This is my old blog. It focused quite a lot around my book Solve Problems Together at the end, but has covered a variety of topics:
2nd agile Article canvas change coaching leadership link meetings retrospective review summary team development tools
The e-book of Solve Problems Together is now available
The second edition of Solve Problems Together can now be enjoyed eletronically as well as physically. It is available most places that sell e-books, and you can easily see a preview and buy it here: https://www.amazon.com/Solve-Problems-Together-Leading-meetings-ebook/dp/B077V2RT52
Introducing the Meeting Focus canvas – the first step to a successful meeting
I’ve been to a lot of meetings and workshops where my biggest question is: Why are we here? Many times the person calling for the meeting has not taken the time to clarify what they want out from it nor why it is important to do this now. They either expect people to understand it…
Presentation at Øredev tomorrow
Tomorrow I’m giving a talk at Øredev called the Five Keys to Successful Problem Solving. I will share lots of thoughts on how to lead problem-solving sessions that improves collaboration, helps you discuss complex topics, and creates clear outputs. I hope to see you there.
The second edition is now available for sale in Sweden
I just found out that the second edition is finally available from both Adlibris and Bokus. You can head over there right now to get your copy: For international buyers and people who want the e-book: The second edition will soon be available from Amazon, iBooks, and more. Note that they still sell the first…
Look what I just picked up
I’m bringing some books for my seminar tomorrow in Växjö. There might still be some seats left.
Workshop in Växjö on October 17
On October 17 I’m going to Växjö to give a workshop based on the second edition of Solve Problems Together – Leading meetings that matter. They will be the first group to see the updated canvases and the new Meeting Balance Assessment. During the workshop we will talk about How to set a good focus…
Second edition just sent for print
I have not written anything on this blog since before summer, because I’ve been busy writing and editing the second edition of Solve Problems Together. It has been both a lot of fun and extremely frustrating trying to write new chapters and rewriting things I felt needed to be explained differently. Since I released the…
Agile helps you say no
At my son’s kindergarten, they have practiced saying “Stop, no” since he started there. When they don’t like what another child is doing they are supposed to say “Stop, no” and put up their hand like a stop sign. This is to give them a tool to handle conflicts without starting to fight and to…
Good leaders sit at their desks
Many managers I meet are running from meeting to meeting, and then work late nights to finish all their work. They rarely have time to think and work strategically with their organization. And many have little time for the people they are leading. A leader should not micromanage and be part of every detail of…
Team Collaboration and Scrum Workshop
This weekend I did a workshop for Consid Malmö on Team collaboration and Scrum. It was a combined course and team building. I talked about how to develop teams and improve collaboration while doing exercises to build them as a team. The best part for me was when we used FIRO-B to look at the…
Minimize the number of people in your meetings
How many people were at your last meeting? How many actually contributed to the meeting? And how many were silent or were checking their email? The problem as I see it is that we invite too many people without the knowledge and skills for how to facilitate that many people. More knowledge and perspectives The more…
Get time to work
Most people I meet complain about too many meetings and too little time to work. One study showed that people managed to work on average 1.5hours per day. In one organization I had to book meetings at least three to four weeks in advance if I wanted everyone to participate. This caused lots of delays…
Review of Solve Problems Together by Lars Nohle
I was just sent this review of my book. So fun to read someone else’s comments and thoughts on my book. I agree that the font did not turn out exactly as I had planned, but I hope to fix that in the next edition when I get around to doing it. Check out the review…
First part of the canvas – Why are we here?
One of the first steps when planning your meeting is to help people realize what they should accomplish at the meeting. If you can clarify this in a way that you and the people who will attend can understand then you will have a good start for your meeting, and people will know how to…
Create better visualizations to make it easier to solve problems
One challenge when solving problems together is to create good visualizations of the ideas or data that you need to discuss. Scott Berinato shows a simple model and some useful tips in his article Visualizations that really work. He has two questions that I think are really good to answer before you try to design a graph or image:…
Where is the problem?
