The e-newsletter from Forrest Workshops

From the pine...

Small heroes doing quiet deeds.

When my kids were little, we would read them "Max" by Bob Graham. It's a great story about the son of suburban crime-fighting superheroes, Captain Lightening and Madam Thunderbolt. With high expectations burdening his small shoulders, Max, looking every bit like the family talent had skipped a generation, saw a baby bird falling from a nest. Flew up, caught it, landed it safely, and proceeded to dedicate himself to smaller super acts (like getting spiders out of bathtubs and helping ducks cross the road safely).

Max's Mum;

"Let's call him a small hero, a small hero doing quiet deeds.
The world needs more of those."

Small, quiet superhero deeds. The things that the interested, the caring do for their clients, for their teams, for their community, that don't shake the earth, that aren't spectacular and don't earn hams and plaques... but that make a difference.

The phone calls to ask how they're travelling, or to tell 'em you think they're doing schmick work. The remembering of a milestone or an event, with a call, or a note, a card, or an SMS. The extra 5 minutes of time + effort, when you can see they need a second set of hands for a lift. The slightly longer, out-of-the-way drive. The tailoring of an offering, in the smallest ways, to make it feel more... them. A sticky bun, an extra double-shot latte, a six-pack for their Friday knock-offs when you can see they're busting their poopers. The raising of a flag when you can see danger ahead for them. Not for you, for them.

The world is full of them, these small, quiet-deed-doing heroes. Do we value and recognise them enough? Emulate their small-but-meaningful super-efforts?

Just because you're not delivering the keys on the once-a-decade golden goose project, or rattling the market commentators' cages with a whizz-bang new disrupta-widget, or topping the 1,000-strong leader board for the number, doesn't mean the work you're doing isn't important.

The small super matters. The acts accumulate. They're easy to copy. And they can be good-contagious.

Look for it? Try it?

Troy Forrest, Forrest Workshops & Strategy Road.

Talking Workshops

Andy Steven from Andy Steven Photography - 2 tips on improving your smart phone vids.
(Disclaimer - deliberately rough to show what not to do. For shiny'n'sharp, speak to Andy...)

Strategic play – Diversity

A strategy session topic as de rigueur as Wellbeing and Innovation, "Diversity" has muscled up the food chain for mind and decision-making real estate around the mahogany table.

Skills, talent and functional diversity remain a given. A Justice League of superpowers..

Then there are those back-filling diversity pieces many are pedalling hard to be across - gender balance a biggie. To address inequities, but also to deliver the upsides of chromosomally-affected worldviews and different takes on scenarios. Cultural diversity is part of this conversation too - leveraging the advantages of a globally-sensible team in a shrinking planet market.

Then there is chronological diversity. Having a smoking circle of emeritus elders passing on the wisdom of their years, many seasons lived. Bookend it with the wide-eyed pups (such taut collagen-rich cheeks) and youth grown on a digital diet to help the organisation understand, to imagine and advance with a occasionally naiive confidence (for that's always bolder than the awareness of fallibility the 40-somethings can't shake). And in the middle, those X, Y and soon to depart BBs, tying the diversity of age-attached attitudes and affects into some semblance of a plan.

There's experiential diversity - putting the creative that grew up on the farm with the process worker who trained in the factory with the temp that served in the army. Juxtaposing and morphing different backstories to see what fresh, what patterned, what illuminate pops out.

Then there's diversity of inputs - the feeds and fodder you're having your crew chew. The kind of folk they're talking to outside your four walls. The topics you bring to meetings to open minds or create strings of dots to be connected in a way you as yet haven't. That extends to suppliers, to partners, to resources, even to systems and processes (for that one way you've been using since way back when isn't necessarily still the best way).

Finally, the enterprise always benefits from continued consideration of offerings diversity and beneficiary diversity. The stuff you sell and who you sell it to. Should we wrap more and different kinds of loving arms, of gifts and lifts for our select few? And / or should the mix of that crew expand, contract, change or cleave into clusters?

However you dice it, consider the domains about which you'd do well discussing "diversity".

From Seth Godin, Tribes, 2008.

Damn, right?

The Green Room

Good wood from smart guest contributors.
This edition…. Tania Cavaiuolo from See Marketing;
"Three things writing my eulogy taught me...".

click here to continue reading...

