January 24, 2022
Are Virtual Conversations Here to Stay?
- Are so-called virtual and/or hybrid meetings and conversations here to stay?
- We’ve probably just barely scratched the surface.
- Here is an interesting, relevant, and helpful article by Ellison (2022)
- Using a check-in increases participation in the meeting… when everyone is invited to be heard at the beginning of a meeting, they are more likely to contribute to the conversation throughout the meeting.
- If you’re there as just a spectator wouldn’t there be a better use of your time?
- e.g., the host says, “What do you hope we accomplish in the next hour?”
- e.g., limit answers to three words. (‘I don’t know how to say this in three words’ is 10 words.)
- The whole structure of the meeting can be lighter, more refreshing, more personal, more participative, but requires a skilled facilitator — and a communicated focus for the meeting.
- The focus acts like a magnet and keeps pulling everyone back to itself.
- Breakouts are good IF they have a specific purpose, are timed, are limited to very small groups (2-3-4), and information is harvested — and something is done with it.
- I want to get better at this… there will probably be workshops, seminars, and perhaps whole college degrees coming soon; we need them.
- Read the whole thing: Virtual
If You Want to Lead, You Need to Grow
- “IF YOU WANT TO LEAD YOU NEED TO GROW. GOOD LEADERS ARE ALWAYS GOOD LEARNERS.” (MAXWELL)
- If I were attempting to teach economics I would put a toy truck (an 18 wheeler or facsimile) in the middle of the room and I would ask the students to identify ALL of the ways in which that truck impacts everything else in the world — and the ways in which everything else impacts/ impacted or contributes to the truck.
- Go all the way back to the dinosaurs and beyond for the fuel, the iron ore, the copper, the rubber, Etc.
- And then, how many specific jobs/ people exist to manufacture that truck — and then to put it on the road — and then to fill it with goods — and then to keep it on the road.
- And then, once those goods are loaded and delivered, and let’s say it’s filled with a plethora of goods from multiple sources, identify all of that — and those.
- I wonder how many connections there are to just one truck?!
- Just one truck.
- Can you write them all down?
- According to Forbes magazine, as of last year there were 2,755 billionaires in the world.
- We are numbed by numbers… create your own analogies or go-to visualizations so that you aren’t numbed or paralyzed or confused by the math.
- A million seconds is about eight and one-half (8 1/2) days.
- A billion seconds is about 11,574 days or 32 years.
- A trillion seconds is about 31,710 years or thirty-one centuries/ more than three millennia — 11,574,150 days…
- What have you been reading?
- I’ve been ashamedly devouring a novel every two or three days, but what can I say?!
- It’s cold outside, it’s dark, and we’re in the middle of a plague.
- For something a bit more erudite try Longerich’s Wannsee — a quasi-primary source document (I’m not sure where the actual original document is located or whether it’s accessible to the public) exposing the master plan for Hitler’s Final Solution and, more troubling, his government.
- Just think, this conference conducted exactly 80 years ago, was to get all of the bureaucratic departmental leaders in agreement — largely having to do with logistics.
- People ask, how could this have happened?
- Who is more at fault, Hitler or his followers?
- Read the book — and get others to read it; chilling.
- Since vulnerability is in vogue I will confess to having never read James Joyce’s Ulysses.
- Scandal! I’m going to put it on my list… 100 years since it was written.
- “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus.” (King)
