How much time, money, energy, etc. do you waste by solving the wrong problems ? What if you could get better at solving the right problems ? What's your Problem by Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg is one of the best books I have read on the subject of solving problems. He asserts, that it is critical that we pay attention to how we frame problems. If we misframe problems, we may be at risk of coming up with a solution to the wrong problem (i.e. a wrong solution) and wasting tremendous amount of time, money and energy or even worst, creating additional problems that may be even tougher to solve later on. The way you frame a problem determines which solutions you come up with.  By shifting the way you see the problem - that is, by reframing it - you can sometimes find radically better solutions. A personal example  I remember when our son started kind...

What tools do you use to create quick sketches of ideas? How do you co-create with others in a visually engaging way? How do you balance traditional text based expression with visual thinking?  I have a whiteboard in my office. I can feel the energy level of any meeting increase when someone stands up, takes the pen, and starts explaining his/her idea at the whiteboard. Collaborating around a whiteboard always unleashes creativity. Home office, virtual working and social distancing have made this experience somewhat more challenging to achieve. The other problem with the whiteboard in my office is it has to be cleaned. Yes, I take pictures before wiping it, however the next time we want to continue the same discussion, our drawing is gone. I would need a larger office and more whiteboards to keep track of all the different discussions that happen around my board. I love visual thinking tools and have always been a mind map junky. Over the years I have used Freem...

The objective of this post is to introduce the concept of lateral thinking and to share four simple and fun exercises for creative thinking. The post is based on Edward De Bono's work.  The lateral thinking model is based on his book The Mechanism of Mind: Understand how your mind works to maximise memory and creative potential , and  The four exercises are based on How to Have Creative Ideas: 62 Exercises to Develop the Mind . How thinking patterns are formed Imagine a bed of nails, except that instead of nails we use pins with blunt heads and we lay a thin plastic film on the heads covering the entire bed. Now imagine that we spray water on this surface. As you can imagine, because the film is laid on the pins loosely, water will start to collect in puddles. The puddles will form in arbitrary locations largely depending on luck. It is not hard to see, that the next time we spray water on the surface it will gravitate towards the existing puddles, making those larger....

Photo by  Lukas  from  Pexels Being effective at work is like a martial art . The difference between the novice and the master is often not the actual moves, nor the detailed sequence of their execution, but the efficiency, elegance, precision, and speed of delivery. There is no silver bullet , just radical common sense and a persistent drive to improve. It is also true, that the same outcome may be achieved more elegantly with a different set or sequence of steps. Take for example typing. If you use two fingers, you may spend years practicing and perfecting your technique, however you will likely never achieve the same level of speed and perfection as if you had learned to type with ten fingers, and had spent your time perfecting those moves. For most of my career I have worked in large matrix organizations. I have read and learned about work. I was trained. I have picked up best practices from colleagues. In this post I lay out a summary of some of the key patterns...

Photo by  Frank Cone  from  Pexels “As I considered the importance of language and how human beings interact with the world, it struck me that in many ways the development of language was like the discovery of fire — it was such an incredible primordial force. I had always thought that we used language to  describe  the world — now I was seeing that this is not the case. To the contrary, it is through language that we  create  the world, because it's nothing until we describe it. And when we describe it, we create distinctions that govern our actions. To put it another way, we do not describe the world we see, but we see the world we describe .” Joseph Jaworski I read about this concept in one of Edward de Bono’s books, but when I was looking for it now, I couldn’t find in which one. I first came across this thought 20 years ago. This has profoundly shaped the way I see the world. I hope it will inspire...

Photo by  Markus Spiske  from  Pexels Three Sentences - a disciplined way to deal with email Source: http://three.sentenc.es/ The Problem:  E-mail takes too long to respond to, resulting in continuous inbox overflow for those who receive a lot. The Solution:  Treat all email responses like SMS text messages or Tweets, using a set number of letters per response. Since it’s too hard to count letters, count sentences instead. Three Sentences is a personal policy that all email responses regardless of recipient or subject will be three sentences or fewer. It’s that simple. Photo by  Anna Tarazevich  from  Pexels Advice hack - ask the Master In a high stakes situation, when the other party is a master at his / her game. e.g. when selling your used car to a dealer.  Ask for advice from the master as to answer his/her own question. Salesman: "What is your asking price?" You: "You are ...

How efficient is your workflow for keeping on top of all your meeting notes, action items, contacts, projects and more?  If you were to bump into someone unexpectedly would you be able to remind yourself of all the relevant topics you wanted to discuss with the person?  Can you remember all the things you wanted to get done when running your errands?  Can you keep track of your discussions with all the people you talk to regularly? In this post I will walk you through my meetings-actions-people workflow in Roam. If you are new to Roam and Roam42... Just in case you are not familiar with Roam , it is an ultra flexible note taking tool. It's like the Excel for text. If you want to find out more, there is tremendous amount of quality content available on YouTube, just search from "Roam Research". Equally, you can head over to RoamBrain.com for all the best links and more. My workf...