A powerful contrast in these two pieces….a positive and negative take on Richard Branson both from The Guardian, over one week:
Where does the ‘truth’ lie?
How can we know?
A powerful contrast in these two pieces….a positive and negative take on Richard Branson both from The Guardian, over one week:
Where does the ‘truth’ lie?
How can we know?
Tags: decisions, leadership
Looking back to this Parliamentary debate on professions and professionalism from 20 years ago I am struck by both how much has changed, and also how similar things are.
The challenge to professionals has grown from those focused on social worker and teachers to doctors and lawyers. Across these elite tribes, there has been some reform emerging from within, with a new professionalism that emphasises accountability as much as autonomy.
Over the summer, I enjoyed reading US doctor, Atul Gawande’s book “The Checklist Manifesto”. I think it speaks to many of the issues and tensions relevant to the new professionalism (handling discipline in the routine alongside freedom to innovate; the need for skilled team communication and individual skill; overcoming failures of ignorance – and especially ineptitude in complex as well as simple and complicated situations).
It is worth a read.
Tags: leadership, responsibility
Australia is an interesting place with its phrases to encourage personal responsibly (eg “Slip Slap Slop”, “Stop Revive and Survive” and “Get Down Low – Go, Go, GO”) and some regulation (eg cycle helmets).
And then on certain things, the UK has the legal lead. For over a decade it hasn’t been possible to buy Paracetamol in 100 tablet boxes (to reduce inadvertent liver damage from para-suicide…there’s a story around the plot line in TV’s Casualty series if you’re interested).
In Australia, these large-size boxes are still available. Perhaps the different characters of our nations (and the campaigns that have shaped them) are subtly revealed through everyday things like cycling and headaches.
Tags: behaviour, choices, innovation, leadership, management
Here’s the way we’d suggest you try taking notes:
– for any given meeting, keep the notes all on one double-page spread. This means you can easily access what you’re writing during the meeting – the ideas are always right in front of you – and when you return to them later, you won’t have to flick through lots of pages. It IS possible to do this, even for a 3 or 4 hour meeting, and still have better recall than scribing pages of notes.
– write small so that you can keep it on one double-page spread
– use a blank notebook, not one with lines. The Moleskine large hardback with plain paper is ideal. It’s just slightly smaller than a piece of A4 paper when opened out. It’s not the cheapest but it’s a delight to write in and you won’t be using up so many pages per meeting!
– as you first start writing things down, don’t worry where it goes on the page. Leave things unstructured for a while until it makes sense to begin connecting things. This will be tough for those with personalities that prefer structure from the outset. But try it – it’s all about holding off judging or pre-shaping the ideas.
– summarise what you’re hearing and thinking. Keep each point succinct, write in short phrases, use keywords.
– write in your own words. Only write verbatim if you want to be able to quote something back.
– start to make connectionsbetween the things you are writing. Put related points near each other if you can, even though they come up at different times in the meeting (that’s the advantage of not writing chronologically down the page). Other things that are linked to each other can be joined up by lines and arrows.
– draw images or doodles if that helps you understand, remember or communicate a concept. Not everything has to be in words.
– bring in your own ideas where these add to what is being said. Think ahead to what may useful to introduce into the discussion and make a note of those things.
– use visual ‘flags’ to differentiate between key concepts, over-arching themes, questions, conclusions, actions. Underlining, bold, caps, asterisks, various shaped bullets, square checkboxes, circles – all of these work to help you see different things when you scan the page.
Practicing using these principles should help with embedding and processing the content you’re generating. At any point in the meeting, you should be able to quickly scan the page in front of you and choose the most effective contribution to make next.
Willing to give it a try?
Tags: leadership, skills, thinking
Our unofficial survey of how people take notes reveals that of those that do, most:
– capture what they hear chronologically, starting at the top of the page
– only use words
– write line-by-line in sentences
– use several pages in their notebooks if the meeting goes on for a while.
In addition, some people find themselves drawn to taking down lots of detail, perhaps even scribing pretty much verbatim what’s being said.
What are some of the alternative ways to take notes?
2. Use the Cornell method.
3. Take some inspiration from Leonardo Da Vinci who produced some of the best notebooks of all time (right).
4. Do what Bill Gates does (supposedly) – split your note-taking page into quadrants and record different kinds of information in each – eg key themes, questions, references and actions.
