Changes in business and technology are occurring at a rapid pace while companies simultaneously fight to free themselves from the residual effects of the pandemic. Companies and teams must invest in innovation not only to stay ahead but to simply survive in today’s extremely fast-paced environment. Utilizing innovation exercises and innovation training can help create impactful, powerful results. 

A McKinsey study of over 200 organizations across industries found that 90% of surveyed executives said they anticipate the effects of COVID-19 to fundamentally alter how they conduct business in the next five years. 85% of executives said that they expect the pandemic will also impact their customers’ needs indefinitely. Innovation is the critical component companies need to heal from the current crisis, transcend its lasting effects, and adequately meet their customers’ needs.

“The truth is that there is no one ‘true path’ to innovation, no silver bullets and no shortcuts. There are, however, effective strategies that managers can pursue to dramatically increase their chances of success.” -Greg Satell, Mapping Innovation

In this article, we’ll explore five innovation exercises that you can incorporate with your team or organization to spur innovation and get creative juices flowing. There is no one way to approach innovation. Explore what methods work best for your team by applying these innovation exercises and strategies.

1. Group Brainstorming

This innovation exercise is great for getting the entire team involved, regardless of what project or role each team member has. Group brainstorming can take place in person using sticky notes and a whiteboard or wall or virtually for distributed teams using a virtual whiteboard tool like MURAL (and digital stickies). Have everyone write down any challenges they are facing on sticky notes and tape them to a wall or create them in a MURAL template. Next, everyone walks around the room and stops at each sticky note to add an idea with their own sticky note that can potentially solve that problem or challenge. For best results, have everyone write an idea on every sticky note and build upon what others said. This exercise increases productivity and creativity as employees have the chance to interact with individuals from different areas of expertise and perspectives, which helps spark new ideas to solve challenges. It also promotes full participation without anyone feeling self-conscious about sharing their ideas. 

2. Liberating Structures

Liberating Structures is a framework for facilitation that consists of 33 microstructures designed to build trust and enhance cooperation and communication between teammates. Incorporating Liberating Structures into in-person and remote team collaboration strengthens communication and improves attention management so you can do exceptional work as a team. When there is equal participation amongst the group, you get the best performance from everyone, i.e., you are able to create meaningful solutions together. Check out our library of Liberating Structures templates for MURAL and Miro.

3. Mind Maps

This innovation exercise can be done either alone or in a group setting. Start by writing a general idea in the middle of a blank piece of paper. From there, begin making connections that build off the main point and write them down. For example, if your idea or project is developing a mobile app, a connection that might branch out is Android vs. iOS. Continue building on each connection to generate a stream of new ideas. If you find your team is struggling to come up with connections, try to reframe the main idea and start a new mind map to get a new perspective. The output will be many new ideas to start working with.

4. R&D

Research and development is a series of innovation activities to develop new products and services or improve existing ones. This is a reverse version of Group Brainstorming (or standard innovation process). Instead of starting with problems and brainstorming solutions based on them, encourage your team first to examine the latest technological developments and then ideate their application to your organization’s challenges. This is the flow in many engineering industries, where technology comes first. The Design Sprint process is effective for exploring R&D and solving big challenges quickly. The 5-day structure allows you to align team members and key stakeholders to solve a problem, rapidly prototype and test potential solutions, avoid costly delays in the innovation process, as well as decrease the time to bring the idea to market. Learn more about how and when to incorporate a Desing Sprint into your innovation journey here

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5. Template Exercises

Exploring innovative ideas can be daunting. Where do you start? How do you bring an idea to fruition? We’ve created a library of interactive and customizable digital templates for you to use with your teams to ignite and accelerate innovation. The templates are created for MURAL and Miro, digital whiteboard tools that allow teams to work together async and in real-time in a shared space. Each template serves a different purpose in your innovation process. For example, the How to Remix Anything Template helps you vary your points of inspiration and approach to achieve a different outcome for an existing idea. The Beyond the Prototype Template helps you overcome roadblocks in innovation by navigating slumps and maintaining momentum. Explore the full library of free resources here.

Innovation is more important than ever for companies to stay relevant in today’s economy. Stay ahead of the curve by utilizing various innovation exercises and implementing innovation training to incorporate effective strategies for your team to succeed.

Want to learn more about innovation training?

We can help! Voltage Control offers a range of options for innovation training. We know that no two teams are alike. Companies are complex, with their own unique set of structures and company culture. That’s why we build and curate custom workshops to find solutions based on your team’s exact needs.

Voltage Control’s experts will guide you through your choice of experiential, interactive learning workshops and coaching sessions where individuals and teams learn and practice how to successfully apply the best of today’s innovation methodologies and facilitation techniques to any business challenge. Contact us if you want to learn more about innovation training, design sprints, or design thinking facilitation.

The post Innovation Exercises: 5 Ways to Spark Innovation in Your Team appeared first on Voltage Control.

What is change management?

The sweet spot where change and project management intersect is known as change management. When a company is facing change in any capacity, change management is how company leaders manage the processes, systems, structures, overall morale, and employee responsibilities during a time of transition.

Change is the only thing we know for sure will happen in life and business. Whether a company is planning for change via transformation or is unexpectedly presented with a challenge, having a protocol for change can help companies better adapt to solving problems in a shuffling dynamic.

Firms and companies have carefully created calculated principles for organizational change management to help navigate the rising challenges of transformation in the business landscape–which is unavoidable in today’s world.

Just how important is having a set of principles to use as a structured guideline? A Forbes Insights and PMI survey found that 85% of over 500 executive respondents said change management is critical to success in times of change of any kind, rather than expecting that workers will automatically react to change well in a competitive marketplace.

Compare this to Forbes Insights’ findings that more than one-third (38%) of respondents reported that their employees view change as a significant threat, and it is clear that fear of change is a problem that needs to be planned for and properly addressed.

“The key to change…is to let go of fear.” -Rosanne Cash

Fear of transition can be stifled while also setting up your company up for success by planning for change and creating your own change management plan using the following change management principles.

Six Change Management Principles

(1) Clearly identify the problem

Some change comes when we least expect it, and we must adapt accordingly. When a problem arises, it is crucial to flesh out why and how it came about and what needs to be done in order to solve it.

Some change is planned, like in the case of innovation. It might be the need for a new product, redefining a target audience, or addressing problems within a company dynamic. Whatever the problem, it must be identified and understood before it can be effectively tackled.

(2) Drive new direction with culture

Company culture is the script for how employees interact and work with one another. Change can disrupt the standard workflow and social status quo. Leaders must take culture into account to understand and overcome any resistance born in a time of transition.

Leading with culture also helps to maintain how employees connect and relate to one another, a crucial aspect to sustain during shifts so that everyone in the company is aligned.

(3) Unify top-level leadership

A company is only as reliable as the sum of all of its employees, starting from leadership. All upper-level executives and leaders must form a united front to clearly and effectively communicate the same information to lower-level employees so that the entire company is on the same page and acting congruently.

It is imperative that the corresponding information is shared throughout all levels to find success.

(4) Involve every level

Change shakes the foundation of an entire company; therefore, every employee is affected in some way. Involving mid-level employees as soon as possible opens the door for employees to express their concerns and share any logistical or technical holes they see from the start, working out any glitches.

It also serves as an opportunity for managers and leaders to consider the repercussions and effects the transformation will have on their teams and the customers at large.

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(5) Utilize change agents

Change agents are informal leaders who can help organizational leaders drive and champion change. From influential employees with a reputation of leading by example and earning the trust of others to stakeholders or veteran employees, change agents help to drive the challenging task of getting all employees on board.

Once identified, leaders should incorporate these people as a coalition. Together, they can help spread the unified message, get their teams integrated, and put people at ease.

(6) Define critical behaviors

Even with a clear vision of the problem/change at the executive level, a unified leadership front, and a coalition to help spread the word and integrate new practices, employee behavior won’t automatically change overnight. It is helpful to provide employees with the “why,” “what,” and “how” of change, as well as defined critical behaviors for them to follow immediately–within the first few days of the change.

Old patterns and habits can be hard to break, and new practices must be instilled as soon as possible for a smooth transition. This may mean training and frequent smaller meetings with managers so that they are equipped to communicate details of change and new expectations to employees.

Benefits of Strong Change Management

“The rate of change is not going to slow down any time soon. If anything, competition in most industries will probably speed up even more in the next few decades,” John P. Kotter says in his book Leading Change.

Because change is the only constant, having a robust protocol to follow to ease any size of transition sets companies up for triumph in chaos. A smooth transition internally maintains company morale and efficiency and translates directly to the external business.

According to research from Towers Watson, companies with healthy change management practices are 3.5 times more likely to outperform their competition. Being prepared to face change before it even happens immediately gives businesses a leg up on their peers.

