This week’s Team Building Tip gets you thinking “outside of the box”. Challenges and opportunities exist all the time. What are the solutions which could be activated around your most pressing business challenge?

One of the frameworks I like to share with teams I work with is the Six Thinking Hats from DeBono. Read more about this topic here.

With the Six Thinking Hats we are encouraged to look at issues from a variety of perspectives –

• what’s possible,
• what new ideas can we generate,
• what are the benefits of the approaches,
• what caution do we need to heed,
• what are the facts and
• what might get in the way.

If you are not familiar with De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats model, take a look at his work and writing.

Wishing you all the best,
​Jennifer

​Today’s blog post gets us thinking about values. Values serve as anchors or a compass, leading the way or anchoring us when we need to make decisions, prioritize and focus.
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In an uncertain context, being clear about our behaviors as a team is critical. As we go to explore our values, we may first want to consider what our values are individually. To do this, we might explore the following questions:

• What is important to me?
• What are the things I will take a stand for?
• What’s absolutely essential to have in my work/life?
• What makes me angry/happy/at ease?

 
All of these questions will usually point to a value which is important.
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Underneath the words of a value are the behaviors. What do the values look like in action? If I were to take my phone into the workplace and record behaviors, what would I see?

As a team, and especially a remote team, having a focus on values can help during periods of uncertainty. Even though the context may change, hopefully our values are not changing in the arena.

As a team, this week consider what your top 3 operating values are this year. What are you committed to, no matter what? Behaviorally, what do these values look like in action?

Best,
​Jennifer

​Jennifer Britton – Potentials Realized 
Leadership | Teamwork | Business Success
Author of multiple books including Effective Virtual Conversations (2017), PlanDoTrack (2019) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013)
Follow along with the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series over at Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder 
Join the conversation at the Conversation Sparker Zone - our online community where you can explore virtual and team issues, coaching, productivity and business development).
Pick up a copy of Volume 1 of the Weekly Journaling Prompts in an digital format. Print it out and take it with you for some inspiration and writing on the go! Available at the Potentials Realized Store.

As a writer, one of my favorite past times is heading to the library for some focused writing. I often try to fit it in on Tuesdays. When I am there, I usually check out the business book selection. Two titles, both named Pivot, recently caught my attention. Jenny Blake’s Pivot  explores the shifts and turns we can make in our career. The 2nd Pivot book is by Adam Markel. Pivot: The Art and Science of Reinventing Your Career and Life.
 
Both are great reads for those looking at ongoing performance and change. Whether we work for others or ourselves, we can all benefit from the tools and tips in both books.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines pivot as:

• a fixed point supporting something that turns or balances;​​
• the central or most important person or thing in a situation.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/pivot
 
As you consider your biggest opportunity or challenge right now, consider:

1. What is creating balance in the situation right now?
2. What is the fulcrum around what things are turning?
3. What is the important person/issue in this situation?
4. What is the most central item?
5. With this information in mind, what’ s possible? What are the options for next steps?

Best wishes, 
Jennifer

​Jennifer Britton – Potentials Realized 
Leadership | Teamwork | Business Success
Author of multiple books including Effective Virtual Conversations (2017), PlanDoTrack (2019) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013)
Follow along with the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series over at Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder 
Join the conversation at the Conversation Sparker Zone - our online community where you can explore virtual and team issues, coaching, productivity and business development).
Pick up a copy of Volume 1 of the Weekly Journaling Prompts in an digital format. Print it out and take it with you for some inspiration and writing on the go! Available at the Potentials Realized Store.

Another part of successful teamwork in uncertainty is giving people the space to experiment and try things out. This goes hand-in-hand with cultivating curiosity.

Experimentation is not just a strategy for small business and start ups, in fact, encouraging intrapreneurism has been a part of larger organizations for many decades now, including organizations like 3M.

Experimentation and trying things out can be a key business strategy when things are changing. Part of the success of this business strategy is that we also track.

When fostering an environment of experimentation, consider these questions:

• Before you start an experiment, where are you? 📍
• What do the metrics say? 📊
• What do you want to measure?📏
• How long and at what frequency will the experiment last?⏳
• What is your hypothesis? I.e. What do you think will happen?📈 

Recently I posted the daily business prompt as part of the #90Days Plan Do Track series over on Instagram at CoachingBizBuilder. 

