Facilitation Lab Podcast

"I think that's also a big piece of what is interesting about holding sessions with groups is to see how people relate to each other. I think part of what I've noticed is that just someone hearing how someone else is feeling and if it matches them, they almost feel that they spoke it themselves. They don't have the need to validate it. They already feel that they belong to a group. I think belongi...

"At the time, I didn't even think of myself as working in an innovation lab, even though there were multiple innovation labs and all the teams worked in them. The way I perceived it back then is that we had a lot of freedom and that you were given a principle or a value, a problem to solve, and that it was the teams or your individual responsibility to really sincerely think about that problem and...

"I think one of my favorite quotes that I heard was this idea that a picture's worth a thousand words and a prototype is worth like a thousand pictures. And this idea that you bring this thing that you can interact with, you are going to have such a depth of conversation of feedback, you are going to just have this amazing conversation and learn so, so much instead of just showing up to your clien...

" I think that it is challenging to bring our own thinking and our own mental models to the surface because we're not trained to do it. We're not really teaching kids how to be reflective of their own thinking and the role that their emotions play in framing up their conclusions and how they feel about the world. And so we don't have great capability in that. It doesn't mean we can't, there are ce...

" My approach on facilitation completely changed because I was really nervous going into a session where we basically had everybody sitting around in a circle and everybody had a chance to share their feedback and their thoughts to this really positive thing that we are doing. I think it wasn't until I had a more experienced person helping me navigate that. But also when I could connect my actions...

" I was at a conference last year pre COVID, and this lady came up to me at a conference booth and said, "Oh great. I just read your book 10X Culture and it's fantastic timing because we're about to redo our culture." And I had a little chuckle to myself, like she was about to paint her living room. Like you can just transform a company culture overnight, but as we both know, and I strongly believ...

" Rhetoric to us is the adjustment of ideas to people and people to ideas. Essentially that calls for what we refer to as rhetorical precision. We suggest that a facilitator be much more reliant on substance than style. In fact, we encourage people not to be charismatic because you want the focus on the content, not on the individual themselves. So clarity and precision demand a very sensitive tun...

" Fallow is such an eco-cyclical idea but I feel that it's very underrated. So I've been thinking about the value. We think about moving through creative destruction into periods of renewal, there is a space and time that is fallow. Things are sort of resting and they're quiet. And there are different ideas and different sorts of notions or learnings that are sort of dormant in us.  And then they...

" I wanted the classroom to be based on the fact that first and foremost, bring everything you got. Bring all aspects of who you feel and think and believe yourself to be, because we're all constantly forming that idea, all trying to figure out who our authentic self is. So through that, I started to focus more on creating an actual pledge for each of my class periods. So instead of saying these a...

"One of the most common things that I'm hearing is, 'thank you for sharing'.  It drives me nuts because there's a big part of me that is just like, there's no 'thank you' needed.  I didn't share that for your gratitude to be received. I shared that because it was on my mind. And so I think what I fear is happening is we're starting to have this conversation about let's listen. Let's just take time...

"I think one of the things that is unfortunate about design thinking is it gets a little bit of a bad rap in that people don't see a practical application of it. And I think if you can strip away some of the aesthetics and strip away some of the language, but there are practical applications, I call it, we have to be practical and tactical because we can really drive a lot of change in our organiz...

" We spend a lot of time figuring out how to dismantle people's ideas.  How to poke holes in them. Critical thinking is supposed to be critical, right? Well, not always.  Critical thinking sometimes is about how you combine things in new ways and create new things out of them.  See what's possible.  Not just how you deconstruct them and leave all the parts on the table. "- Gregory Galle In this ep...

"Every product leader needs to have their own definition of what makes a great product manager because there is not this one size fits all definition. We're operating in so many different sizes and types of companies and organizations, so I strongly encourage the product teams to come up with their own definition."- Petra Willie In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking w...

" I really believe that anyone who has a business is a salesperson. You've got this far and you may not follow that traditional path. You may not be the guy in the polo shirt who's going to make 100 phone calls that day. But I feel like there's something to be said for people who have built their business and want to keep selling it and they have the tools to sell it. You can have these conversati...

" To me the future of the public commons is the metaverse. And so, if you're hearing this word metaverse and you're thinking, ;What is that?; It is a digital universe. It has many planets and solar systems. The ecosystems of the metaverse might be like a crypto experience, or it might be a virtual world, or it might be augmented reality or smart glasses. These are all places where we come to colla...

"The number one foundational principle as a facilitator is to create psychological safety, psychological security, emotional security in the room by informing people and letting them know what the expectations are upfront. So what is the agenda? What is the goal? What is expected of them? Because that helps people relax, when they know what I am supposed to be doing here? Because otherwise they're...

"Three-quarters of enterprise customers and around 67% of consumers primarily buy and compete on experience. And we kind of know that intuitively. Think about it, we pay extra for certain brands that we feel connected to. And it's one of the interesting things I've been talking more about. There's a great quote, not mine... "The best experience anywhere becomes the minimum expectation everywhere."...

"I think it's important to have silent time because each individual has something unique to contribute to the collective of the group. In order to not be influenced by what others are saying or contributing, it's important that they listen to their own thoughts or ideas or opinions or beliefs about whatever it is that is being shared, whatever we're trying to accomplish. So that you can have more...

" To me, [DevOps is] a collaboration philosophy. It's an ideology that is all about breaking down silos and getting communication flows, working through an organization. Starting with dev and ops, that's where the name came from, but really extending beyond that. It flows through the whole organization, you taking that product mindset approach to everything, continuous discovery, continuous delive...

"We really pride ourselves as somebody that can go into a company and put on the team's jersey, so to speak, and act as the advocate for the person who hired us. In order to do that, you've got to know your environment. So we listen a lot. We take a lot of notes. We ask a lot of questions. And we very much try to keep an open mind. In this episode of Control the Room, Jeff Marple and I discuss how...

"That's what I nerd out on. I really love this idea of how...organizations create environments where they can push decision making down to the edges, so...they become a complex organism that's way better at engaging with the world and creating value in the world." -Teresa Torres   In this episode of Control the Room, Teresa Torres and I examine her diverse career journey centered in human-centered...

" If you really listen to people and understand what's happening, if you illustrate an image that they're actually describing in their mind, [while] reflecting back maybe a sketch of what they were trying to say, people love it. People absolutely go crazy being listened to. " -David Sibbet     In this episode of Control the Room, David Sibbet and I break down his unique career path in consulting a...

"When we follow our curiosity...and take small steps towards that curiosity, that's how we create possibilities for ourselves and for others." -Van Lai-DuMone   In this episode of the Control the Room Podcast, Van Lai-DuMone and I unpack the creative footprint that inspired her to dedicate her life's work at worksmART to uncover creativity in every organization. Van shares her observations on the...

"There's a spectrum of teaching styles, and there's maybe the more traditional historical style of command style and sage on stage, all the way to a self-discovery. It appears to me that facilitation is really in that middle space between the command style and the self-discovery. [Facilitation] is about unleashing the collective power of a group." -Sarah L. Collie   In this episode of Control the...

"Design is an artifact, it's a thing, I believe it's also a process. I find that there's not a strong tie to people expressing and trying to describe the essence of the problem. To ask that question, 'What is the essence of the problem we're trying to solve here?' There's something deeper there and I think that's somewhat been lost." -Jim Scott In this episode of Control the Room, Jim Scott and I...