Here are a few ways how:

1. Change management reduces the risk of project failure: Projects are more likely to fail when there is a lack of preparation. If changes are made too quickly without a proper plan for transition, or if not everyone is on board with new changes, the project can fall into chaos. A carefully constructed plan already has in mind any potential risks and is accompanied by analyzed strategies to overcome them.
2. Change management helps to eliminate confusion: A change management plan helps to reduce any trouble that may arise in transition, as each step of the change management process is detailed and outlined from the top down before implementation. This simultaneously tackles the fear of change and eliminates uncertainty about new business protocols–everyone is on the same page and adequately prepared for a shift.
3. Change management aids in maintaining a budget: Whether planned or unexpected, change is expensive! Incorporate a budget as part of your change management plan so that you don’t blindly pay for it later. Assign a cost estimate to each stage of the process. Doing so will provide an overall assessment of the cost of change and help to keep a new project on budget as it evolves.

Embrace Change to Improve Business

When an organization has a solid plan for how to embrace change, it can be used strategically to its advantage in the workplace and industry. A change management protocol can be used as an outline to evaluate and fine-tune an organization’s goals or priorities as well as to analyze how employees can help the company grow; it can be a tool used to expand and improve business overall, a steady progression of forward momentum.

“Change has a bad reputation in our society. But it isn’t all bad–not by any means. In fact, change is necessary in life–to keep us moving, to keep us growing, to keep us interested. Imagine life without change. It will be static, boring, dull,” Dr. Dennis O’Grady says in his article, The Change Game.

Looking for help with change management in your organization?

Please reach out to Voltage Control at hello@voltagecontrol.com for a consultation.

The post Best Practices for Organizational Change Management appeared first on Voltage Control.

Within any organization, change is a given. If leaders approach change without empathy, transparency, or understanding, that change can be blown out of proportion and feared. Each team member can and will interpret the consequences of change differently. As leaders shrinking the change at hand and reassessing culture are critical to the success and the sustainability of the change at hand.

We believe the change is challenging but possible to achieve with a healthy balance when handled proactively. In fact, change offers an opportunity to reassess culture and find ways to grow and innovate.

Reassessing Culture and the Importance of Change

Anytime you make a change, it’s wise to step back and understand the potential effects of what you’re implementing or what is happening. You must make a change, so why take your baggage into that change? Seize the moment. Think about who you are and who your team is versus replicating what previously existed in your organization’s space. 

For example, it can be a time to reassess culture if you’re going remote or forced remote. Use the shift to remote as an opportunity to ask how you do so and which cultural shifts might come along with the change. What are you happy or not happy with?

View this situation as an opportunity to debrief. Invite the team to discuss how you show up and operate so that you can design with intention. Are there company core values that you need to reassess? Are the needs of all of your employees being met? Is there room for growth within your values and company culture? Seize the moment. 

A UX design mentality captures this concept well. This is essentially the act of being open to criticism of the system’s design to add value to a situation or solve a problem effectively. 

Ask the following questions to start:

1. Why are you facing the change?
2. Is something in our culture causing the necessity for change?
3. How do you utilize experimentation and exploration to it move forward?

As another example, take organizations that build the AI systems of today. If they don’t take thoughtful care of how they build those systems, then bias, misunderstanding, and lack of empathy will creep in.

Bias represents traditional systems and how you all viewed work in the past. The same thing is true if you simply moved everything to remote without delicate consideration. Our policies and the ways you meet, connect, collaborate, and do things are influenced by past mistakes, consequences of things that are out of our control, or things you’re reacting to that are no longer valid.

On the surface, this concept is simple. The key is knowing and implementing the tactics to reassess. 

This article discusses the following tactics for thinking about culture and using change to your advantage.

• Establishing psychological safety.
• Asking questions.
• Staying in tune with the effects of change on people.
• Using design thinking.
• Reassessing urgency.

1. Establish psychological safety.

Recognize purpose within change. 

Innovation happens slowly. In our conversation with Jamie Gardner, she highlights the importance of patience within innovation. Real change happens with time, so communicating the change at a high level and diving deeper into the change incrementally helps build trust and psychological safety. 

Getting people involved will align your team at a high level from the start. 

It’s more productive and allows for transparency to align people and establish a culture of trust before diving deeper into the details and challenges of the upcoming change. 

Involve those that a change will affect. 

Building trust enables people’s willingness to experiment with change. When people feel invested in change, they want to see it through. They’re willing to listen to problems and assess what’s working and what isn’t for them on a personal and organizational level. 

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To make way for change, it’s essential to identify the “why” behind your desire for it. If so, it’s unlikely to last. Is your change aligned with shared values? Does it project a line of sight in a direction you want to head? That’s a promising start.

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Empathy and clear communication make all the difference in guiding a team through change.

Give people perspective so that they can trust through understanding. The more individuals are left in the dark about the “why”, the greater the tendency to question intention. When a change has the potential to alter finances dramatically, position, or social standing, for example, being left in the dark is a surefire way to invite resistance to change. 

2. Ask questions.

High-level navigation of change begins with asking the right questions. 

What are you proud of? What do you appreciate? What’s not so great? What’s aspirational? What’s dragging you down, and what’s lifting you up? How do you talk about our culture internally that is not being manifested?

You might say that you have specific values, and you aren’t actually living them. That’s the “saying – doing gap”. Change can, but doesn’t always have to, involve a values shift. However, when faced with change reevaluating our values on a company-wide level has the potential to lead to more meaningful answers.

Leave room to address miscellaneous questions and concerns. It provides space for empathy and growth as leaders and teammates. Worst case, set some time aside and don’t end up needing it, but it’s wise to assume that you didn’t cover all of our bases in the planning process alone.

3. Stay in tune with how change is affecting people.

Acknowledge possible negative outcomes. 

• How will this affect our culture?
• Which communication practices will be interrupted?
• How can you communicate effectively throughout this change?
• Is this change long-lasting?
• What can you do to evolve during and after this change? Do our teammates feel supported sufficiently enough to handle this change? 

Being human-centered is the key to lasting and innovative change. While facing your change, it’s important that you’re able to create a space for innovation. At times, you may need to lean heavier on specific team values. When sharing your change with your team, utilize experimentation. Ask everyone to express themselves in a new way. Rather than vocalizing, or writing out their fears or hesitations, invite them to draw their emotions. Get back to pencil and paper. When looking at getting your entire team involved, offer a variety of ways to express what values they hold near and dear. This allows for everyone’s voice to be heard, which will truly shift your company culture to one that is transparent, inclusive, and fully prepared to embrace change. 

4. Use Design Thinking.

Design thinking is worth considering as a more holistic approach. It centers around empathy first with a focus on people, and people are at the core of every organization. As you identify these possible effects of change, design thinking challenges us to move forward in testing the process of these ideas. 

Design thinking plays a crucial role in engagement by centering the needs of each participant and ensuring that each person involved has a stake in the organizational change’s success.

As we’ve said before, change is a type of experimentation. Some changes must be made, but you must keep in mind that you can find ways to work with change rather than settle on a single way of thinking or working. The process of ideation around this change, even if the change itself is inevitable, is essential.

As you implement the change, you challenge yourself to notice differences in how you think, work, and interact. Whatever process you choose to guide that change, you enhance your understanding of your team, strengths, and opportunities for improvement. Viewing the initial change as part of design thinking allows us to develop our approach with time. 

If you hold yourselves and each other accountable for checking in and making necessary adjustments to our practices, you’ll be much more successful at achieving our full potential. Again, if you’re aligned at a high level early on, you’re more inclined to work together towards a fitting solution.

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5. Checking in and reassessing urgency. 

Take some time to step back as a team and determine priorities. 

In the midst of change, it’s easy to get caught up in the logistics and push to have tasks completed quickly just to make progress, but that often leaves room for mistakes and forgotten priorities. 

We should consistently look to stick to our values, but beyond that, what are our cultural non-negotiables? What needs to continue, and what can take a backseat in order to keep our determined priorities at the forefront?

Step back and ask why you’re making this change in the first place — considering who’s involved. How can you work together to ensure you’re on the same timeline? What’s most urgent about the change process?

Small changes ultimately make the most significant differences within innovation. What are you making time for amidst this change? Which practices should you integrate? Are you leaving time for learning as individuals? Are you practicing self-awareness? 

If we want to innovate, we must change. If we want to create lasting change, we must consistently reassess the effects that change has on culture, what our teams and organizations value, and how the change ahead will be sustainable.

Voltage Control can help you change the way you think about growth and pursue innovation. Through custom-designed programs, we guide leaders in navigating change with cultural stability. 

Our change programs aim at unleashing full potential through practices that solidify learning and help you realize your potential as leaders and teams. We offer a range of formats, from courses to workshops, to support you through your transition. 

In need of some guidance? Reach out to us at hello@voltagecontrol.com to discuss what we offer.

The post 5 Tips for Reassessing Culture in the Face of Change appeared first on Voltage Control.

