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Leaders Letter 90 – 3 Out Of The Box Ideas To Create Team Connection

three out of the box ideas to create connection - leaders letter 90

Dear leaders, I trust you have had a good and productive week. 

This week I am going to offer three ideas for you to consider. 

Why? I am often creating ideas for others to implement, my iMessage and WhatsApp is often pinged with someone asking for a framework or idea or new concept to try out. 

Over the last few months I have offered three or four ideas for friends and business owners to try out, so I thought I would share those with you. 

Podcast Clubs 

You have heard of book clubs and film clubs, this is podcast club, I have actually seen this work and it really helps people form a connection, in and out of work. 

It is important to find a podcast you connect with the host and theme and discuss the episode together. Some approach it like a listening party, so all listen together, others use time like a book club do to listen separately and then come together to discuss. 

Importantly, works in person, remotely and hybrid. 

Story-based podcasts work best, I would recommend masters of scale if you are in tech. 

Team Wordles

Wordle became a phenomenon and is an activity some tend to do alone, one company I recommend this to actually tackled it together, it made one activity every morning something to collaborate on and work through together. It becomes a competition and one to bury the rivalry.
TriviaHQ was another app that was something I remember a previous team loved playing together and made 15.00 their time and importantly time they blocked out and stopped everything for. It was a joy to see them collaborate, laugh and create together. 

This idea also works in person, remotely and hybrid. 

Rock Paper Scissors

A few years ago I ran a workshop with a great brand, there was an issue, many of the team who attended the workshop didn’t know each other and had never really worked as a unit. 

It was a group that should have collaborated but the company were not set in the way to enable this. At the start of each session, we would have different objectives to hit and teams would swap over. 

At the beginning of each session, I would make the teams play a quickfire Rock Paper Scissors and the winner would be the leader of the group.
One factor of this day of workshops: All decisions had to be agreed upon before they moved forward. 

If a decision couldn’t be agreed upon, we would then make them play Rock Paper Scissors to get to the answer. It would show competitiveness but also it created a glue between them. You will be surprised by how a quick game will connect people, personalities shine through in games, you learn a lot quicker through games and stories. 

This idea also works in person, remotely and hybrid, just be careful of lag times and cheaters.

FWIW these ideas can help with teamwork, company culture and with tactical enhancements, but can also show the competitive natures, the cheaters (the win at all cost team members) and can identify those who just aren’t podcast fans.

This week why not consider using these or tweaking to work within your business. 

Thanks for reading and have a great week. 

Danny Denhard

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Leaders Letter Newsletter

Leaders Letter 87 – Learning Experiences

Learning Experiences - Leaders Letter 87

Dear Leaders, this week letter is a chance to rethink a few situations to take forward with new meanings.

A few years ago I was introduced to the founder of a successful growing business. 

It was an in-person meeting, after a number of emails were exchanged the founder asked me to come into their office and meet in person.  

No need for a pitch or a presentation, it was a discussion around specifics and where we could partner.

The meeting started well and then there was a statement that changed the direction of the conversation: 

“I just don’t believe in Marketing”. 

At that time they’d ask me to come in and pitch an interim solution to set their business up for success via growth channels and expanding their footprint. 

I believe in tests and seeing reactions, it gives you a barometer of how they might react in a crisis or if something happens unexpectedly. But this was slightly different, the tone was off, the energy changed. 

I used to work for someone who regularly ran unsophisticated social experiments based on the things he said and the way he said them and would see how people reacted to them. 

The founder continued: 

“I think it’s a huge waste of money, platforms will take a huge cut, the leads will be low quality and it’s a price wars”. 

For me, this wasn’t something I expected a founder of a successful business to say especially when they had asked me in to help grow their business, with a focus of a Marketing and Pricing lens. 

