Monday, 10 March, 2014

Creative facilitation

cfFacilitation is one of those odd skills, or activities, where it is very hard to define, but you tend to know when it is being done well, or indeed badly.

Viv McWaters and Johnnie Moore are two people who can definitely be described as great facilitators, and they have collected together their combined thinking and experience on the topic into a free e-book, Creative Facilitation.

Here’s a quick synopsis of each section of the book, from their website:

Part One: Why Facilitation?

We explore the impact of facilitation and facilitators on groups, the qualities that make for good facilitators and some of the underlying philosophy that underpins our approach.

Part Two: Workshop Basics

The foundations of facilitating workshops.

Part Three: Beyond the Basics

…is about providing an understanding of how to engage people and use different approaches.

Part Four: Creative Facilitation

…explores some of the knowledge and understanding that helps facilitators step into complex, and sometimes difficult, situations.

Part Five: Resources

…provides suggestions for developing your own “toolkit” with what you learn from experience as well as useful links, resources and other information.

To get Creative Facilitation for free, you just have to sign up to their email newsletter. It’s a great resource, and given that the emails tend to be very useful as well, it’s a bit of a win-win.

Social tool implementation strategies: Part 1 – cobble free stuff

This is the first part in a series on different strategies for implementing social software within your organisation. They will be published every other Monday morning for the next few weeks. When they are all published, I will collect them all into an ebook which members will be able to download for free.

macbooktypingStrategy 1 – cobble free stuff

There are plenty of services out there that can be used for nothing, right now. For example:

Staff can sign up for these sites and make use of them to record and share knowledge, have conversations with colleagues and get all the advantages of social software without the need for paying for software or development.

As an organisation you could create a strategy which outlines which tools should be used for which task, and how everyone can share and connect on them. Perfect!

Well, kind of. Outsourcing your knowledge and collaboration activity in this way can work brilliantly, but it isn’t without its risks. For example, each service has its own username and password, creating an instant barrier to entry. Further, the services might not talk to each other very well, making it hard to link a conversation on one site with some resource uploaded to another.

What’s potentially worse is that all of these services are dependant on the fact that the companies that run them continue to do so.

Pros:

  • You can get started right away
  • No development requirements or deep IT involvement
  • Often these apps are the best of breed

Cons:

  • Lack of consistency of user interface may put off users
  • Your data will be stored on a multitude of third party servers
  • Limited functionality and support – not to mention adverts – with free versions

Have you tried the ‘cobbling free stuff’ strategy? How did it work for you? Let us know in the comments!

Friday, 7 March, 2014

Five for Friday – 7 March 2014

linksFive for Friday is WorkSmart’s weekly roundup of interesting stuff from the week’s reading.

  1. Attention, Please! PC Programs to Stave Off Distraction – can technology help you stop wasting time with technology?
  2. Oppia – a Google 20% project to “enable students to learn by doing online”
  3. The trajectory of ‘cultural change’ matters, as Microsoft demonstrates – even if you’re not interest in Microsoft itself, well worth a read for the culture change stuff
  4. Digital Analytics Fundamentals – a free online course on data stuff from Google
  5. The ART of Collaboration (reprise) – a great, very comprehensive post from Steve Dale on collaboration culture and technology.
Did you know that WorkSmart has a Pinterest board where loads of cool stuff is shared?

Simplifying complex work

Yves Morieux gives a really interesting TED talk here on how to reduce the complexity of modern day work.

He has six rules to help make this happen:

  1. Understand what your colleagues actually do.
  2. Remove rules: Reinforce the “integrators” Integrators are managers. Give them more power and interest to make others cooperate. Remove the layers so they can be closer to the action. Stop making more rules that reduce the discretionary power to managers.
  3. Increase the quantity of power so you can empower everybody to use their judgment and their intelligence. Move away from insulation and give more people the opportunity to take risks.
  4. Create feedback loops that expose people to the consequences of their actions
  5. Increase reciprocity by removing buffers that make individual employees self-sufficient.
  6. Reward those who cooperate and blame those who don’t cooperate. The CEO of The Lego Group, Jorgen Vig Knudstorp, has a great way to use it. He says, blame is not for failure; it is for failing to help or ask for help.