Ways we can encourage more experimentation:

• Provide people with stretch zones
• Work with real business challenges. Encourage a peer exploration of different options and perspectives around key business issues. It might be that you are looking for different ways to get services or products out to market or how to magnify sales.
• Explore opportunities for cross-departmental sharing with a view to learning from other’s best practices and ways of working. This cross-pollination of ideas may lead to new ways of working in your department.

What else might you do to encourage more experimentation? 

Best wishes,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton – Potentials Realized 
Leadership | Teamwork | Business Success
Author of multiple books including Effective Virtual Conversations (2017), PlanDoTrack (2019) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013)
Follow along with the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series over at Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder 
Join the conversation at the Conversation Sparker Zone - our online community where you can explore virtual and team issues, coaching, productivity and business development).
Pick up a copy of Volume 1 of the Weekly Journaling Prompts in an digital format. Print it out and take it with you for some inspiration and writing on the go! Available at the Potentials Realized Store.

​It’s Sunday which means that it is time for another Video Montage from PlanDoTrack. Take a look at this week’s video montage.

In bringing this work out into the world, one of my favorite program offerings at the moment is the four-hour PlanDoTrack Virtual Retreat.  Check it out here.

The program is geared for business owners and professionals who are looking to reconnect or create their vision OR take action on a creative project. We meet throughout the four-hour retreat every hour as a group, leaving you ample time in between our group touch-points to engage in structured activities to help you PLAN, take action (DO) and TRACK your results.

Here’s what two participants from the April session wrote about their experience:

"The PlanDoTrack session was everything I hoped for and more! These 4 hours were a super useful and productive pause to work on my business vision and goals for the year. It was a hands-on approach, very much helped by the worksheets in the Coaching Business Builder and also Jennifer's guidance.
I would certainly do at least one more session!”
- Rute Silva - Organizational Development Consultant/Executive Coach - PCC 

"Jennifer - thank you for creating a space to allow me to focus on the deep work that I am committed to getting out into the world.  On a normal day, the whirlwind of life would have prevented me from putting pen to paper and designing a problem that could have easily been put off until "someday". Today I prioritized the important over the urgent and I feel so accomplished to have created content that will make a difference. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. If you are committed to creating a program, a business plan, content, or whatever is meaningful to you and your clients, but you do not have the space or time to focus, this program is a game changer. Block the time. You will be thrilled with the outcome and the support along the way.” 
- Jacyln M. Bradley

The next one will be held on Thursday May 30th from 10 am – 2 pm Eastern/Toronto.

I hope that you will join us. The cost is $129 US and includes a virtual retreat workbook, structured exercises to work on during the afternoon and access to me during the 4 hours for some individual coaching.

You need to bring a copy of the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner, OR the Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner, an idea of what you want to focus on, and four-hours of dedicated space.

Reserve your spot at the next PlanDoTrack Virtual Retreat – Thursday May 30th here.

Look forward to connecting!
​Jennifer

Welcome back to the Thursday Team Building Tip series. This week’s question gets you to consider the question “What will 10X our results?”.

This question gets you consider what will magnify your results as a team.

10X thinking gets you to think not only bigger, but also bolder.

This is a great question to bring into your next team meeting, or offsite. Get everyone to share the first thing that comes to mind for them? What would 10X thinking look like for the team? 10X results?

Working backwards, what would you need to get there?

Google has used the premise of 10X thinking for many years. It can be attributed to:

10X thinking can also be called “moonshot thinking”.

Rather than just growing by 100%, or doubling, what would 10X growth look like?

A resource you might want to explore is:
The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone

Best wishes,
Jennifer

​Jennifer Britton – Potentials Realized 
Leadership | Teamwork | Business Success
Author of multiple books including Effective Virtual Conversations (2017), PlanDoTrack (2018) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013)
Follow along with the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series over at Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder 
Now available – PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner - Order a copy today on Amazon
Join the conversation at the Conversation Sparker Zone - our online community where you can explore virtual and team issues, coaching, productivity and business development).
Check out the new 19 Tips for Productivity On-Demand Course. If this is your year to get things moving, check it out now. Join Jenn for bi-weekly live group calls until July. $129 US. Learn more and enroll here.