This weekend we met a friend who is a freelance musician. We talked about a lot of things but especially about practice and developing yourself and your skills. When she is practicing for a new piece she will usually find one or more places that are hard to play, that she will need to practice over and over again to…
You can now get the e-book version of Solve Problems Together
The e-book version was finally finished and is now available from Amazon, iBooks, and it should pop up in a number of other e-book stores during the next couple of days. The e-book version should be available to buy in most countries in the world. If you have not bought all your christmas presents yet then…
Team debrief
In this video I talk about team debrief which is a very powerful tool for both building a team and doing a retrospective. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gQpvHbnxtM
A quick overview of the book
I needed to remind myself about the different parts in the book and created this mindmap. It contains the parts I will focus on when creating more concrete tools in the upcoming months. The next step is to make this overview a bit better looking and make sure it contains enough information to be useful, while not becoming…
How do you help people change their behavior?
I realize that some of the tips in my book might not suit everyone nor every situation. But I think there are a lot of ideas there that would help most people if they just did it. Fogg’s behavior model says that we need three things to change our behavior: Motivation – we understand the need…
My next 90 day challenge – Creating an interactive version of the book
I have now spent two weeks taking it easy after the book release. Just enjoying the feeling of the book being available to anyone, and taking the time to gather some energy and thinking about the next step. I don’t have any exact sales numbers yet, but I know that people have started ordering it. I have…
You can now order the book from Bokus if you are in Europe
I just found out that the Swedish book site, Bokus.com, ships my book within Europe. So if you have some knowledge of Nordic-languages you can go there and order it. I will let you know when it can be ordered through Amazon worldwide, but it will probably take a bit more time. When I got the books…
90 days to write a book
Exactly 90 days ago I decided to challenge myself to write the book I have been thinking about for a long time. And because I know that I need a way to push myself forward I decided to try to write, edit and publish it in 90 days. After I made the decision, I immediately…
The books arrived right on time for the release party tomorrow
The books arrived today, and I finally got to see how they turned out. It feels great to have them here, though it was a bit tense having them arrive one day before the release party. It is actually possible to start ordering the books now on Bokus, Adlibris, and directly from the publisher if you live…
Books just shipped
I just got an email that the books I ordered for the Release party on Saturday have shipped. I was a bit scared that they would not reach me in time, but it is looking good. It has felt strange since I sent the final pdfs to the publisher. Suddenly I was done with my…
The book is now sent for print
I just sent off the pdfs for the book and the cover to my publisher. It feels both really exciting and terrifying at the same time. I will let you all know when you can order it. While you are waiting for the book you can take the chance to check out my video on how to…
Draft of book cover, 200 books sold, and some first impressions
So much happened this week: I created a draft of the book cover and also a synopsis. I also received an order of 200 books before it is even possible to order the book. I have received some great feedback from my test readers, the book has become so much better because of them, and these two quotes made…
Exactly one month until book release
It is now exactly one month until I am planning to release the book. The first three chapters are finished and sent to some amazing people that wanted to review it. I have already received some fantastic feedback, and the book is so much better for it. I have also written a draft synopsis for the…
Visualizing reduces conflicts
Another thing that happens when you make sure people can see all the data, ideas and solutions on the wall is that people get disconnected from their ideas and from the data they present. Even in a conflict when you start to write ideas up people will stop facing one another directly and turn in…
Write Everything Up
The best tip I have to improve all your meetings is to write everything up; to write everything that anyone says so everyone can see it. Our short-term memory is not very good, and we want people to focus on finding patterns, ideas, and solutions. Not to try to remember what everyone said. You can…
Two types of meetings to solve complex problems
When trying to solve complex problems many people fall into one of two traps: Analysis-paralysis gets you stuck in trying to understand all the data and always finding new information and analyzing it. Nothing gets done because of the feeling that we need to know more about what is happening. Shotgun-action ignores all the data…
Solving complex problems – Data – Focus – Change
You will not be able to solve these types of problems during one workshop and instead, you have to lead a longer change process to move forward. To be able to find a change you want to try out you need to have a focus and a way to see if things get better. To…
Solving complex problems
I’m starting a new chapter today on solving complex problems and how you can’t expect to solve them with just a meeting: There are a lot of complex problems that we need to solve. Wicked problems are another name for this type of problems and what is so wicked about the is that we usually don’t know…
Team debrief of meetings
Team Debrief is a model developed by Kimberly Smith-Jentsch1 to help teams assess their work and has shown to improve team effectiveness by up to 25%. She has shown that even though many groups evaluate their work, it does not have an effect in man cases. One of the reasons she has found is that…
One-action meetings
Many meetings I have attended fit into one of two categories when it comes to their output; no-action or shotgun meetings. The no-action meetings are the ones where the discussion goes on and on and on. New thoughts or perspectives pop up all the time, or the participants get stuck in one detail and dig…
1-2-All
Some more thoughts for the book on how to create better meetings with simple methods: Another simple way to get more out of your meetings and to make sure everyone speaks to give people time to think by themselves and talk with another person before sharing with the whole room. The process is simple: Ask everyone…
How satisfied were you with this meeting?