Thursday, 6 March, 2014

Connect with WorkSmart

wiresAs you would expect, WorkSmart is all over the internet!

The first thing to do is to join the site. Membership is free, and means you get the regular email newsletter. In the future it will also give you access to exclusive member resources – more on that soon. You can sign up here if you haven’t already.

Next, WorkSmart is of course on Twitter, where you can get alerted to new articles published on the blog, and to interesting links as we spot and curate them. Follow @worksmarthq now.

Are you a big Facebook user? It might be that the Facebook page is the best way to keep up to date, and to have your say on the articles and other content that are published there. Like WorkSmart on Facebook here.

How about Google+? I’m not convinced either, but there is a WorkSmart page there, which also has content posted up as it gets published on the blog. Follow WorkSmart on Google+ here.

Last but not least, WorkSmart currently has two (count ’em!) boards on Pinterest. One features all the posts that are published on the blog – so if you like to get your content in Pinterest, they are all there waiting for you. The other one is where content is curated from across the web, and is called Bookmarks.

So, you really have no excuse not to keep up to date with what is happening here! It will be great to see you on our various channels.

What’s on your tablet, Nick Jones?

NJ-headhsotNick Jones is Head of Digital and CSR at Visa Europe. Responsible for protecting and improving the reputation of Visa Europe across digital channels owned and earned.

Previously he worked in government at Number 10 and the Central Office of Information. You can find Nick on LinkedIn here.

Which tablet do you use most?

iPad mini

What do you use your tablet for most?

  • Email
  • Web browsing
  • Social networking
  • Note taking
  • Photography / video

What are your favourite apps?

What add ons do you use with your tablet?

Logitech Ultrathin keyboard case because the soft keyboard doesn’t allow easy tabbing when taking notes.

What does your tablet not do that you really wish it could?

Outlook integration so the work calendar and email were easily accessible. There is the Good app but not approved for work.

What’s on your tablet? is a regular series of posts about how WorkSmart readers use their tablets. You can take part too – just fill in the survey.

Wednesday, 5 March, 2014

Collaboration or cooperation?

coopStowe Boyd is a great writer on technology and the impact it has on organisational culture.

You can follow his blog here, which is updated several times a day with great titbits and articles.

He has written a post for the CMSWire website, entitled The Fall of Collaboration, The Rise of Cooperation which is a really interesting read.

In it he mentions a great quote from Marshall McLuhan: “Our Age of Anxiety is, in great part, the result of trying to do today’s jobs with yesterday’s tools!” – I can see myself repeating that in meetings in the future, for sure.

As we move into a new way of work — one based on more fluid and looser connections, grounded in freethinking, humanist and scientific approaches to the social contract — it’s becoming clear that the traditional model of “collaboration tools” is based around outmoded structures of control rather than the shape of our work today, or the nature of networked sociality. We need a different take on the tools we are using to get work done, one based on open cooperation at the core of our work instead of closed collaboration running alongside it.

His idea seems to be that the notion of collaboration has come to mean big, corporate platforms and processes. Cooperation on the other hand is more about individuals finding their own way to work together, using the most appropriate tools for the job.

Is this how you see things? Has the word collaboration become tainted by association?

Tuesday, 4 March, 2014

Kahootz’s guide to a digital first culture

kahootzlogoKahootz is a cloud based project collaboration platform, which looks pretty good – and their blog is full of useful stuff.

Recently their CEO John Glover posted about “Creating a ‘Digital First’ culture in your public sector organisation“. In it he mentions four main points, which are well worth reflecting on.

1. Involve staff at the outset

While there are organisational purposes for going digital first, it’s staff who will make the change happen, so you need them to be onside.

2. Don’t assume management understand digital

Having management buy in is vital – but you need to make sure that it is at a deep level that demonstrates true understanding of the full potential of technology to transform working culture.

3. Start small – and give staff freedom to innovate

Taking an agile approach to implement a digital first strategy is most likely to succeed. Let staff try stuff out and see what works for them, rather than procuring a gigantic platform that you’ve no real idea will take off or not.

4. Be clear about what you want to achieve

You need to know why your doing what you’re doing. Unless you have specific objectives, how will you know if you are succeeding? Everyone needs to be pulling in the same direction, and to make that happen you need a shared vision across the organisation.

Some great advice there – would you add anything?