community – how can you channel that collective strength for collective impact and, in the end, how can you tell? I just returned from 7th World Water Forum in Korea, where numbers of attendees were reported at 41,000 people. I also […]
I saw this first last year at the Balaton Group Meeting where Junko Edahiro, a fellow life-long learner and enthusiast in the field of productivity, was using her “nu board” to take notes during the meeting. I usually use my iPad and Penultimate to take photos, written notes with my stylus etc, etc. and they […]
When your story is a powerful as UNHCR’s Vincent Cochetel – of his 317 days in captivity near Chechnya as a hostage chained to a bed, in darkness but for 15 minutes a day of candlelight and able to take 4 small steps and no more – simply the facts can have a profound influence on listeners. […]
We like to use this blog to capture our learning as we go, through the interesting and varied processes that we have the opportunity to co-develop with our partners and support in different ways. Many of these initiatives produce news! They develop new standards (like for aluminium stewardship along the supply chain), test innovative models […]
Lizzie and I from Bright Green Learning wish you a very happy holiday season! Want to learn something new and make your own holiday e-card in 5 min? I enjoyed using Penultimate to make these two holiday cards – how to? 1) Grab your ipad; 2) Open the free app Penultimate; 3) Start a new notebook and […]
Attending a TED event is like spending 5 days surrounded by shiny objects – great opening lines to speeches, weird facts, interesting turns of phrase, amazing visuals, and those random ideas that you get that are sparked by something that the speaker says, and more – and from amongst all this having to choose what […]
We’ve recently put together the Balaton Group Book List of 124 books by Balaton Group Members. If you are interested in systems thinking, systems dynamics, sustainable development and related issues, you might be curious to look at this collection, which includes a wide range of titles from academic books to games books. There are books […]
As learning practitioners we play many roles – we are process designers and facilitators, panel moderators, skills trainers, advisors, team coaches, and sometimes we are MCs (Master of Ceremonies), helping weave together the different learning threads of a larger event. I recently took on this role at the Women’s Forum, having done this on a number […]
I often get asked for interesting resources to help people learn more about Systems Thinking – what it is and how to use it for understanding the complexity that surrounds us, and for making effective interventions for positive change. For those of us in the sustainable development community, working with this complexity is a feature […]
With thanks to Guest blogger: Cristina Apetrei Back in January my friend Gillian and I were planning to go together to a Common Cause workshop, but we both cancelled last minute due to work obligations. When six months later I did manage to attend a similar event, she was very eager to hear what I […]
Every year on the shores of Lake Balaton, a very unique group of systems dynamicists, systems thinkers and sustainability practitioners – called The Balaton Group – meet. The Group has met annually since founders Dennis Meadows and Donella Meadows (Co-authors of Limits to Growth) constituted it in 1982 to explore, exchange, support, dream and create together around […]
I recently took over the role of Table Topics Master at our Nyon Toastmasters Club, a role I had not taken before (Note: If you don’t know about Toastmasters, I would highly recommend this wonderful learning community focused entirely on public speaking.) Table Topics are a regular feature of our Club, and I think of […]
Believe it or not, one of my most productive work days this week was here. At the risk of no one taking me seriously again, I wanted to write briefly about mobile working… from a water park. Sometimes your kids have a day off, beg you to take them to Aqua Park because it is […]
Having worked for the last 20 years in and around the Geneva area in the training and facilitation field, after a while you get to know the good places to hold workshops and meetings. I wanted to put these all in one place for easy use for myself, and for others, as I get asked […]
Most multi-stakeholder processes convene a diversity of opinion around complex issues. They do so with the express mandate of surfacing these different perspectives and working with them – maybe even transforming them – to become the building blocks with which to construct an agreed and robust solution for an important challenge that the parties care […]
If you think about it, the kind of workshops we go to, and run as facilitators and learning practitioners – our strategic planning meetings, our team development sessions, and brainstorming events – are not traditional workshops. The walls are not lined with physical tools, and in the room there are no hydraulic lifts and pneumatic […]
This is an occupational reality that I need to remind myself about from time to time related to the work facilitators do. The resulting advice that I give myself may also be pertinent for trainers, event planners and staff members with bosses using “just-in-time” management or a firefighter approach to work. You are invited to […]
As facilitators (and human beings) we make all kinds of assumptions about what people want out of the workshops and processes we help them run. Some of these assumptions might be around getting results, or at least the sheer volume of results we can help a group of people generate over a day or two. […]
Does this look familiar? It wouldn’t have to me before today. It’s my treadmill screen and my laptop screen (notice Zero Inbox!) because I just made myself a Walking Desk. Impressed by the recent New Yorker article, “The Walking Alive” by Susan Orlean, gently informing all us knowledge workers that we are shortening our lives […]
As Facilitators sometimes we get asked to prepare reports from our workshops. Normally we at Bright Green Learning encourage the teams to do this as report preparation is an excellent learning opportunity and helps the team to process the results of the workshop in a more in-depth way. (See our blog posts: Don’t Outsource It: […]
