Hello again my friend. Hope things are well with you near the end of this year. A couple of months ago I shared this observation on LinkedIn: The real challenge with problem solving is rarely in coming up with the solution but rather: Communication: getting people to agree what the problem is Decision: which solution…
Author: tre
Saw this tweet earlier https://twitter.com/helenbevan/status/1333005570056523781 (Source: Impact Wales) They say the best way to learn is to teach. That is because (good) teaching forces you to digest and express what you know. You engage more parts of yourself, compared to passively (and often mindlessly) consuming the information. The act of drawing means you are actively…
I’ve shared some practical tips about how to prepare for, lead, and participate in meetings in my other newsletter. Now let’s look at some principles and frameworks to help us think about meetings. Why can’t we have good meetings? One reason is because we’re still spending time sitting in bad meetings. Cancel that meeting if…
I’ve fallen into the trap of bottom upping again. Been organically following my curiosity, observing, and theorising about learning, thinking, knowledge and skill acquisition. Then I discovered there’s a name for this established field: Knowledge Management. And then after noodling around in my head with the idea of transformation of knowledge (tacit, explicit), only last…
I first ranted in Topics: I discovered these names by following my curiosity, slowly building up a collection of things I find interesting, connecting with people with similar interests, looking for references of books, before I discovered the taxonomy. And then having a name for them allows me to discover more related information (bless the…
3 ways to remember more of what you read: Know what you’re looking for (What do you want to get or achieve by reading this?) Take notes, paraphrase, reflect (active reading) Teach it / share the takeaways (forces you to externalise what you have read in your own words) And a bonus trick: Read it…
I am learning to be less efficient in my communication. Lately I realised I am too obsessed about communicating efficiently that it hurts the effectiveness. I am not getting my message across as well as I could. My tendency is to distill what I want to say into the most precise and succinct set of…
Let’s now take one extra step and attempt to distil everything we’ve learned so far into 16 sins of Modern Communication. 1. Not aware of your Intent (change behavior, change mental state, change emotional state) 2. Not documenting before conversing (missing Context) 3. Not documenting after conversing (vaporising Content) 4. Diverging aimlessly (false Maturity, likely…
This HBR article is full of practical gems on what to do to survive being put on the spot in a meeting. One I’d like to highlight today is this part about practicing set responses. It’s helpful to have certain types of responses prepared. The following phrases and questions can help you when you’re put…
What comes into your mind by the time someone says “I’d like share some feedback with you”? Feedback gets so much negative connotation but we often forget that it can really mean both positive (appreciation) and negative (identification of issues). Phrases Hi Folks. X smashed a call with [client] outta the park today. Massive High…