To improve, you need to evaluate and get feedback on everything you do. And that means asking one of the scariest questions there is at the end of each meeting: How satisfied were you with this meeting? And then you have to listen to the answers. I am asking this question more and more because…
How to use Sticky Notes
I have spent the last couple of evenings trying to wrap my head around the structure of the book. Getting stuck in how it should be set up instead of the content. I am slowly wrapping my head around it again and I spent tonight writing more than 400 words about how to use sticky…
Visualizing processes
Continuing on what data to visualize to solve problems better, today a short text on processes and systems. Sometimes your problems are in your processes; it could be organizational, production, or other types of flows. Or your challenge is in a system you are working with, for example, software with a complex architecture or a…
Visualizing data
Today I’m writing about the importance of visualizing data points in a good way. I’m not sure how detailed I have to make this chapter, and as this is a passion of mine I will probably stop it at this level unless people want even more detailed examples. Tomorrow I’m continuing with visualizing processes, events,…
Visualizing goal and context
I am starting on the visualizing data part of the book now, tomorrow I will share some concrete things you might want to visualize. Visualizing data during the meeting is not about repeating everything again but giving people a tool to create better insights and ideas during the meeting. The data you need for a…
Collaboration and the feeling of Acceptance
Continuing with the last feeling to focus on in collaboration: Acceptance. This is so hard to try to write and summarize. I’m quite happy with this first draft and I hope my mind will have processed this some more when I go back to rewriting it. Acceptance FIRO-theory calls this being liked (and the first…
Collaboration and some more thoughts on how to make people feel more competent
Some more thought and concrete tips on how to make people feel more competent. When people see the goal of the meeting and why you want them there then they can either accept the meeting or send you a message to say that you should invite this person instead. At the start of the meeting…
Collaboration and the feeling of competence
Some thoughts on how to make people feel more competent. At work, people will directly feel threatened when they fear being humiliated, failing at a task, or if they don’t know if they will be able to do something. I think many people believe that they keep their jobs based on their competence, and therefore…
Collaboration and the feeling of significance
A first draft on making people feel more significant during meetings. I will probably need to rewrite it and I will add more concrete examples: Significance We all want to feel significant to the people around us, and we fear being excluded or ignored. Significance is about being seen and acknowledged. Some people want to…
More thoughts on collaboration
Continuing my thoughts on collaboration and one of the most useful skills to have to be better at improving collaboration in a team. Tomorrow I will go into more practical details. Being open is the start of collaboration which means that being able to increase people’s feeling of significance, competence, and being accepted is one…
Making meetings more collaborative
Starting to wrap my head around how to explain how I try to create better collaboration during meetings. Here is a first paragraph and I will continue adding to this during the next few days. Creating openness and reducing resistance One of the most important things at the start of a meeting is to make…
Pictures and sketches
Pictures and sketches for my book that I will now try to write and publish in 90 days.
