What we're thinking

More and more of us are working remotely; some of us some of the time, some of us all of the time. There are pros and cons… What’s great about working remotely? Many of us can now work any time, wherever we are. We might be working at a regional hub, in a hotel or… Read more

Want to better handle those moments when you’re asked to evaluate creative work, a.k.a. feed back to the people who did it? Yep, there’s a Zoomly bite-sized workshop for that*. This is something that happens a lot in creative enterprises of all persuasions: content creators, ad / design / media / branding / experience /… Read more

I need to manage your expectations on this one: if you’re a PRINCE2 PM guru you’ll be familiar with what follows. If you work on projects but your specific skills aren’t in that area, this post is for you. One of Zoomly’s many bite-sized workshops is ‘How to manage projects’ and it’s about the essentials… Read more

Whether you’re facilitating an idea generation session, a training workshop, an off-site or a meeting – you need tools and techniques to make the beginning and ending work well. Why? Too many such gatherings deliver too little – yet at a high cost, when the hourly rate for all the talent in the room is… Read more

When participants in Zoomly’s ‘How to communicate for clarity’ workshop pause to take a brief self-assessment, they often realise they default to one or two methods – which may not be the best for their message. Reassurance that they’re not alone is needed, and then we can get down to work. So first, let’s deal… Read more

Poor you, that’s not a great position to find yourself in. First of all though, how on earth did you get here? Did your boss just wave, say ‘see ya later’ and disappear off to some beach? Or did you have an actual handover discussion before their holiday, where things were explained and you were… Read more

I’ve been delivering Zoomly’s ‘How to motivate people’ workshop quite a bit lately and it often strikes me how some participants feel powerless to deal with demotivation in those they manage. First, I qualify the workshop title: ‘motivate’ actually isn’t something we do to people – it’s more about what can do for people. So… Read more

  Right at the start of Zoomly’s ‘How to influence and persuade’ workshop, we discuss the importance of influencing for mutual benefit. If that’s your goal, chances are you won’t sink to using manipulation, which is a concern people naturally have about this topic. The simple way to decide if someone’s influencing or manipulating is… Read more

What’s stopping you from delegating? This is something we deal with right at the start in Zoomly’s ‘How to delegate effectively’ workshop. For example, people can feel very uneasy about the whole idea of asking someone to take on a task and get it done. Typical objections that I’ve heard include: “They’ll think I’m arrogant”… Read more

After Action Reviews (sometimes referred to as AARs) have their origins in the United States military. Tools and techniques that improve team performance often have a military provenance. An advantage of techniques with military origins is that they’ve been tried and tested when the stakes were very high. The idea is that after the ‘action’,… Read more