Control the Room 2022 was an absolute success! We hosted our annual facilitator summit last week, and our makeup sessions this week, alongside our partner MURAL. Our wonderful connection between the live event and the virtual world, hosted by Mark Tippin, Director of Strategic Next Practices, Mark facilitated “Mind Shift” sessions, where he guided our attendees through a dialog about how everyone was impacted by the talks. He engaged both in-person and virtual attendees through our various activities in our conference mural. It was inspiring to have so many people joining in different ways and everyone getting the chance to communicate.

We partnered with SAFE this year to support and honor a lost colleague, Jenni Robertson. The dedication of this summit comes after losing a coworker, mother, and friend to family violence and Voltage Control has pledged to work with SAFE to stop family violence for everyone. We wanted to take a moment and look back on all of the moments of insight, knowledge, and growth we all took part in over the course of the summit. 

This year’s summit theme was SHIFTS, and as we move into 2022 we have seen shifts in the way we work, the way we connect, and the way we honor one another.

We hosted 18 facilitators in a hybrid space. We were live in-person, on Zoom, and even created our own Control the Room VR space, and we must say the event, even with a few technical issues, turned out to be a hub of idea sharing and growing with each other. 

Each speaker delivered a 20-minute lightning session, and each session was filled with a sense of community, play, and story-telling. Our first speaker up, Matthew Reynolds.  

Moving Your Authentic Self Forward

I am worthy.

You are worthy.

To open the summit with such a beautiful practice was profound. We all shared our worth with each other and were instantly pulled into this space of sharing, learning, and growing. Matthew celebrates bringing everything you’ve got and creating a space that celebrates diversity and inclusion.

“Our old habits are ingrained, worn in, soft, as are the thoughts that created them. We deserve as much grace as possible in reworking them. Rest in the promise that new pathways will appear to you in the midst of these new practices, often when you least expect it. At times, it is a great feat to stay open and willing against the growing scenes of stress and difficulty, but it is all you really need in order to begin. We begin slowly, as the largest, most powerful things do.”

The peaceful warrior opened us up to the understanding that a sense of belonging must be created by the individual. We, as people, need that sense of belonging to be authentic, and the space we found ourselves in was absolutely authentic and beautiful.

Watch Matthew Reynolds talk on Moving Your Authentic Self Forward

Screw it. I’m going to build my own place. And I built it through theater. I started out as an aeronautical engineer and a mathematician. That spring I took my first theater class, and it was on.

Matthew Reynolds

Read The Full Video Transcript:

Matthew Reynolds:

Thank you, thank you. I am worthy. You are worthy. I am worthy. You are worthy. I am worthy. You are worthy. Rise up, if you can, whatever your accessibility may be. One hand on your heart, one hand on your belly, please, and say, “I am worthy.”

Audience:

I am worthy.

Matthew Reynolds:

Open your hands up. You are worthy.

Audience:

You are worthy.

Matthew Reynolds:

Please join me, go through the room. Connect with someone. Say, “I am worthy. You are worthy.” And then they will say it in exchange. After you’ve exchanged with three people, please find your seat again and that way I’ll know to continue on. Thank you everybody.

Audience:

Matthew Reynolds:

So what’s coming up for you right now? Were you like, what is this woo-woo that this man is starting with so early in the morning? What, what, what is going on? What happened when I looked in that one person’s eyes, what did I see? What was reflected back to me? Did the words get cloyed and caught inside your mouth, inside your throat, inside your chest? What stories started coming up for you? What shields started to be built? Blocking, not letting it in. Do you truly believe that you are worthy?

Do you truly believe the others that eyes you looked into that they are worthy? My name is Matthew Reynolds. My pronouns are he, him, his, they, them, theirs. I am the fourth child of six of Emmanuel Reynolds and my mother is from central Illinois. She was Irish, German and Swedish. My father was a second generation out of slavery. He was in… born in Montgomery, Alabama.

I don’t know much about my father. He didn’t speak much about it. He was part of the great escape, the great migration north out of the south when all the terror lynchings were going on. So him and my grandfather actually went up to Keokuk, Iowa. And in Keokuk, Iowa, my father got onto a river boat and that’s where he was doing some cooking, et cetera, et cetera. My mother got off the farm and was actually cocktail waitressing on this river boat, and that’s where my parents met.

My mother at the time had jet black hair, but she has ice blue eyes. So she would wear sunglasses so that the two of them could go out to the black establishments, and she would wear gloves so that the palms of her hands couldn’t be seen. And that is where they would go. When my mom’s parents found out about my… when my mom’s parents found out about my mom and my dad, they kicked her out of the family.

And so that started even more migration north, and they went up to Minneapolis where the three… us four eldest, I should say, kids were born. Now, like I said, I didn’t know much about my father. He didn’t talk about his upbringing much. He figured if he talked about the trauma, it would follow him. If he talked about the things that occurred in his youth, it would follow him.

He did not know that my mother had talked to us older kids and said, “Hey, the only time that you raise a fist to another person is if they call you the N-word.” So I was in the back alleyway, three years old, my older brother, two years older than me, and these two white-bodied boys, and one of them called Ethan the N-word. I looked at the kid. I looked at my brother. I was like, “mom said,” and I looked back, and I popped him in the mouth.

And that was the start of me fighting… constantly. And it actually incited a huge fight between my mom and my dad. And in my younger years, I just didn’t know. I didn’t have the tools in my toolkit. I hadn’t gone to the right therapist yet. I hadn’t unpacked those things for myself to understand that my father did not have the tools… to deal with a lot of the things that were being thrown at him for being in an interracial marriage… From being from the south. And what him and my mom argued about was, “How dare you tell my children to be physically violent towards white-bodied folks.” Because for him, coming from Montgomery, Alabama, terror lynchings, that meant that you disappeared, or you were used as some way of oppressing black-bodied, brown-bodied folks. So they moved us all even further north. So Isanti, Minnesota is where I grew up. My family was the only family of color until I reached the eighth grade.

Like I said, this was the start of me fighting. So I fought basically every single day of the week, every time that I went to school, three times a week was probably the least. My father worked evenings, my mom was the one who came in. She’s the one who always fought. I saw my mom fighting all the time too. Women would come up, touch my hair, touch my brothers’ and sisters’ hair. “Oh my gosh, when did you adopt these kids?” Pop, pop.

So there was this violence that was always within me, this fight that was always within me. And then my father, he was an alcoholic and that’s how he dealt with a lot of this. And so he was physically abusive, and out of the four older kids, I was the one he took lot of that out on. So, at home, I don’t have a sense of belonging, fighting at school, I don’t have a sense of belonging.

And then the crush happened… on the next door neighbor boy. And now even more got thrown into the mix of me not belonging, of me trying to squish down, take away, keep everybody laughing, Matthew. And that way, if I’m keeping them laughing, they’re not going to call me names. If I keep them laughing, they’re not going to see the things that I’m actually trying to do to lift myself up. I want them to not pay attention to me, but they’re paying attention to me because I’m the only one that looks like this besides my brothers and sisters. Again, not having a sense of belonging.

Move it forward. Excited to go to the University of Minnesota, got a whole bunch of scholarships. I started in the summertime. The day I graduated, I moved out. I’m going to meet more black folks. I’m going to meet more queer folks. This is going to be amazing. Queer folks. “You played football in high school, really? You don’t know about Stonewall? You don’t know these… who Milk, Harvey Milk was? You don’t know these things? Yeah, whatever.” And I was shunned there. Black folks, “Wow, you talk really white, you dress really white, you must want to be white.” Again, pushed aside, not having any place to belong.

Screw it. I’m going to build my own place. And I built it through theater. I started out as an aeronautical engineer and a mathematician. That spring I took my first theater class, and it was on. Mm-hmm (affirmative). All my freaks and geeks, and everybody was there. All of us who had this whole sense of not belonging somewhere.

And that started my journey of understanding that is what I longed for, later on in life learning that that’s what the cognitive brain wants. It needs a strong sense of belonging. Everybody wants to belong. Even if it’s the introvert saying, “We’re introverted.” They have somewhere to belong. So then jumping ahead, multimedia performance artist, performing all over the place, drum corps, doing all these things, lower 48, performed in every state, et cetera, et cetera. Decided, U.S., I’m done with you, I’m out. Move to Amsterdam. [Dutch 00:10:51]. Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Came back because my father was sick, wanted me to come back to the U.S., came back, saw him, et cetera, et cetera, and then I got the calling. “You are to become an educator.” Went to Southern Oregon University, got my master’s in teaching. Where I student taught at my mentor teacher was like, “Hey, I want to retire. I think you would be really great here. You should apply.” And dangled in front of me was that they got this Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grant.

They’re turning it into a small school, meaning that it was, we got to revamp everything and we’re going to change education, we’re going to do all this great stuff, we’re going to be really progressive, which happened for a little bit. And it was… And it wasn’t. The conservatives there weren’t conservative enough for about 18% of them. In my time in southern Oregon, I saw two cross burnings, both on interracial couple’s property. There were multiple times that the KKK in Southern Oregon flyered to get people to join.