Making an idea concrete
Some thoughts on how to make an idea concrete enough to try. I will need to expand on this text a lot I think, but here is the overview. You have not finished just because you have found your highest priority ideas. Now the fascinating part begins, and some new conflicts will emerge: • Some…
Some more thoughts on prioritization
A common way to prioritize (and it is nothing revolutionary) is to draw a graph with one axel for impact and the other for effort. It is then easy to find what to do. To make this easier I usually find one idea that I put in the center of the graph, and I then…
Prioritization
I’m finishing the second week of writing on my book with more thoughts on prioritization. The plan is to publish the book on November 26th, and it still feels possible: “I love to get a group to prioritize their work because it brings out all the right conflicts. Suddenly everyone can not get what they…
Subjective prioritization
I have written a lot of text tonight, but I have been jumping around in different parts of the text, and mostly written a sentence or paragraph here and there. I am not sure what to share today so you will just get this paragraph that I think is very important when prioritizing your ideas:…
Some more thoughts on why it is important with visualizations
We all know we have a limited short-term memory, and studies from Miller (1956)[1] gave an estimate to 7 +- 2 and later research gave a lower number of 4+-1 (Cowan 2001)[2]. Despite this we still have meeting after meeting where we sit around a table and talk for hours on end, and expect us…
Three principles and three possibilities
I will think a bit more about the collaboration chapter before writing it. I need to find a way to make it clear and not just write all the ideas I have. Instead I focused on the three principles I try to use during the workshops and meetings I facilitate: When everyone understands the goal…
Structuring my thoughts on collaboration
Structuring my thoughts on how to create a collaborative atmosphere at a meeting. Will turn it into practical tips and some text tomorrow.
Outputs from a meeting
Continuing to set up the framework for the book today. I realise when I’m writing that I will probably need more specific examples along the way but those will have to come later. The text for today is about the importance of deciding on what you want to bring from the meeting. Outputs The goal…
Setting a goal for a meeting
Today I spent some time writing about how to set a good goal for a meeting. I hope you like it: This morning I went to a meeting with no subject and no other information. In many cases people take the time to write a headline but even if they make perfect sense to you…
Getting people to focus on the meeting
Today I’m writing on how to start a meeting and help people focus. Tomorrow I will go deeper with this and write more on setting a good goal and outputs for the meeting: The start of the meeting should help people focus on this meeting and not everything else happening at the moment. We need…
PowerPoint is never enough
Day 5 of my book writing challenge and I wrote two short part today. PowerPoint is never enough Even if you have sent out the information before the meeting, it can be a good idea to point out some crucial points, and also make sure people get some cues, so they remember what they read.…
The difference between an agenda and a process
Day 5 of my book writing challenge, and the difference between an agenda and a process. An agenda is a list of items that someone has decided should be discussed during a meeting. There does not need to be any connection between them, nor a thought on how important they are. I once worked for…
Day 4 and structuring the book project
I spent the evening structuring the book project in Scrivener and wrote in ideas and keywords everywhere. Not sure if this will be the final structure but at the moment this is the idea.
#NoAgenda
If you need an agenda for a meeting, then it covers too many things. The idea of an agenda is based on some assumptions that are not true: • We can not estimate and predict how long a certain topic will need to be discussed. Of course, you can choose to limit the time for…
Preparing for a meeting
Day 2. Feels good that some draft text has been written on Preparing for a meeting. What do you think? There are two kinds of preparations before a meeting; the facilitator needs to prepare, and the participants need to prepare. These two preparations are completely different, and in many meetings, the facilitator is both a…
A meeting has four parts
A meeting has four parts. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The part that most people forget though is the first part: Preparation At the moment, this is how I see the structure of the book, but it might change. I will add more text on this and improve the sketch of…
My fourth 90-day challenge: Writing a book
I am now getting ready for my fourth 90-day challenge, and I’m going to change the form a bit and increase the challenge. The challenge is simple: In 90 days, I’m going to publish a book. I will write, draw the pictures, and then put it all together so it can be published (the tough…
New 90-day challenge – drawing
At the start of the year, I did a 90-day challenge where I wrote and published fiction every day. After I had finished that challenge, I felt that I had improved my writing and I have been looking for a new challenge for a few weeks. This week I realised that I wanted to improve…
Cut your open bugs in half with Kanban
New article published on Linkedin: Cut your open bugs in half with Kanban.
What type of salad are you making?
You can find the original here and start following SMBC’s amazing comics: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=4036
Marcus Degerman 