The value of the words
they don't want to hear...

While it will stick in your craw (and theirs), the value of telling your client those uncomfortable, ugly baby truths, or sharing a perspective that plucks a painful string in their soul, can be immense... and can be rewarded that way.
Consider 5 lines you might offer that will probably invoke a short-term wince...

I don't think you're right.
There is a better way to do it, but you're going to have to pay a higher short-term price.
I can't see a bright future for the path you're currently taking.
The person(s) you've entrusted this with isn't doing you a great service.
You are not the right person to be doing this task.

Ouch assessments are often the foundation for the biggest, most productive and profitable changes you'll help a client kickstart. Of course, they can also easily become a door hitting your bum as they wave you goodbye if not delivered with;

Genuine care
Deep insight and
A willingness to endure frosty next steps while you work intently in their service.

The truth tellers - awkward, difficult truths - are ALWAYS the most valuable. Brave enough?

Red eyes. Sunrise. Early birds get the prize.

Workshop observation...

It's not really about the space...

... if there's a smart, committed, hungry bunch in the room
... if the objective is clear, the agenda is honest and the leader role-models, and
... if you give 'em pears, coffee and chocolate...

... then an old clothes shop with blackboard painted walls, 44 gallon drums and an old wardrobe door for a boardroom table will do juuuuust fine.

Seeds

3 moments in a conversation you ought to consider closing your mouth…

When you've asked for their opinion (even though you're dying to give yours)
When you've asked for an answer (and their silence is begging to be filled)
When you have locked eyes, and theirs are telling you there's something they're really keen to share (good, bad or left-field), and your discomfort with the pause is egging you on to talk and entertain and dazzle (but you know, deep down, it's about showing steely resolve to let them open up...)

Alignment. Needs an overseer. Needs a pace setter. Needs all-team all-the-time awareness.

The Swarm Guide

Meet Strategy Road Associate Travis Adams, a chartered financial analyst, equities specialist and financial adviser with Baillieu Holst. Travis is a highly respected share market commentator dedicated to advising on, building and supporting investment strategies that satisfy his clients wealth and retirement goals...

click here to continue reading...

Blooming

Blooming Teams…

From Ray McLean's leadership & team performance guide, Any Given Team;
A few questions leaders can ask themselves to get the ball rolling;

How do I want our team to describe itself?
What are our trademark behaviours that are congruent with that description?
What behaviours have we tolerated that are counter-productive?
Who are our leaders (not in title, but in actions)?
How are we giving honest feedback?
What are the consequences of non-compliance with our trademark behaviours?
Who are the custodians of our standards?

Just of a few of a clever connected crew... The Strategy Road Swarm

'ssociates with skills

My primary help delivery & income earning engine, Forrest Workshops (for 1 or 100), has lots of map limits. As with anyone, my training, experience, skills and likes max out (or don't exist) on umpteen planes. But there are loyal clients that trust me (and who I want to help) who have other professional support needs.

To be of ever-greater value then, it's my obligation to try and surround myself with smarts and services beyond my bucket. Hence, the Swarm.

I'm fortunate to have a cluster of 15 or so professional talents and engines trusting enough to velcro their hard-earned brands to mine. People of similar values, businesses of complementary and relevant and proven value propositions that I've got great comfort in putting forward to people and organisations whose trust I want to retain long term. Helps my clients. Helps their businesses. Helps mine. Aligned, independent, organic... professional friends with benefits in the most platonic sense.

There's often great merit to rigid, sophisticated and scaled organisational architecture, and maybe that's the engine you're contributing to each day. Even if you are, in an increasingly transparent and transient world, consider your Wolf Pack beyond the brand borders. There are likely people out there you've got no qualms about recommending. The talents you trust to do the right thing when you put your reputation at stake. Consider the feeding of that network, the nurturing and (however informally) aggregating of that cohort, for the upsides of diverse professional mateship. It doesn't mean you can't still see others - if you're to be of value tomorrow, possibly you must.

The old sporting saying - "A team of champions will never beat a champion team... unless the team of champions is very, very good."
You can have both.

Investing time in yours?

Worth a Bo Peep...