And then in 2016, when 45 was elected, it got really dangerous. And the death threats upped, and people came to my MLK celebration that I started, that never happened before, and it was the sixth one. And during the student piece about 50 people walked out. Then I had a dream, three times in a row. Active shooter at the school, former students, current students, all being shot and killed. Active shooter turns the gun on me, click click, no more bullets, drops the gun, turns and walks away.

After the third time I had the dream, I wrote my resignation letter. And then I started doing this. And I realized as I was going through my years in teaching that the biggest thing that I wanted people to do was have a sense of belonging. But then I realized, like myself and my own story, there are so many components in life that are telling us constantly that we should be somebody else. And part of that is through the fact that we’re not even given the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

How many people know Nathaniel Bacon and the Bacon Rebellion? How many people know when the word white was first used to describe folks in, in a legal form, in a law that was created? How many people know the characteristics of whiteness? So there’s something that has happened, and that’s for the longer session, right? There’s history that is missing, that we’ve internalized, that we don’t even know we’ve internalized, and we’re upholding particular ideas about society and what’s going on with society and how we fit in, and it’s called colonizer illness.

And the person who turned me on to this was Edgar Villanueva from his book, Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance. And he says, “Internalized oppression limits us just as much as the oppression coming from someone else. It limits the thoughts we can think, the dreams we can dream, the actions we can take, the futures we can create. It is an aspect of trauma from which we must heal, in order to stop the cycles of division, exploitation, and hurt.” Inside of us, outside of us. And so Yrsa Daley-Ward is this powerful magician, poet, performer, and I was reading her latest book and something jumped out at me and I was like, “Yes, that’s it.” The work with a capital W, looking in the mirror, pulling out these internalized aspects and these internalized ideas and they leave a wound, and how do we heal that wound?

“Our old habits are ingrained, worn in, soft, as are the thoughts that created them. We deserve as much grace as possible in reworking them. Rest in the promise that new pathways will appear to you in the midst of these new practices, often when you least expect it. At times, it is a great feat to stay open and willing against the growing scenes of stress and difficulty, but it is all you really need in order to begin. We begin slowly, as the largest, most powerful things do.”

I am worthy. You are worthy. Thank you.

The post Moving Your Authentic Self Forward appeared first on Voltage Control.

With that in mind, I love this old quote:

“I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here? Then, I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what this decision is about.”

Alfred Sloan, the former CEO of General Motor

Sloan knew — and appreciated — the role friction could play. In a study on conflict and decision-making cited by the Harvard Business Review, participants were divided into three groups based on different work styles. Those assigned to “debate” yielded 25% more ideas than the two other groups. 

So how can your organization respectfully disagree and arrive at better outcomes? 

Give everyone a voice

As I’ve said on this blog many times over, no one person is smarter than the collective intellect of an entire room of people. This is the basic concept of room intelligence. If you’re going to go to the trouble of assembling a group of people, you might as well hear what they have to say. 

Of course, if you want their honest opinions, you’ll first have to instill in them a sense of psychological safety. This means fostering a culture that doesn’t punish team members for taking risks, asking questions, challenging authority, etc. When you connect as peers — versus through a power-based dynamic — people will explore the problem(s) at hand without letting a fear of reprisal limit what they might say. 

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Once you’ve achieved this level of trust, I recommend a few exercises that can help you unlock room intelligence: 

Fist To Five

This technique is an amazingly quick gut check of where your team is consensus-wise. In Fist To Five exercises, the team leader — or meeting facilitator — makes a statement and asks the group to show their level of agreement by holding up a number of fingers.

• Five fingers: I couldn’t agree more. I will champion this.
• Four fingers: I’m fine with this. 
• Three fingers: I have minor issues we can resolve later.
• Two fingers: I have minor issues we need to resolve now.
• One finger: I have major issues we need to resolve now.
• Fist: I couldn’t disagree more. I will block this. 

When conducting Fist To Five, it’s important to realize that an abundance of people showing two fingers or less means you have a way to go to achieve consensus. 

25:10

When there are many divergent ideas on how to move forward, 25/10 is a great sorting exercise developed by the Liberating Structures team. It’s relatively simple to conduct, too. Just invite a large group to a room where the tables and chairs have been pushed aside. When everyone’s arrived, hand each person a single index card and begin the idea sorting process.

• Ask attendees to write a bold idea and a first step on their index card.
• Set a timer for a few minutes and ask everyone to mill about and pass their cards around. 
• Ask attendees to rate the idea in their hands by writing a score of 1 – 5 on the back of the card. 
• Repeat the “Mill and Pass” and “Discuss and Score” steps four more times. 
• Ask participants to add up the scores on the back of the cards they’re holding [if someone has a card with more or less than five scores, they can calculate the score average and multiply that by five]. Then countdown from 25 and ask those with that number to come forward and read the idea on their card. Stop when the top ten ideas have been identified. 

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Before dismissing everyone, take a few moments to ask the group what caught their attention with those ideas. This can provide useful context around their scoring. Note & Vote

This can be a great way to cull the top ten of a 25/10 session. Note & Vote, pioneered by Google Ventures, can also work as a standalone exercise that evaluates possible solutions discussed in a previous meeting. 

• Give meeting attendees a sticky note and ask them to write down their favorite idea.
• Ask everyone to place their sticky note on a whiteboard.
• Organize the sticky notes so the same ideas are organized together.
• Collectively discuss the pros and cons of the three ideas that have the most support.

While Fist To Five demonstrates how far apart your group is — and 25:10 helps you arrive at a slimmed-down consideration set — Note & Vote can quickly show you what’s resonating. As a result, you effectively get a heat map of what people gravitate towards.

Embrace different perspectives

What GM’s Alfred Sloan advocated for is essentially the root of a philosophy called Integrative Thinking, introduced by the University of Toronto’s Roger L. Martin in 2007. If Martin’s name sounds familiar to you, it’s because he’s also the originator of Design Thinking.

Similar to how Design Thinking balances analytical and intuitive thinking, Integrative Thinking helps its practitioners balance two opposing ideas instead of choosing one at the expense of the other. According to Martin, and his colleague Jennifer Riel, opposing ideas are only a problem when treated as such. 

Here, in a nutshell, is this thinking behind Integrative Thinking:

Stage 1: Articulate opposing models

• Identify two extreme and opposing answers to a problem [a third distinct answer is permissible].
• Explain, in a few sentences, what each model would look like in practice so an observer can understand the essence.
• Explore each side in greater detail by asking who the key players are (those people most affected by the issue).
• Determine the benefits that the potential solution offers the key players.
• Work in order and find reasons to love each model, identifying what makes it work and what’s valuable about it [as you consider each model, forget the others exist].

Stage 2: Examine the models

Use these questions to evaluate your well-defined opposing models:

• How are they similar? Consider how the benefit is produced differently and how it might be produced in a new model. Then consider the tension between the models.
• What assumptions underlie each model and what are the crucial causal relationships?
• Has the problem you are trying to solve shifted during the analysis? Which elements of each model do you want to keep in the new model?

Stage 3: Generate possibilities

Reflect on your thinking by asking yourself these questions:

• Under what conditions could one model actually create one core benefit of the other?
• How could a new model be created using a small building block from each model?
• How might the problem be looked at in a new way, so that each model could be applied to a different part of the problem?

Stage 4: Assess prototypes

• Test out your ideas and create the data you need by sharing the new models with customers.
• Ask for feedback and suggestions, co-creating better prototypes together.

Obviously, what’s above is the briefest of introductions to the concept of Integrative Thinking. For a much deeper dive, I encourage you to read Martin’s book on the topic and the follow-up he co-authored with Jennifer Riel.

Check out ‘The Rarity of Truths’ podcast featuring Jennifer here.

I wholeheartedly believe capturing and discussing differing viewpoints is what makes meetings valuable. To gather, and simply nod in agreement isn’t just a waste of time, it’s a squandering of room intelligence.

“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.”

General George Patton

Want more ways to capture what your team really thinks? Then check out our thoughts on Concentric Conversations. Sign up today for a consultation and we will help you asses what your team needs to foster successful, and meaningful meetings!

The post Why Conflict is an Important Part of Collaboration appeared first on Voltage Control.

Trying to cure bad meetings is similar to taking medicine when you’re already sick. You try to fix the problems once they’ve spiraled out of control instead of taking measures to treat symptoms as they arise. Just like regularly taking supplements can help keep you healthy and prevent illness, addressing meeting symptoms as you experience them will help you maintain a healthy meeting culture. 

That’s the purpose of facilitation–to treat bad meeting symptoms as quickly and effectively as possible in real-time. Great facilitators have the keen ability to identify when a team is misaligned, not engaged, or not performing at its best. They then utilize expert methods to direct the team to a place of optimum focus and collaboration so that all participants are aligned and get the most out of the meeting. 

Meeting Pains

Good facilitators help to solve the following meeting pains:

• Unfocused meetings with no clear purpose
• Weak team collaboration
• Participants are not engaged
• The team has difficulty reaching a consensus
• Little or no work is achieved during the meeting
• People leave the meeting unclear on the next steps 

They do so by adequately preparing for meetings, as well as identifying these problems and solving them as they occur during the meeting. 

