BBN School

When Student Collaborative Work Is Fruitful and When It’s Not

Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi was getting on a train. One of his sandals slipped off and fell to the ground. The train was moving, and there was no time to go back. Without hesitation, Gandhi took off his second sandal and threw it toward the first. Asked by his colleague why he did that, he said one sandal wouldn’t do him any good, but two would certainly help someone else.

It was also a knowledgeable act. By throwing that sandal, Gandhi had two important insights: He knew what people in the world needed, and he knew what to let go of.

crisis of content

Attract: How can I interest participants in the event before they even arrive?  What should they do, watch, consider or experience that will get them excited and mentally prepared for an event? Enter: What happens as participants enter a space?  How do I want them to feel as they  arrive?   Engage: While they are at the event, what are the experiences that will that lead to transformation?  How will participants engage with their learning and with each other? Exit: How do I want the participants to feel at the end of the event?  How do we end?  How do they physically and mentally exit the space?  What will the participants leave with? Extend: What is the long-term transformation that I want them to have?  How do I follow-up with the participants and build on the experience?  How can I extend the transformation beyond the experience itself?

If you lead a meeting, your job is to make sure that every decision made is crystal clear to everyone present before the meeting ends. The second lesson is that leaders must make sure that decisions made in meetings are communicated to, and ultimately implemented by, their organizations.

in the best companies, executive teams really are teams and that they make the hardest decisions together.

t the end of every executive meeting, to say ‘Have we made any decisions in the room today, and (if we have) how are we going to communicate them?’