Capturing really high-level trends, insights and topics of global interest, the World Economic Forum site (and Social Media feeds) are a terrific source of facts and stories to inform your 35,000+ feet view of your marketplace. Worth following - https://www.weforum.org

**Luft balloons* (imagine...)**

The burnt building scenario. You turned up to work Monday morning, and there, in ashes, the ruins of your enterprise. Nothing left but the carpark filled with slack jawed colleagues.

Do you even bother starting again, same enterprise, same brand, same model, same market? Like... is it worth it?
Do you talk to the owner of the vacant identical building across the street, or is a different location, or a different architecture (people and place) more logical and practical?
Do you take the whole bunch of those slack jaws with you, or do you leave half, or 95%, or 1, in the carpark? (That's staff, suppliers, partners AND clients in that mob of onlookers.)
What is it you use as the filter for your future team selection? Is it talent? Title? Track record? The glint in their eyes as they look beyond the embers? Or the fact they're already taking calls because others see the opportunity?
What is it, even temporarily, those you've worked to serve will miss most about the brand that's not now there for them (and will that missing piece of their lives be the starting point, the flag bearer for the refreshed brand?)
The position you occupied on the supply chain - where was your choke point, your rate limiting step, the frustrating hand-brake slowing success (and could a new entity on a different chunk of the chain stent that choke?)
The message to the market - that you're Phoenix-ing and you're worth some eyeballs and headspace... is it logical, or emotional? Rational or awesome? Face-blastingly apparent in 2 seconds... or is it an unveiling storyline that's too compelling to miss an episode of?
The sweet spot; the moment your biggest, most private dreams will be realised in the form of this new organisation's zenith... is that about fast trend-riding impact-on-cashflow stuff, or is it about a slow burn (bad choice of word), or is it a reeeeallly long play you're going to organically, boot-strappingly build to complete in 20 more years?

Bipping smoke alarm advance warning.... do you actually need to wait 'til it burns for you to engineer the brightest ideas or insert the hole plugs you found on these thought tracks?

A sport cut from Pyeong Chang... Freestyle SnowFacePlant. 'bout as sensible as Curling.

Slide deck specials

Before moving to the "new", take a balanced look at what you've done & learned

Facile - itation.

Facile means "easy, ready, fluent". Facilitate means "make it easy".

Part of the gig is making it LOOK easy. Which is not easy.

My experience;

Fluency comes from familiarity. That comes from time in the trenches (which you have, or you haven't), and practice (which is in your control right now). Practice until it's painful. Practice around all manner of scenarios, potential side-tracks and barely-imaginable "well, THAT was weird!" workshop moments.
Your slide deck (you're using one, right? They all say they hate Powerpoint, but that's because they haven't seen YOURS!)... I build mine from scratch every single time. Sure, there are a lot of slides I can and do re-use, but the flow, the order, the freshening and tailoring for resonance and personalisation and fit with the day, the audience, the goals? Different, all 1,000+ of them. On average, before I actually click to advance the first slide in the session, I've juggled the order of the deck 10 - 12 times (which can only be done with the practice bit). And I usually change something at morning tea, and lunch, and afternoon tea. It's a dynamic, ungainly, but more impactful process.
Speaking aloud in the car. En-route to destination, hear the opening words, the first part of the attention grab, escape your lips. Again. Think about the pause points. Think about tone and volume and inflections and how beaming (or stern) you want to come across.
Know your timings - nothing frazzles a facilitator like getting 1/4 the way through your deck and the 5-minute warning bell sounds. Know where you can make up time in the air, where you can tap-dance, and where a spur-of-the-moment group exercise can help.
Walk the room in quiet, visualising the interplay. Before the hordes descend, get in early and play the game out in full, in your head, in the space. Facilitator proprioception means understanding your position in time and space when you're juggling the delivering of coherent messages and working to keep an easily-waned team engaged.

Hot tip for stopping the audience from staring at the floor... pick a room with this carpet.
What were you thinking, Novotel Barossa....

The trees for the woods…

Maybe if they'd said "no chips"...

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Thank you for reading!

Forrest Workshops custom-builds and facilitates team workshops on topics ranging from strategic planning, leadership and sales practice development, to innovation, customer experience creation and collaborating with your supply chain in an evolving market. Based in Adelaide, serving clients nationally and internationally, from SMEs to Fortune 500s.
Committed to facilitating purposeful teamwork.

Contact Troy Forrest from Forrest Workshops on 0430 308963 or troy@forrestworkshops.com.au for a discussion.