Facilitators execute the following 5 skills to heal bad meeting symptoms from spreading: 

1. Encourage an inclusive environment

Open communication is one of the most important aspects of having a successful meeting. Attendees need to feel comfortable sharing their ideas and expressing their views. This requires the facilitator to read the group, both verbally and non-verbally, and adjust to its needs throughout the meeting while keeping everyone focused and on task. 

2. Build and foster relationships and group synergy

Trust and empathy are essential components of building healthy and successful relationships within a group. The ability to identify the common goals and interests of a group and then steer everyone to the completion of found goals is what facilitation is all about. Group synergy can be created by encouraging group members to share their ideas and points of view, and most importantly, respect the opinions and views of others. Doing so will help the group effectively brainstorm and later reach a consensus.

3. Active Listening

According to a study analyzed by the Harvard Business Review, a good listener does the following: conducts active conversations where they periodically ask questions to the speaker to promote exploration and observation, creates a safe environment where speakers feel supported and heard, holds a cooperative two-sided conversation that is uncompetitive, and provides feedback and constructive suggestions on alternative paths to consider. A good listener serves as a mirror; they reflect to the group what is said and provide clarity on the content discussed as well as the meeting’s focus.

4. Conflict Management

When conflict arises, it is important to immediately identify its cause or source to understand it before evaluating and discussing all possible solutions holistically. To healthily manage conflict, a facilitator must be able to empathize with other people’s viewpoints calmly and respectfully. A good facilitator always has an eye for compromise and faces conflict head-on to find common ground amongst all sides. They stimulate teamwork by encouraging shared goals of the group rather than highlighting disagreements, and they ensure each team member has a clearly defined role, outlining the distribution of responsibilities. The facilitator can defuse tensions by injecting a dose of humor to redirect the group’s energy, initiate a well-timed break, or calm the room by maintaining composure and exposing alternative points of view to foster understanding.

5. Build Consensus

Because the main objective of a facilitator is to help a group find common ground among varying opinions to reach a conclusion that everyone accepts, a consensus must be reached among all group members. This does not necessarily mean that everyone will agree with the final decision(s) made, instead it is making sure that all group members have the opportunity to voice their opinions and that everyone understands how the conclusions were made. When everyone feels heard and also follows the process of how a decision was made, an amicable consensus can be reached.

Pro-tip: learn and practice the art of facilitation at our weekly community Facilitation Lab

Monitoring the temperature of your meeting culture will help you identify its health or lack thereof. Use effective facilitation to heal meeting symptoms, before they become problems, to run better meetings. 

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Facilitation Advice

I’ve been thinking a lot about what good facilitation is best suited to solve for. I believe that facilitation is an essential leadership skill. It’s useful in so many contexts and situations especially ones that require tapping into our humanity. As the future becomes more robotic and automated we’ll find ourselves in more and more situations where facilitation is not a luxury but a staple. But what does that mean for the average worker today?

While this world of autonomous robots and facilitated creativity as humanity’s main contribution seems like a distant dream,  it’s important to constantly shift perspectives and anticipate change as best we can, this is what true agility is about. Luckily facilitation is an amazing tool for navigating and sustaining change. Regardless of the change you are embarking on–whether it’s adapting to the future of work or adopting the latest cloud infrastructure–listening, curiosity, safety, and all the principles of facilitation will serve you well. 

I wanted to hear what the Voltage Control team thought about the role of facilitation, as they too are experts in facilitation. Here’s what they had to say: 

Erik, VP of Learning Experience

Facilitation is an essential skill for learning, growth, and transformation. Effective facilitators are able to design the conditions through which people are able to grow, change, and realize their best outcomes. So much of it is about tapping into the individual and team potential waiting to be released. Facilitators guide this process and design the space to release that awesome energy. So, facilitation is best suited to solve for problems where you want solutions to stick and people to grow through the process.

Dawn, Lead Designer

Facilitation is best suited to help teams solve whatever problem feels most pressing. What’s ideal is having an unbiased, neutral facilitator that can come in and mediate a group that will not subconsciously lean one way or another. That keeps the process honest!

Kierra, Community Manager

Facilitation, I believe, is best solved for brainstorming in different areas & ways as teams navigate project ideation to remain innovative and relevant to stay ahead of the curve as companies organically evolve.  I also think it can be utilized to pinpoint areas of opportunity and unique challenges organizations face, whether it be culture changes in the organization or tactical changes, it identifies and seeks solutions to uncover ways to ultimately move forward as an organization and thrive together. Ultimately, I think it’s a tool to keep everyone highly accountable in the organization. 

Annie, Workshop Facilitator

Facilitation is best suited to all groups who are learning together and/or undergoing a collaborative process (like problem-solving, decision-making, and gaining clarity on strategic goals). In essence, facilitation makes all group work more effective and ensures the group invests in the relational dynamics.

I helped a network called the DC Civic Innovation Council launch a steering committee of leadership gathered from across Washington D.C. The aim was to have leaders across D.C. better coordinate and align on resource distribution. We invited leaders from across industry and sector, including nonprofit executives (direct-service providers), real-estate development firms, social investors, education leaders, government officials, and local industry. We had many hairy problems entangled with each other, but the most important and difficult to arrive at was the scope of the work conducted by the Steering Committee, and to build a decision-making structure. 

Effective Meeting Facilitation in the World

I am so fascinated with how facilitation can heal horrible meetings that I started a series called Magical Meeting Stories. I meet with facilitators and meeting professionals across industries to discuss exceptional meetings they’ve run. All of these meetings were created because each person identified a bad meeting symptom that needed to be healed, and they solved for it. 

Do you have your own Magical Meeting to share? I’d love to hear it!

Here are a few Magical Meeting Stories examples:

Taylor Cone’s Collaboration Design Kickoff

Taylor noticed that people were not talking together or making decisions in productive ways during their regular meetings. He identified there was clearly a better way to do things. He created the Collaboration Design Kickoff with the focus to place intention on the role of collaboration design. The purpose of the meeting is “making collaboration design an explicit emphasis as opposed to just something we either don’t even think about, or just hope will magically happen.”

Jonathan Berger’s “Responsible Recipe”

Jonathon created the recipe when he recognized, over and over, that a team would try to figure out problems that other teams already figured out. He explained he comes from a place of “the realist ideology of Convention over Configuration.” He identified that many teams were trying to reinvent the wheel, and individuals would bring their own personal experience from working on teams and attempt to reach compromised democracy. Instead of wasting all this time, he saw an opportunity to minimize trivial decisions and avoid expensive negotiations and put a productive structure in place in order to save valuable time and resources (and keep projects moving). “We see this kind of existential threat to developers of being pulled away for other stuff because they’re smart and interesting and have answers to a lot of things, and they don’t have natural defenses around protecting their time,” Jonathan explained.

Cam Houser’s Instant Community-Building Workshop

Cam created the Instant Community-Building Workshop to help people break down walls and connect on a deeper level to work better together. He was first inspired by researcher and psychologist Arthur Aron and his ‘36 Questions That Lead To Love’ experiment. The theory behind the experiment was that taking human beings, sitting them down, and asking them 36 intimate questions would lead to a deep connection. Aron found that questions escalating in intimacy indeed gradually led to a greater closeness between people. He and his wife found that people felt very bonded after answering three sets of 12 questions at the end of their sessions. A couple in one of their cohort experiments even ended up getting married. That’s when they knew they had something really powerful.

Arm yourself with facilitation skills and practices so that you can combat bad meeting symptoms. Correcting these indicators in real-time will prevent a bigger meeting problem from evolving. The key to maintaining a healthy meeting culture is the ability to identify and quickly heal unhealthy ones. 

The post Heal Meeting Symptoms, Not Meeting Problems appeared first on Voltage Control.

The future of work is hybrid. Whether we like it or not, hybrid and virtual work is here to stay as the workforce becomes more distributed. As a result of forced virtual work during the pandemic, many companies realized employees don’t need to be in a physical office to be successful or have successful meetings. In fact, multiple studies show remote work actually boosts productivity. Therefore, companies like Twitter, Slack, and LinkedIn made the decision to offer permanent virtual work options. As remote and hybrid work become the new norm, it will be increasingly important that virtual meetings are productive. To help make your virtual meetings more effective, we’ve curated 5 best practices you can apply today to improve virtual meetings within your team. 

Best practices to run an effective virtual meeting 

1. No Purpose, No Meeting

Meeting rule number one, whether it’s in a virtual or in-person setting, is to have a worthwhile reason to bring people together. During the pandemic, many teams got into the habit of jumping on a Zoom call whenever they wanted to discuss anything. This can be helpful in some cases, but not necessary for every little thing. Why do you want to have a meeting? What exactly do you need to accomplish? You must have a clear purpose if you want to have a productive meeting. Without one, the discussion will be vague and unfocused. You can’t work to meet a goal that you have not first identified.

