Hey,

I hope you are safe and well. Life is good here at Lambert Towers. The kids are doing well, the weather is starting to brighten up and spring is creeping in. I know I said I wouldn't mention the weather but I am British after all.

The Workshop Mastery book is nearly done!

It's had several reviews and I'm just prepping some support material such as workshop plans and optimal seating diagrams.

I think I will be publishing it on Amazon but I'm also pondering whether to move all of my products to Shopify, and host it there (let me know if you have any thoughts on this).

This week I posted three articles on the site:

I'm also still adding to the Releasing Agility scrapbook.

Onwards!

For those new to the Meeting Notes newsletter, welcome, I’m Rob, Chief Demonstrations Officer at Cultivated Management. This newsletter is about mastering the art of communication and creativity - and creating a bright future of work. 

Meeting Notes - some ideas to play with

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Demonstrations

If you’re in the world of change (which all of us are), it’s much better to provide a good example, than an excellent description.

It’s better to show people what good looks like, than tell them.

It’s better to quietly go ahead with positive change and improvements, than it is to fight over theories, words and concepts with others. It’s much better to make change, than to document a future in beautiful diagrams, plans and charts. 

At the end of the day, it’s better to look at change that is working, shine a light on it, point people to good examples, deconstruct the guiding principles, inspire and enthuse others through this demonstration - and let people emulate, drive and aspire to move into action.

Quietly go about making things better, provide a (good) demonstration and let other people see why it works. Or, spend months creating excellent descriptions of the change (and future) and hope that moves people into action.

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You have now what you wanted

Overheard on a diary of a ceo video:

"What you have today is likely something you wanted in the past"

Another reason to express gratitude.

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If you think someone has ruined your life, you’re right. It’s you.

The inspiration for my opening story for the How To Thrive In Your Career keynote (a funny but sad story too), is about Mr Freaking Furious.

I didn’t actually catch his real name but he pinned me against a wall at a conference (not literally), and spouted hatred and venom about work, life, the industry, me, his peers, his friends, his community. He hated everything and everyone. 

I swore never to become like Mr Freaking Furious - that's the premise of the talk (and video).

As I get older I’ve realised an important lesson.

It’s up to me to go after what I want, it’s up to me how I let people make me feel, it’s up to me to tell a story about events in my own life (good or bad), it’s up to me to choose to look at the good in life and it’s up to me to focus on what I can (and cannot) control.

And so, when I heard this quote on a YouTube video (butchering a Friedrich Nietzsche quote), I kind of felt I may be on to something. 

If you think someone has ruined your life, you’re right. It’s you.

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You have time and you have focus - how are you going to apply it?

One of the most frustrating aspects of doing any kind of strategy or change work with leaders (who aren’t sure what they’re doing), is the utter belief they hold that things should happen immediately, or at a certain point in time.

Change programmes that assume on 15th September we will all operate in a new way, the old way will cease to exist, and results will flow. 

Strategy, that clearly outlines the problems to be overcome, but leaders want the problems solved tomorrow. (Solving wicked problems doesn't work that way.)

The reality is, unless the company has literally no money, there is time. Time to focus, to move ahead, to do work, to discover new insights, to creatively solve problems. 

We have time. We just need to choose where to focus that time (and not expect immediate results).

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No solutions only trade offs

I was building some “decision making” workflows when I had a sudden realisation (I don’t get many of these), that there are no perfect solutions to problems; only trade-offs. 

And so, I wonder whether this is why organisations avoid solving wicked problems and let them fester unmanaged. Maybe it’s because there's actually no single solution, only a series of trade-offs. 

What do you think?

Have you ever found a perfect solution to a problem that required no trade-offs around cost, money, people, work, structure or anything else?

This is why the pros and cons list (albeit old school) works so well.

There are always downsides to a solution, the trick is working out what you’re willing to “trade-off” and what you’re not.

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Affective and Cognitive Learning

Nurturing a passion for learning is more beneficial in the long-term, than simply providing a lot of training. By the way, I wrote about that subject this week — how to build a learning culture.

It comes down to the two components of learning (which are covered in depth in the new Workshop Mastery eBook). 

The first component is affective learning, which is to do with feelings.

If we enjoy a subject we will be more effective at studying it. Positive feelings about a subject, stirred in a student by a good teacher, can inspire richer learning. Affective learning is also the feelings we get as we gain more competency. 

The second component is cognitive learning. This is to do with our thinking, knowledge and growth in behaviours (as we put into action that which we learn). 

If we’re sent on a training course we don’t want to be on, or the teacher of a workshop is dull and boring, or the subject has very little interest, it’s fair to say that we’re unlikely to thrive in, nor relish, that learning opportunity.

We’re also unlikely to develop our cognitive growth and comprehension at a good pace if we have little interest in the subject at hand. 

However, if our learning is self directed, and we find an enjoyable teacher (or learning resource), then we’ll be more inclined to find deep space to study, and our cognitive growth will be more rapid (as we enjoy the art of learning). 

In my new system, I cover this from a “teacher's” perspective centred around a rallying call to avoid dullness at all costs, be enthusiastic about your subject and to teach with absolute clarity.

And of course, if we are teaching a subject, it helps to understand that subject from all sides and angles.

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AI Managers

I was pinged the other day for an opinion piece about AI taking over the role of management. I chose not to write the opinion piece because (in my mind) this mantra from IBM in the 1970s is still valid today:

As a computer cannot be held accountable for a decision, it should therefore never be able to make a management decision. 

The decisions we make as leaders and managers have consequences; hire this person, deal with this low performance, invest money in this initiative, move the organisation this way (or that), work in this way, or that.

They all have consequences.

Consequences should be owned by those who make the decisions. If they are not, the decisions will likely be bad, have no repercussions for those who make them and are merely a way of passing the burden.

As computers cannot be held accountable (at least for now) they should not be making decisions that could have big consequences. 

Of course, there will be leaders who remove decision makers and replace them with AI….but good luck with that. I for one, as a leader and manager, wish to stay out of the legal courts.

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Support Cultivated Management

This newsletter is a labour of love - if you’d like to support my work please consider:

  1. Sharing this content with others you feel would get value from it.
  2. Downloading the free ebook 10 Behaviours of effective employees.
  3. Buying a copy of Zero to Keynote

It means a lot. Thank you.

Until next time. Have a great week.

Rob..

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