Happy Wednesday! In this edition of the Anecdote newsletter we have a book review, a description of a 'new' technique we've been using, and a note about our upcoming workshop plans, including a Narrative Techniques for Business workshop in Canberra on 03-Dec-2007. Please don't hesitate to contact us with your comments, insights or feedback and feel free to pass this email on to your colleagues and friends. LEADERSHIP WISDOM FROM THE MONK WHO SOLD HIS FERRARI — BOOK REVIEW — Daryl Cook I recently read "Leadership Wisdom from the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: The 8 Rituals of Visionary Leaders" by Robin Sharma. I admire what the author sets out to achieve - to inspire the reader to become "a true leader who touches lives, adds deeper value to the world, and leaves a beautiful—and lasting—legacy." A lofty, and worthy goal. Sharma has some important messages about putting things into perspective, understanding the most valuable and important things in life and the importance of leading thyself. The easy to follow 8-rituals—albeit very similar to Covey's 7 Habits—provide a practical, step-by-step guide for leaders to develop some important skills. However the wisdom seems to get lost in the ill-conceived narrative. The fable of the "monk who sold his Ferrari" seems far-fetched or, at the very least, over embellished. It's just not all that believable and it detracts from the message. It's an easy and at times interesting read, but if you're looking for something ground-breaking or interested in exploring spirituality in the context of work, I'd pass on this one. THE REVERSE CAFÉ — TECHNIQUES At the conclusion of all of our narrative-based workshops, we typically ask people to work together in groups to come up with actions or interventions. These are practical things that can be taken back to their workplace—little things that can make a big difference! To do this, we've come up with our own little twist on the World Café technique, which we've been using quite a lot lately. We've been calling it the 'reverse World Café', but I'm sure that there is a much better description for this method, which is really a mash-up of world café and a pre-mortem. Anyway, here's how we do it ... First we ask people to select a cluster or theme that they want to address. The workshop participants created the clusters of post-it notes from the a hundred or so workplace stories they collected before the workshop. We then ask participants to self-organise into groups based on the clusters and ask them to work together for a period of time - let's say 30 min. During this time they come up with specific actions they can take to reinforce the positive or disrupt the negative aspects of the current situation. Once the group has 'finished' coming up with their interventions, we get one person from each table to rotate to another table to 'sell' their ideas to the other table. The other table members are asked to play the role of a friendly sceptic. They also add value to the ideas that have already been developed, or offer up new ones. We give each person 10 minutes or so to 'sell' their ideas and then we rotate them again to another table. We rinse and repeat as often as possible to get through all or as many of the groups as we can, although this is not necessary. We use this technique because the interventions are more likely to be implemented when they have been tested vigourously to ensure that they are specific, realistic and achievable. It also ensures everyone in the room is aware of all the proposed interventions. It is also a good way to embed the actions into the psyche of the person selling the concept, as it applies the maxim: "you don't really know it until you say it out loud". We're very fond of that old adage. PROJECTS AND UPCOMING EVENTS — WHAT'S HAPPENING Consulting Engagements and Projects: - Training and mentoring program for regional deployment of a knowledge strategy process
- Establishing and fostering communities of practice for a number of clients in industry and government
- Ongoing leadership program for a multinational pharmaceuticals company
- Storytelling Booklet for a company in the construction industry
Upcoming Events that we're running or attending: 21-Nov Victorian Facilitators Network. TOPIC: Using Electronic Tools to Assist Our Facilitation Task. 03-Dec Narrative Techniques for Business Workshop in Canberra. Sign up! 07-Dec and 08-Dec OSonOS: Meeting *in* Open Space *about* Open Space. Hosted by the Open Space Institute of Australia 2008 We're currently planning a number of workshops to be held around Australia in 2008. Watch this space. LOREM IPSUM — PRODUCTIVITY Partly because we're busy, but also as part of our quest for continuous learning and improvement, here at Anecdote, we're always looking for ways to improve our own personal productivity. We thought that we'd share a few tips and tricks ... Have you ever needed to use some 'dummy' text in documents, websites, wiki's etc? Don't waste your time laboriously typing out text, use a lipsum text generator. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. 2008 WORKSHOP SERIES — BREAKING NEWS
We are in the midst of organising our 2008 workshops here at Anecdote and we're excited to tell you that we will be holding the following one-day workshops in Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney: - Narrative Techniques for Business
- Starting and Sustaining Communities of Practice
- Storytelling for Leaders
We'll release dates and information about our upcoming workshops in the next couple of weeks. Please contact Krista for further information or to book a workshop. We would also love to have your input on any unique small group venues you know of in Perth and Brisbane. — Thank you for your continued support,
The Anecdote team.
| 