• Ask yourself why you want to have the virtual meeting in the first place:Are there decisions that need to be made?
• Do new concepts or processes need to be developed? Is there an important deliverable you want to talk through?
• Are you seeking advice from your team?

Only when you have the concrete answer should you schedule a meeting. Matters that aren’t worth scheduling a collective discussion for can be addressed with an email or via Slack. You don’t want to waste anyone’s time, not to mention the money that is lost to unproductive meetings–$37 billion annually. Schedule with purpose!

“The majority of meetings should be discussions that lead to decisions.” –Patrick Lencioni, author and President of The Table Group

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2. Create and distribute an agenda 

Prepare an agenda beforehand to outline what needs to be discussed and decided. As a best practice, only include essential topics to avoid wasted time. This will block out any unnecessary discussion that isn’t central to the objective and keep the meeting focused. An important aspect of an agenda, especially for a virtual meeting, is a realistic timetable with roles and responsibilities. If topics and/or tasks have (or should have) specific people owning them, include that information in the agenda for clarity. What will be discussed when, for how long, and by whom? Map these details out and follow them as closely as possible. 

With that being said, timing and attention are much different in a virtual environment. Things take longer online because of the tools you must use and the need to get everyone on board. That means you must include time in the agenda to set people up in whatever tool you use (more on that later) as well as buffer time to troubleshoot any technical issues that may arise. Realistically, there will be lags and time-sucking overlaps that wouldn’t otherwise happen in an in-person meeting. That’s why it’s crucial to be concise with your schedule in content and timing. Be strategic. But also be flexible – working from home has additional distractions that don’t typically occur in the office, such as family members, pets, and all those Amazon deliveries. The virtual meeting space is a novelty for most. It will take trial and error to get your meeting prep recipe down just right, but following these virtual meeting best practices will help you get there!

“If we have a clear agenda in advance and we are fully present and fully contributing, the meetings do go much faster.” –Arianna Huffington, co-founder of Huffington Post website

Once you have created your agenda, send it to all attendees in advance (ideally 24 hours before the meeting, if possible). This will ensure that everyone is on the same page and ready to participate when they log in to the meeting. Another beneficial aspect to consider is the need for any pre-work. Remember, you want to be ready to hit the ground running and only focus on your objective during the meeting, not spend (and waste) time preparing attendees during the scheduled time. Doing the work in the meeting is another one of our Meeting Mantras. Is there anything that needs to be assigned to participants before the meeting in order for everyone to be fully prepared, in order to have the most effective and successful meeting possible? If so, send that along with the agenda so that everyone is ready and aligned from the start. This will save time and increases engagement and productivity. 

3. Pick your tool

At Voltage Control we use and recommend Zoom, Google Hangouts, and Butter as core tools for hosting virtual meetings. They all have slightly different features, but all three support video conferencing during virtual meetings. Pick whichever platform best meets your needs then make sure everyone knows how to use it. While most people know how to use them by now, consider sending out a how-to for any newbies and plan for an extra few minutes at the beginning of the meeting for everyone to join and get connected. Even the most advanced users can experience technical difficulties!

Pro-tip: use our custom-built Control Room app to engage and inspire groups of any size like a master facilitator.

Some additional best practice tools for virtual meetings include:

• Krisp: Mute background noise during the call.
• Google Slides: Free tool to create presentations or slides to share prior to and during the meeting.
• Google Docs: Take notes during the virtual meeting.
• SessionLab: Dynamically design, organize and share workshops and training content.
• Trello or Asana: Project management tools to help keep track of assigned work and priorities following the meeting.
• World Time Buddy: World clock, time zone converter, and online meeting scheduler to coordinate and plan across different time zones.
• Mural: Digital-first whiteboard with collaborative templates for visual collaboration including planning, brainstorming, and designing.
• Figma: Collaborative design platform to design, prototype, and gather feedback in real-time in one place.

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4. Keep everyone involved and engaged, and prioritize human connection

Making sure all participants are engaged is much more difficult when people are ON their devices. Encourage the use of video (pro tip: review the best practices of video conferencing etiquette here) and silenced phones to optimize participating during the virtual meeting and to get the most out of it. We also recommend you include periodic opportunities for everyone to work asynchronously and have key moments of high engagement where the entire group is involved at the same time. Doing so will keep people from disengaging.

Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, remember the necessity of human connection. This best practice is especially important in the virtual era. Tending to your remote team’s health is essential for team connection and for employees to succeed. Intentionally create opportunity for connection outside of the meeting agenda itself, as virtual work lacks the ability for attendees to meet, mingle, and have watercooler conversations before and after the meeting like in-person meetings offer.

Team conversations outside of the meeting can be just as important as they are during the meeting. They build trust, connection, and rapport with team members. You can make up for this by scheduling an extra few minutes before and/or after the meeting to have free chat. Or schedule a team happy or coffee hour to mingle and connect–it doesn’t have to be a full 60 minutes! Another idea to spark some friendly competition and engagement is utilizing Kahoot! during your virtual meeting. Any time spent getting the team together to breathe, check-in, and network is invaluable to overall team performance and happiness when you’re back in work mode. 

5. Debrief, Debrief, Debrief

Allot time at the end of the virtual meeting to debrief with the group. Summarize the major decisions and takeaways, and outline tangible next steps. Ask and answer questions to align as needed. Assign owners (with clear deadlines) to each task or action item so there is no confusion or clarification needed on who is responsible for what following the meeting.

Finally, consider ending on a light note with small talk or a joke to boost everyone’s mood and energy before heading out to tackle responsibilities! Send a meeting follow-up with the notes and action items shortly after the meeting via email, Google Docs, or Slack so everyone is on the same page and has all information readily accessible.

The inability to meet in person doesn’t mean we can’t have purposeful and effective meetings! We just need to adapt to the virtual environment, help one another, and roll with the punches. Consider hiring a professional facilitator to help navigate this shift to virtual and set your business up to experience positive results. A facilitator’s job is to actively guide teams through the decision-making process to reach goals and desired outcomes. They are unbiased leaders removed from emotion about office politics, which allows them to objectively lead with a clear vision of the sought-after goal. Their purpose is to ensure that a team meets its objectives, has fruitful conversations, and that the group gets what they need and want from the gathering. We also developed various downloadable resources and guides on Magical Meetings, Remote Design Sprints, and Hybrid Work to help you and your team navigate this unique time. We’re all in this together! 

Want to learn more about our virtual services? 

Voltage Control offers virtual services including Virtual Facilitation, Virtual Transitions, and Virtual Meeting Design. We also offer online courses, training, and workshops on Magical Meetings, Design Sprints and Design Thinking, and Large Virtual Meetings. Please reach out at hello@voltagecontrol.com if you are interested in learning more and for a consultation. 

The post Virtual Meeting Best Practices appeared first on Voltage Control.

Innovation-forward companies have one thing in common: they’re all chasing cutting-edge creative thinking. Who doesn’t want to be the creator of the “next big idea”? Thinking outside of the box, doing something no one else has done before, or expanding an idea to unchartered territory can is not only a proven and highly lucrative business strategy, it’s fun as hell and super exhilarating 

Getting unstuck and finding inspirations when there just seems to be none to be found is no small feat. There are numerous tried-and-true frameworks and methods to amplify your ideation process and develop your idea further, faster. A few of our favorite ways to flush out new ideas quickly are utilizing lateral thinking exercises like storytelling and pre-mortem to unlock fresh ideas, running a Design Sprint, and implementing design thinking processes in our everyday meetings. These methods are proven highly effective ways to align your team and quickly move through a design-based thinking process to uncover insights, prototype an idea, and test it with users. A system for flushing out an idea quickly is great, but what if you’re having trouble coming up with the idea itself? 

Pro-tip: We created a tool that lets you dive into some of these suggested frameworks and methods. Check it out.

Sparking New Ideas

Whether you are still searching for the idea that will become your big break or you’re thinking about how to top a company project that just launched, we’ve all experienced the nag of worry about falling short on good ideas. While we can try to force good ideas to surface, that’s unfortunately not the nature of creativity; it strikes on its own time. We may sit down to generate ideas and nothing surfaces. The think tank is empty. Similar to writer’s block, sometimes creativity just doesn’t come when we want it to, and then we feel stuck. But staying “stuck” gets us nowhere; we must move forward. The question is how.

As I was sitting down to write this blog post, I recalled my conversation with Paul Sloane, a professional speaker and lateral thinking expert, about the power of lateral thinking to overcome stagnation and accelerate innovation. Paul was named the King of Lateral Thinking Puzzles–a worthy title as he wrote the book about lateral thinking. We discussed the power lateral thinking has on solving problems by way of unusual or creative approaches; get creative to be creative. 

One of the ways I pursue creative approaches to ideation block is by exploring the Worst Possible Idea–an exercise that encourages team members to generate the worst possible solutions of an idea. The “reverse” search relieves the pressure of ideation and instead offers low-risk space to exercise creative muscles. It also allows the team to safely challenge their assumptions and gain insights towards great ideas by considering the ones they know won’t work. 

