Plus …
OUR FORTHCOMING WHITE PAPER, NEW BOOKS,
and a NEW ONLINE INNOVATION COURSE
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SUCCEEDING IN ZOOMWORLD
Like everyone, you no doubt included, we’ve been spending rather large amounts of time on Zoom these last few months. We’ve learned a lot, and have run some surprisingly successful collaborative sessions, including one that spanned 12 times zones and four continents, and another as a series of three workshops, from both of which we’ve learned how to make Zoom sessions highly productive at accomplishing meaningful work.
While we don’t think that Zoom will ever fully replace the magic of collaborating and innovating face to face, there’s a surprising amount that you can do online to make it useful and effective (and also less exhausting).
We’ve done highly useful brainstorming, as well as scenario planning, and even some interesting work in strategy and urban design, all over Zoom.
Here are a couple of quick tips:
- With groups of more than 6 people on Zoom, someone has to facilitate. One of the ley reasons is that without body language cues we get from being in the same room, it’s really hard to know when it’s your turn to talk, so people tend to hold back.
One solution that works nicely is simply to have a facilitator who calls on each person in turn, and if they want to comment that’s their chance. Two loops through the participants list can lead to a very productive conversation.
- Breakouts of 3 to 5 work well. We distribute the instructions in advance via email, and also post them to the chat. Of course the instructions need to be pretty simple, but multi-step guidance is fine.
- Zoom pairs nicely with Mural, Miro, and Google Jamboard (and probably others). This is great for small breakouts (but mostly useless for large groups). We instruct the team members to keep the zoom window open on one side of their screen, and have Mural open also. We encourage them to create Mural post-its (or whatever) while talking, and keep it mostly stream of consciousness. This has proven to almost replicate the in-person experience quite nicely.
To learn how we develop and share some of these learnings and others in more detail, Langdon will be giving a keynote to the International Forum of Teaching and Studies Journal Online Teaching & Learning Conference, September 25.
His talk will be on “How to Design Effective Online Courses,” and will highlight learnings from the recent virtual events that InnovationLabs has led with London School of Economics, and NurseTrust.
This event is free and open to anyone. You can register here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/IFOTSRegistration
We’re also working on a Guidebook to Virtual Facilitation, and as soon as it’s ready we’ll let you know.
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WHAT’S NEXT: BUSINESS AS UN-USUAL
As America descends into full pre-election chaos, we we’re finishing up our fifth white paper in the Covid-19 series. We’ll let you when it’s available.
And based on that white paper, Langdon will be giving the keynote talk at the CoreNet Global Philippines Chapter, 2020 Signature Event. His talk will be on “Business as Un-Usual,” and will focus on planning for the short, medium, and long-term futures.
Register here: https://resources.corenetglobal.org/Meetings/Meeting.aspx?ID=10387
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NEW BOOKS and NEW WORKBOOKS
We’ve just published our newest book, THE CHIEF INNOVATION OFFICER: The Complete Guide to Your Success. Check it out on Amazon. It’s 280 pages of guidance for anyone in an innovation leadership role – what to do, what not to do, what to expect, and how to be amazingly successful at what may be the coolest job in the world.
We’ve also revised and updated THE INNOVATION MASTER PLAN and THE INNOVATION FORMULA, as well as its companion workbook, THE INNOVATION MASTER PLAN WORKBOOK.
Now we call it all The Innovation Mastery Library, 8 books + 6 workbooks. Yikes, what a lot of great content! And all available at Amazon.
These are the NEW WORKBOOKS, which we have never published publicly, but we’ve been using them and constantly revising in our consulting practice for more than a decade:
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ADVANCE NOTICE:
OUR NEW ONLINE INNOVATION COURSE IS COMING
And why all this publishing activity?
Well, it’s because …
For the last few months, InnovationLabs has been preparing an online video course entitled Innovation Mastery. As far as we know, it’s the most complete online innovation course available anywhere, as it consists of more than 100 video chapters that cover the full range of topics related to innovation management, design thinking, business model innovation, the innovation culture, and small business innovation. It’s more than 22 hours of content, and comes with 4 digital books, 6 workbooks, and more than 250 worksheets. Three certification options are available as well.
We’ll be putting the course live within the next couple weeks, and you’ll be hearing more from us at that time. Feel free to reach out now if you’re interested in being a beta tester.
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As always, we welcome your feedback.
And please do stay healthy!!