5. Experiment with our principles for power note taking…which we’ll explain tomorrow.
Tags: leadership, skills, thinking
Research on note taking, for example here, suggests it benefits the notetaker on 5 levels:
1. It helps you capture what is being said so you can remember it later. Much of the information we take into our short-term memories (which is what we are using most of the time) is quickly forgotten: between 30-60% after an hour and probably more than 90% after a few days. That’s why discussions towards the end of a meeting often forget (or repeat again) what was said at the start.
2. It helps you understand what is really being said and makes it clear when you need to ask for clarification because you don’t. The trick here is to summarise and not to write verbatim (unless someone has used a particularly important or noteworthy form of words). When you write in your own words, you increase the sense-making processes going on in your brain.
3. It helps you order and summarise. As you write, you can see the different groupings of ideas, which are detailed and which are more high level, those based on logical arguments and those revealing how people are feeling. From this you can abstract to identify and describe the key themes that are emerging and spot any gaps in the thinking.
4. It helps you connect the ideas you’re hearing with things you already know. This is the opportunity to bring in other ideas and data that relate to the discussion and to synthesise these in a way that improves your understanding and insights.
5. It helps you conclude what to do next. You see more clearly the questions you could be asking, the insights you could be sharing, the opinions you could be advocating or the actions you could be proposing. And it helps you decide which of these is the right one to use at the right moment (not just what happens to be at the front of your mind).
As you move up each level, you are doing more to embed the ideas in your mind and deriving more value in how you process and use them. And, crucially, this is not just about how you use notes after a meeting. It is about how much impact you have ‘in the moment’ – developing the skills to think on your feet and make the best possible contribution there and then.
Tags: leadership, meetings, skills
Do you take notes in meetings? Or when listening to a presentation or talk?
Not formal minutes, but notes for your own benefit?
How do you take those notes?
Have you ever had any training in note taking? Probably not. If the people who take our Brilliant Thinking course are anything to go by, it’s a skill that is hardly ever taught (or at least, very rarely learned).
Yet if you’re paid to use your mind at work (err, that’s almost all of us) it’s the equivalent of:
– making sure your camera has full batteries, available memory and a clean lens before heading out to take photos at the wedding
– being able to draw a small sketch in 15 minutes that gets across all the meaning and beauty of a scene instead of a bloated canvas with loads of detail but no sense of what’s vital
– crafting and sharpening your own arrows before shooting one through the apple sitting on your fellow worker’s head (excuse that bit of licence with the William Tell story).
This week, we’ll explore what makes note taking such a fundamental skill…
…and why mastering it can transform the impact you make.
Tags: leadership, meetings, skills
Robert Fritz, the US management author, comments on the mechanics of the creative process. His model of the tension between the actual and desired is probably his most well-known (see image).
We find a version of this is alive in many of our workshops. We regularly start with exploring a group’s hopes for the future. The understanding this gives is then deepened by immersing ourselves in the perspectives on the present, informed by a survey and whole group discussion.
The insights from this process can sometimes be accompanied by confusion and guilt too, for example around the habits and obstacles that the group is experiencing or some of the things that had been hoped for in the past but not achieved.
The resulting tension can be fascinating, but also for some too much to bear at moments. However, it is the resolution of this that creates the momentum to propel the group forward to planning action.
So the tension generates the energy to go on.
Too long spent seeing deeply and sensing what is needed can lead to frustration. Too little and there is insufficient insight or commitment. This dilemma is one that needs careful attention – and is increasingly one we mention at the start before it comes to a head at around the half way point (when the shift from divergence to convergence in the ‘diamond dynamic’ happens).
Tags: behaviour, choices, leadership, management
This is one of our responses to Helen Bevan’s article on the need for hope in the Health Service Journal.
“I agree that we need to be aware of risk and problems, however, I read this as a welcome balance to the over-focus on pathology – and not a denial of difficulty.
Interestingly, this positive, hopeful article has attracted only a fraction of the comment that the story about KPMG partnering with NHS London received this week.
Well done HSJ on leading with this. I hope [sic] with non-inflammatory intentions. If we believe that we get what we talk about, then this sort of piece can help progress and assist the NHS achieve its potential in terms of eliminating harm to patients and increasing quality care.”
Tags: behaviour, healthcare, hope, leadership
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