One of the most valuable tools I use liberally at the start of peer conferences is a variety of human spectrograms, also known as body voting. There’s no quicker and more entertaining way to publicly uncover vital information about who’s […]
I recently attended a conference session that made me uneasy, and not in a constructive way. I won’t name names, but the session was centered around a specific program to increase “belonging” in organizations and included statistics such as: “Only […]
I’m a proponent of paying it forward. Throughout my professional life, I have been fortunate to receive invaluable advice, support, and encouragement from mentors at critical times. Most importantly, when I hesitantly approached someone I deeply respected and asked them […]
Large language models (LLMs) have made significant strides in natural language processing, yet their safety features can sometimes be bypassed with simple prompts like “ignore all previous instructions.” For example, uncovering Twitter “users” that are LLM-powered bots spewing disinformation…
I love my clients, but some have a special place in my heart — those who generously give me feedback. All the conferences I design and facilitate have a time and place for participants to share their experiences. But most […]
I have a confession to make. Though I’ve written over a thousand blog posts for this website, to be honest, I’m often writing for myself. Writing for oneself is as old as writing itself. Writers have always written privately. Famous […]
Recently, I’ve been practicing what Susan Pollak calls “letting go of whatever isn’t serving you right now”. Perhaps your first thought is “That sounds nice”, quickly followed by a second thought along the lines of “Huh, easy to say, hard […]
The other day, Liz Lathan told me about a version she invented of my core peer conference process The Three Questions. She uses it to solve problems together at Community Factory‘s Spontaneous Think Tanks and Club Ichi, her community for […]
I got my first paid consulting job in 1983, solving IT problems for a lumber yard. I’ve been a consultant ever since. I’m so grateful to the hundreds of clients I’ve served over the last 40+ years. Here are five […]
Through attending decades of Vermont Town Meetings, I learned that effective facilitation requires respect. For over two hundred years, my little hometown of Marlboro, Vermont, met at least once a year for “town meeting”: a form of local government where […]