One major issue with the statement and the tone, how they grew was through Marketing; their fleet on the road, they were smart enough to have a website that redirected so they knew the lead source and they had a dedicated phone number that was logged as the lead source. Word of mouth was also a big driver of their business, despite not tracking it properly, in essence, it was a bias that the founder had against Marketing that never had the right set-up (which is common and still happens across all business sizes). 

In life, we are tested every single day, sometimes by the small and insignificant, and then other days huge test, in many situations it is how you react and how you learn and grow from this. 

The lesson at the time to me seemed to be; never work with someone like this, however, actually, in hindsight, it was learning that someone’s bias and wanting to prove they were right was hindering their success and their business. 

Sometimes we are all blinded by a bias or a belief we cannot see or cannot shake. 

This week, learn to write a list of learning experiences and consider how you might revisit or reconsider if there was a different learning opportunity. 

Have a great week.

Thanks,

Danny Denhard

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Leaders Letter Newsletter

Leaders Letter 76 – Time To Rethink Training Budgets?

Time To Rethink Training Budgets? Leaders Letter

Is It Time To Rethink The Way You Are Spending Your Training Budgets?

Dear leaders, for years we have accepted staff going on many different forms of courses as acceptable ways of spending training budgets. 

We have to trust our people to make the right decisions for their training.

Over the last decade, we have seen the majority of people move their training budget to attend conferences. 

We trust they have learnt and rarely do we get to see the direct results from this. 


There are many conferences that make sense for individuals, there are many which are geared towards networking, this is not wrong but is this really going to improve your people and their performance? Maybe… 

Attending conferences at the early stage of my career, I created a set of success criteria that really did help me to find those talks that added value, the why and the how were my criteria, if it wasn’t a talk with the why they did it and the how they did it specifically I would feel short-changed and ultimately added no value to me or the attendance price.
Mid to this point in my career, the majority of conferences are now designed to be big brand logos to attract the audience, big brand logo presents a big case study, the sticking point; they can rarely go into the why or the how, it’s the what and if you’re lucky some numbers that have been signed off to use. 

Over the last seven years and leading departments, I have encouraged people to find courses (and/or conferences) that will help them to develop, I like fundamental training, the courses that teach a core set of frameworks and skills. 

Most big businesses set out a training budget and you get to go wild on LinkedIn courses or equivalent online software. 

There were two outstanding team members who took traditional project training and they tremendously benefited from this, just because agile and waterfall is in vogue, this doesn’t mean structure and operational excellence will ever go out of fashion, particularly in larger organisations that need operating excellence. Most mid-level employees will understand more agile methods, it is because they have lived it and have to operate in it because another person has said it is best. 

Another example is signing off a senior Marketers request to have formal financial training. Why? Budget management and understanding how finances flow-through businesses is a core skill everyone should learn. Hint most team members just never understand why headcount is often shuffled or removed and it’s driven by the CFO or CEO. 

2022 for most will be from ‘survive to thrive’, it will be about seeing the bigger picture again and delivering excellence alongside learning core skills. 

The training many actually required is a coach, most specifically a performance coach. Someone to help shape their career, help to shape thinking and importantly sharpen skills, it won’t be attending how big brand x did big campaign y through spending z millions of dollars – you will be able to reverse engineer or hear the same story on podcasts. 

I predict many c-suite execs will need formal coaches, more than just the CEO or the COO. Formal and professional coaches who drive the business forward. Like Bill Campbell with execs from Apple, Google and so many other firms.


A c-suite example: A formal CMO coach to help reshape their knowledge and drive their organisations forward and be able to understand the 2 critical P’s, their people (culture) and their performance (strategy –  Focus) and then enable performance coaching underneath them. 

Your team’s training budget should be the best ROI within the business, it will likely be the best ROAS for staff retention and staff development helping them to attract better candidates in the process. One important tip, the more people learn from coaches, the more you should encourage a coaching loop. 

Have a good week thinking about how you can repoint and restructure your training budget and how potentially it becomes a coaching budget. 

Thanks,

Danny Denhard

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