I got curious about what other people do to overcome ideation blocks, so I asked my team at Voltage Control. Here’s what they had to say.

VC Team: How We Overcome Ideation Blocks

Annie H., Workshop Facilitator

One of my favorite activities is a “fishbowl”. I find this activity works best in larger teams that are having trouble listening to one another, and keep getting stuck in long-winded debates that lead nowhere. 

Three people sit in a circle in the middle of the room (the inner circle i.e. the fishbowl) and the rest of the audience sits in a larger outer circle around. Those in the fishbowl receive a prompt from the facilitator and begin to have a conversation. Only those in the inner circle, or fishbowl, speak. Participants in the outer circle listen to the discussion and take notes. Participants in the fishbowl move from the inner circle to the outer circle when they feel finished with their part of the conversation. When a seat is vacated, another participant will get up from the outer circle and join the inner circle to continue the conversation. The exercise generally lasts from 30-45 minutes. 

This exercise can also be done virtually. In Zoom, those in the fishbowl will keep their video cameras on, and everyone in the outer circle keeps their video off. To leave the fishbowl, you just turn your video off. This worked magically when I was leading a group of philanthropists and financial service providers working together to build new financial products that better incorporated humanitarian and environmental metrics (alongside the financial outcomes). These two groups are often pitted against each other, so it was difficult to get them to see themselves as part of the same team. The fishbowl helped them to get unstuck and move forward. It helped the team get a visceral experience of self-management. 

It can offer a highly dynamic setting to discuss controversial issues. When the people in the fishbowl are public officials or other decision-makers, this technique can help bring transparency to the decision-making process and increase trust and understanding about complex issues.

Dawn S., Lead Designer

As far as design goes, I love analogous inspiration. Especially when I’ve got a unique request for a MURAL design and what normally doesn’t work, simply looking for inspiration from other sources helps a lot along with what exactly draws my eye to it. I can pull those elements into “my” design–steal like a (sneaky) artist mentality.

Erik S., VP of Learning Experience

I like cover stories (or some variation) that gets folks to think about what success looks like long into the future. And, since folks are oftentimes much more comfortable with incremental thinking here, I ask them to channel science fiction for their response: imagine what needs to be and we’ll figure out the tech and resources later.

I also turn to Liberating Structures activities: 25:10 Crowdsourcing can be a great way to generate and quickly sift a variety of ideas. And 15% solutions can get people to focus on what is within their control to move forward (vs. what they can’t do).

Jamie L., Executive Assistant

I love Pat Flynn’s book “Will it Fly” which is actually about how to figure out if a business idea will sell or work, but I feel like when it comes to big decision making about almost anything whether in a group or doing in on your own, you can use many of the principles and exercises in his book to work through it.

Jamie G., Innovations Master Facilitator

Dancing!! Seriously, if I can put everything aside and get some movement in, I can get unstuck, feel good and motivated so then I sit down to work again and I feel playful & creative!

Jenni, Head of Operations

Diagrams are for sure my favorite thing to do. Working forwards or backward really helps me get creative, and the open space of a MURAL or physical whiteboard gives me the room I need to lay it all out.

I love the What If game. It’s a great asset in risk management, especially when paired with worst-case scenario framing. My favorite question to get things going is “What if aliens invaded?” 

Walk and talk is an oldie but a goodie. Get moving and your brain just works better, especially outside.

Frankie F., Marketing Manager

Take a break and walk away from “thinking” about it, literally. I’ll go for a walk, hike, or engage in a different creative activity. Typically my best ideas come to me when I’m fully occupied with something entirely unrelated. 

Visual stream of consciousness thinking using vision boards (MURAL is my favorite)! Similar to stream of consciousness writing, I jot down all ideas and thoughts I have (removing judgment) both in pictures and words for a set period of time. At the end, I step back and assess what I’ve curated–clumping like ideas and connecting my thoughts to see a full picture. 

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Kierra J., Community Manager

I love the “Yes, And” activity when you can reframe it and apply it within brainstorming because it allows you to be as creative and imaginative as possible when thinking through ideas with a team. You don’t have to worry about making sense when the activity happens, as it allows everyone to be collaborative in a “popcorn style” motion. You would have one person scribe to document all the ideas as the activity happens in real-time and then circle back with everyone to discuss, examine, and analyze all the ideas that make the most sense to move forward on once the activity concludes.

We all face ideation blocks at one point or another. Trying different approaches to spark creativity can get us unstuck. But when you are truly stuck, it may even be hard to remember these ideas! Prepare for when you need inspiration ahead of time by creating a list of tricks to pull from. Make sure you have them ready and accessible for when you need them. Keep adding to the list. You’ll discover that some work well for you while others may be less effective for your context. Share your ideas with others and see what works best for them. I’m always looking for new ways to jolt creativity. 

What are your current go-to methods to break through creative holdups? I’d love to hear your ideas! 

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The post When Inspiration Doesn’t Strike appeared first on Voltage Control.

How do group decision-making techniques in the workplace effect your creative solutions? From the small to the big, what and how you decide as a team matters. It determines or prohibits outcomes, productivity, team dynamics, meeting culture, innovation, and transformation. Many people think of decision making as a concept. On the contrary, it’s a dissectible science. There are certain methods and processes that enhance decision making. These techniques help teams arrive at consensual decisions quickly and effectively, and you can start implementing them as soon as today.

If your team could benefit from improving your decision-making process, consider some of these techniques in your next meeting or work session. 

Set the Scene

Before we can make sound decisions in the workplace, we must first unlearn what we’ve been taught about the process. As explained in Gary Klein’s iconic book Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions, the “sources of power” to make decisions expertly are not what most of us are typically taught–ones based on logical thinking, analysis, and statistics. Instead, they are intuition, mental simulation, metaphor, and storytelling. The science of effective decision-making is based on connection and understanding ourselves and one another. 

This takes us to decision-making rule #1: leave your ego at the door to allow room for genuine creativity and connection. Daniel Coyle shared an intriguing experiment about ego-less decision making in his book Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups. He shares that a Stanford researcher found kindergarten students outperformed groups of CEOs, engineers, designers, and even cross-functional groups when it came to making decisions. This was because the youngsters didn’t spend any time exploring or understanding status. They dove in with no ego and instead were experimenting and understanding what would get them to the goal. Take notes from the kids: comparing status gets you nowhere; focus on how you can generate creative solutions together. 

Once you’re ready to lead with the child’s mind, implement some basic ground rules to ensure your meeting’s success. One of our top rules at Voltage Control is to have a designated decider. There usually is one, why not acknowledge them! Appoint a person to play this role before the meeting begins. They will serve as the mediator, leading the group to reach an agreed-upon decision. A good decider will implement the most effective decision-making techniques and listen to the team. Note: they are not necessarily the person who makes the final decision. Think of them more as a facilitator or guide to help the group navigate and introduce techniques when needed. 

Visual thinking is another critical component in effective decision-making, especially with virtual teams. The purpose of visual thinking is to use imagery to communicate beyond words; essentially, thinking out loud in pictures. It’s critical in the business world because communicating beyond words alone often leads to greater success. Try our Visual Thinking Template to start using imagery to communicate your ideas with your team.   

Here are a few more ways to set the scene for optimal decision making:

• Use a diverse heterogeneous group – varying perspectives breed better understanding and results. You want to understand all sides of the problem at hand to create the best solution. 
• Keep the group small – only invite who you absolutely need in attendance. The group dynamic is more productive when everyone involved has something to appropriately contribute. People who do not need to be in the meeting can distract from the discussion. 
• Don’t over-rely on experts – misconceived opinions can distort group think. Biases can evolve and pollute the ideas being presented in the moment. Use experts as guidance, but not as the end-all-be-all. Follow your intuition and believe in the power of the group. 
• Make sure to invite the dissenter – opposing views give you valuable insight into the validity of the decision being made. Naysayers are actually a gift. They can save you trouble down the road for angles you did not consider. Hold space to hear their thoughts and lead with curiosity. 

The Decision-Making Process

Let’s take a look at the structure of an effective decision-making process and how it can lead to successful outcomes. 

Establish Parameters

Before the meeting begins, establish the decision parameters with the group. Have a discussion about how you are going to decide. Will a decision even be reached today? Or is that happening next week? Or am I collecting data and plan to make the decision privately? Understanding your end goal will help keep the group focused and on track to fulfill your needs. 

Then, establish as a group what qualifies as a good decision. Identify and agree on criteria weighted by importance to measure the various solutions. Decisions aren’t always about options. When you measure options against determined criteria, you are able to make more informed decisions. This is how to build weight scoring for decision-making, an extremely helpful tool. 

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Decision Making Flow

The following is an example of a six-step decision-making process. You can think of it as an agenda of sorts for decision-making meetings. 