Welcome back to another Effective Virtual Conversations! This week’s post gets you thinking about “recording”.

It’s likely that in today’s remote work environment that someone is going to be late and/or not attend the meeting. While you don’t want to get into the practice of having people miss meetings, making sure that they can be recorded is an important option, particularly as it can serve as a record of the meeting.

If you are going to record, be sure to check out any local legislation and/or policies around recording and privacy and what agreements need to be obtained in order to share the recording. Check out Rev.com and Temi.com, two transcription services that offer low cost options. You’ll want to try out a couple of options to see what is going to work best for you, AND this can save a lot of time which used to be spent on having someone take hours typing in their handwritten notes.

One real benefit to recording meetings is that you can use the transcript from the call to serve as official meeting minutes. It can also serve as a “going back to” place to confirm who is going to do what as a result of the call.

Another consideration is where will things be housed. Consider a common naming system (i.e. date, focus) and also consider how additional materials may be housed. This could include handouts and other items.

What’s important for you to note about recording with your virtual conversations?

Best wishes,
Jennifer

This week’s Weekly Journaling Prompt is “The thing that has changed the most for me this year is…”.

Change is everywhere this year and our reaction to change can also vary. What is the thing that has changed the most for you this year?

This week consider the prompt the “The thing that has changed the most for me this year is…”.

Consider what is possible now that this change has taken place. Is the change good, or not so good?

What’s is available to you now that this change has taken place?

Is this something to celebrate or not?

Enjoy your reflections!
​Jennifer

For those that work on creating and delivering on-demand courses which people consume at a later time, this week’s Effective Virtual Conversations tip gets you to think about the question “To drip or not to drip?”. What’s dripping you ask? Dripping content that is.

When you create a course that may be several hours in length, it can be useful to consider if you are going to release all the information at once or if you are going to release it “drip by drip”. It could be released on a fixed schedule (ie. weekly, daily or monthly).

There are pros and cons to both approaches. When dripping content, it can provide a continuous stream in bite sized pieces. When releasing it all at once it allows the person consuming the content to do it at a pace that works for them. This may be really beneficial if someone has a limited window of time to work within, but it may not be as advantageous if the content needs to be put into practice before they move on. Withholding the content in that instance may be more advantageous so they need to “put it into practice” rather than move on.

Consider your design work right now – is it best to drip or not to drip? What’s going to work best? What do your colleagues do?

What do your clients want?

Take a look around and see what other courses do. Discuss with others what could work best.

Best wishes,
​Jennifer

One of the themes this month has been about getting organized and minimizing. With this in mind, here are three resources you might find useful:

1. Outer Order, Inner Calm by Gretchen Rubin – Having been a podcast listener of Gretchen’s Happier podcast for a couple of years now, I was so excited to hear about her recent release of Outer Order, Inner Calm. It’s a quick read, chock full of practical tips and strategies you can implement right away. True to her work and philosophy that there’s not a one size fits all, consider how your own tendency might impact the way you organize. If you haven’t explored the work and writing of Gretchen Rubin, check her out, including the Four Tendencies.

2. Cal Newport – Digital Minimalism. As someone heavily enmeshed in the digital ecosystem in my work as a virtual educator, coach and solopreneur, I appreciated this new book. It speaks to the challenge of the digital world we live within. While the ability to switch on and off has been part of my own work over the last 3 decades, the book offers practical approaches to minimizing what you have and what you are connected to in order to create more space for what’s important. Like many other books on the topic of minimalism, what it means and looks like for each of us might be different.

Personally, I am looking forward to taking some quieter time this July and August when I work out of the cottage to further cull my digital landscape. Letting go of TV and streaming almost 2 years ago has made a big difference in my time available for things I love, creative pursuits and time spent with loved ones.  I can feel the pressure of emails creeping up however and will be focusing on that first this summer when I have earmarked my annual “return to basics” six weeks.

3. I also have appreciated the resources of Organizing365’s Lisa Woodrow in the last few weeks. This year she hosted a Decluttering Blitz. Her podcast series is also a great tone to follow if organizing is important for you on a personal or professional level. You can follow it up here.  
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What resources are you finding useful in your work and world right now around this topic?
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Warm regards,
Jennifer