The Fruits of Collaboration – Part 1

In any organization or initiative, we want people motivated to bring their best thinking and ideas to the work, fully participate, and take action. In a world where much work is done in cubicles interacting with screens, I believe there is an overlooked and often unrealized desire of people to contribute and gain the benefits… Read more

Designing Meetings that Do More

Here are some of the needs I often hear expressed by people in organizations and networks of those working on social change: Our work is too ‘siloed’ – people are not aware of what others are doing. Insights or lessons learned are not well communicated so others make the same mistakes or reinvent the wheel… Read more

Presentations versus Conversations

In these times, we need ways to understand and navigate complex and inter-related challenges, such as adapting to impacts of climate change and shifting systemic patterns of racism. No one person, organization, or set of expertise can come up with the best solution or path alone – we must find ways to do “collective sensemaking”… Read more

Six Conversations that Inspire Change

Note: This guest blog post is from Katherine Golub, a professional coach and consultant with CoreBrillianceAcademy.com in Western Mass. She has been a student in Marlboro College MBA courses I teach. I was happy to see how much she appreciated this book by Peter Block, one of my favorites. Thanks, Katherine! You know those books that you pick… Read more

The Meaning in Meetings

A few weeks ago, in the small talk before a meeting started, I was talking with a woman about our respective work. In reference to my work as a facilitator she said, “ugh, I couldn’t stand all those meetings!” I understand her reaction, particularly if you are used to the rather boring and tedious way… Read more

Using Events to Close Triangles

We have been experimenting with a technique to encourage and strengthen network connections at conferences. In this great blog post from our colleague, Janne Flisrand of Flisrand Consulting, she shares how it works and her experience using it at a recent conference. Janne is a network building facilitation consultant, based in Minneapolis. This is cross-posted… Read more

Quick Way to Map Who Is in the Room

When bringing together a new group, you want to help people make new connections. A good place to start is to offer ways for them to find out who is in the room. Here is one quick technique that can be done to facilitate this. We facilitated the introductory session the the UNH/NHBSR three-day business sustainability… Read more

Enliven Your Conference Design with a Network Mindset

The way we gather and convene people can be a metaphor and an experience of what community and networks can be. Traditional conference designs leave most of the participants listening to speakers most of the day vs. interacting with each other or discovering the latent collective intelligence in the room. Often the most energizing productive… Read more

An Energizing Staff Retreat

Kathy Gallant, the owner of the Blue Moon Market & Cafe in Exeter, NH, had run this successful health food store and cafe for 12 years when she recognized it was time for the next phase of the business’ evolution. Last October, the doors re-opened as Blue Moon Evolution, a full-service restaurant featuring organic, locally-grown… Read more