1) Identify the problem – what is the issue that needs to be solved? This is also a good time to allow space for the team to quietly think through any concerns they have. Have everyone write down their concerns and then share them with the group. Airing them out can squash doubt or fear and get everyone on the same page. 

2) Understand the problem – from all angles. What/who caused the problem? Are you seeing the real issues clearly? Discuss, discuss, discuss. Reveal all corners of the problem. 

3) Collect information – gain as much insight about the problem as possible. The more information you have, the better equipped you are to solve the problem. 

4) Explore various solutions – get creative, think outside the box. Instead of going with the first idea that’s presented, challenge yourself to think up additional possible solutions. Ask questions to understand everyone’s perspective and acquire understanding; lead with inquiry instead of advocacy for a single idea or viewpoint. 

Techniques to help make decisions: 

• Filtering and clustering reduce the available options and narrows the idea pool. Have everyone write their ideas on sticky notes (physically or virtually in MURAL or Miro) and add them to a collective whiteboard. Then, combine similar ideas into clusters. From there you will be able to identify any repeated or out-of-place ideas. Do away with duplicates. Have the group vote on their favorite idea in each group. Then repeat the process, recognizing patterns, merging ideas, or generating new ones, until you narrow down the options to arrive at the best one.
• A pre-mortem strategy is a simulation method to work backward from an idea. Have the group imagine that in the future the plan for a possible solution has failed and you have to understand why. This is a great exercise to consider the longevity and effectiveness of presented ideas. You can eliminate any ideas you do not see crossing the finish line. 
• Repackage and re-frame options to find better versions of the solution. Sometimes an entire idea isn’t ineffective, but parts of it are. Before you do away with a solution that has some promise, see if there are salvageable pieces that could be effective. How can you alter the plan to optimize its effectiveness? Is there a solution you’ve tried before that you can revamp and improve? 

When decisions become negotiations:

Some decisions come down to negotiations. The trick to negotiating is listening and understanding the needs of the other side. If we practice inquiry we can start to propose things that allow us to quickly agree (decision made!). Another critical concept is trading things of unequal value. If you really value something and I don’t value it much, that’s an easy negotiation. Find understanding and compromise.

Before moving on, make sure that everyone has had enough time to think through the scenarios and consequences. 

5) Move forward with the best solution – once you are sure the best solution is chosen, implement it. Note: consensus = unanimity! If everyone does not agree, don’t move on. Foster understanding and if needed, go back to the drawing board. If everyone agrees, develop commitment and ownership on follow-up tasks and next steps. Make sure that everyone knows their responsibilities and their deadline(s) to fulfill them. 

6) Debrief – evaluate what went well and what didn’t work. Gathering feedback is a learning process; it is critical to reflect on the effectiveness of the executed plan. 

More heads are far better than one when it comes to ideation and arriving at creative solutions. Implementing decision-making techniques can help you get the most out of your team so you can do meaningful work together. 

The post Group Decision-Making Techniques appeared first on Voltage Control.

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Have you ever found yourself in a disagreement or argument where the other person was solely advocating for their opposing position with little regard for your point of view? Not feeling heard is not only frustrating but also makes it nearly impossible to arrive at a solution or consensus. This concept is at the core of what makes for great facilitation. It is more inviting and leads to more effective outcomes to ask questions to better understand individuals’ perspectives than to advocate for a single perspective.

The goal of facilitation is to help the group arrive at a common understanding, develop ideas, and make decisions in support of reaching objectives. If the group does not understand one another, it is not likely that they will arrive anywhere desirable. A facilitator is responsible for leading with questions to guide the group to collective understanding.

Let’s take a look at how to identify and combat positions of advocacy.

Abolish Advocacy

When someone makes a statement about what they want they are advocating for what they want. When someone does this to you, it feels like they want to “win” rather than cooperate. There is little to no opportunity for them to hear let alone accept another point of view. A facilitator can begin to break down this wall by introducing a position of inquiry. Asking questions automatically changes the perspective from describing a solution to seeking shared understanding around needs and possible options. Instead of maintaining a defensive posture, asking questions opens up an inviting space to hear other peoples’ perspectives. In this space, there is no “right” or “wrong”, just discussion. An inquiry approach leads to an amicable solution. You must first understand the person’s position in order to conceive solutions that will support everyone. The only way to do this is to ask questions.

There are 3 factors that contribute to a groups’ defaulting to an advocacy approach instead of an inquiry approach even though it is less effective and less fun. Let’s explore all three.

Siloed Information

Disagreements among a group can come about due to several factors. One is misunderstandings/misinformation. If the group doesn’t have shared information, it’s easy to misunderstand one another or varying perspectives. Lack of information can lead to disagreement because context is simply missing.

For example: Imagine there is a company meeting about whether they should remain remote permanently or return to in-person. Someone pitches the idea of transitioning to a hybrid workplace as a beneficial solution. They say it will increase team members’ productivity and ultimately lead to increased profits. Several others in the group strongly disagree. They advocate for their opposing view, saying that a hybrid workplace is just too complicated to implement. There’s no way it could work, they argue. This meeting has no facilitator to mediate and intervene with questions to shift the dynamic. So the two opposing sides continue to strongly advocate for their stance. Both sides push and push and struggle to make any headway until finally it’s clear there is no hope of reaching a consensual decision. Then the most senior or the most assertive person in the room announces which solution wins. People support the decision begrudgingly, everyone leaves disgruntled, and the project doesn’t go well. 

Now imagine if the same meeting had a facilitator that helped the group understand one another and navigate the decision-making process. The same opposing viewpoints are presented and people are taking a defensive stance to defend their position. The facilitator intervenes and begins to ask questions to both sides, working to better understand each perspective. Using MURAL,  the facilitator creates two sections on a template for the group: one for hybridizing and one for returning to the office. The facilitator asks both sides questions to extract more details about their viewpoints, such as, “Tell me more about that,” and “How would this work?” “Now how is this different?” They document the breakdown in the MURAL sections and the group can see the breakdown of each side, which gives them a clearer understanding.

Through inquiry, the group learns that those with a fear of hybrid oppose the idea because they lack the knowledge of how to successfully transition to a hybrid workplace. Because they don’t know how to do it, they opposed it. Instead of asking more questions about how to transition to hybrid, they just advocated for their idea. Asking questions revealed the missing information that both sides needed to better understand each other, and ultimately reach a solution that was best for the company. The more you know, the more you are able to find common ground.

Opposing Values

A difference in values can also lead to misunderstanding. When people have the same information, but fundamentally disagree due to their values, it can lead to disagreement. You can come to a solution by isolating the key values – understanding the different values for what they are – and then combining the values to create a compromise.

The notion of compromised values is inauthentic and people can’t uphold the accommodation for long before they collapse under the weight. When there is a values clash, all hope is not lost, but it is essential to name it and have a focused conversation to explore those values and why the group is stuck on them. Explore if you’re able to adapt the option to come to a decision or solution that the entire group can support. Or perhaps you realize that the conflict is around a value of someone that doesn’t have to directly support the outcome and maybe they are ok with it after understanding the trade-offs. You can only come to these conclusions when you address them through conversation.

Personal Issues

An unrelated or outside factor can also affect disagreements. This could be someone’s personal experience that affects their decision or perspective on the matter at hand. A disagreement could also be as simple as the people involved not liking each other. To solve these types of disagreements, you have to rise above the problem and solve it from a higher vantage point. The more you can understand the individuals involved, the better prepared you are to gain consensus. People who advocate for their viewpoint due to matters unrelated to the topic being discussed often don’t have a definitive reason for their stance. A common type of response is “It just won’t work.” Asking these people questions like, “Can you help me understand your thinking here? “ and “How might we improve this?” will help you dig deeper and uncover the core issue. Everyone may not agree with each other’s opinions, but a better understanding of where each person is coming from can lead to a space of compromise and agreement about the matter at hand. The more inquisitive you are about the point of view of the audience, the better you are able to help them arrive at solutions.

Facilitator Questions

It’s one thing to know the importance of asking questions, it’s an entirely different matter to know the right questions to ask. When you frame them correctly, questions are an immensely powerful tool to dissolve tension and problems and create impactful solutions. 

That’s why we created the Facilitators Guide to Questions to help facilitators effectively navigate meetings/conversations. It includes questions to facilitate engagement, understanding, alignment, positivity, and more. It’s an excellent resource to refer to and use to spark ideas of ways to lead groups with inquiry, especially in times of disagreement. 

Here are a few examples: 

For when participants are disagreeing

• “What is your understanding of what ___ is saying?”
• “What evidence and reasons are there for…”

For extracting understanding

• “Is that the real issue or are you upset/worried about something else?”
• “It seems as though you had a reaction to that. Can you help me understand why?”

One of the greatest powers a facilitator has is that of posing questions. Simply asking can open minds and lead groups to think differently about one another and the world at large. The more questions you can ask of a group, the more understanding the group will gain. Remember, if you find yourself advocating for a cause, stop, breathe, listen, and ask a good question. You will take yourself out of attack mode and into a space of understanding. That is where creative solutions are born.

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