WELCOME TO OUR NEW OSW CERTIFIED TRAINERS

We are delighted to welcome Meghan Barnett from RIM, Michael Ferrabee of the Canada School of Public Service, Arlene Herman consultant , Joan Giannone – President of the Mentor Group Training Inc, Nick Kenyeres – President, The Technology Coach Inc and Lisa Wiley from Georgian College – as newly certified OSW trainers. They were joined by Jay Lundy, President Spark Innovation (aka Vitamin J) Jennifer Shram – George Brown College, Jen Holden – The Holden Group, Mandy St Germaine and Lisa Wiele from the OneSmartWorld team at the Boulevard Club.

FINDING YOUR NICK

One of the things I have learned after almost 40 years in business is how to shut up and listen to what others have to offer. These days we are inundated by the tyranny of the loud – loud people dominating conversations and telling everyone around what they believe, think and feel. By taking up most the the airtime and relentlessly focusing on themselves, a lot of smart people go unnoticed and their intelligence untapped. My new friend Nick Kenyeres is a quiet green guy who has a remarkable wealth of knowledge on all things technological. He continually comes up with cool solutions to our complex ( to me that is) technology problems. The Nicks are out there and all around us. But in this current climate of the loud – all that proclaiming and pronouncing - we lose out and we never even know what we missed. So – the more we listen and the more we turn the conversation to the other by asking a few good open ended questions and then really listen instead of re-loading and interrupting, the more we can learn from and gain from the Nicks. The Nicks are out there – ready to contribute and make a positive difference. I am lucky to find my Nick. Thank you Nick! I hope you can find yours to and be the nick to someone else.

THE GO TO MARKET CONSULTATION WITH GEORGE BROWN COLLEGE CONSULTING TEAM AND OSW AFFILIATES

We are currently engaged in a Go To Market project with a wonderful team of four George Brown College business and marketing students, Scott Carruthers, Michael Fiorino, Jeffrey Ribeiro and Jennifer Schram under the tutelage of my Nick – Nick  Kenyeres –(he is everywhere!). On Friday, March 4, we had an interim report to help us make strategic decisions on our business design. We ran a smart meeting with the student team and were joined by three of our OSW affiliates Joan Giannone, Jen Holden, Jay Lundy and our OSW home team of Ron Percy, Mandy St Germaine, Lisa Wiele and Bob Wiele. The goal was to help us tap into their brain power to re-design our business model and to work out a global go-to-market strategy. The George Brown College consulting team did a terrific job of laying out what they learned from speaking with our clients – work on sustainability and improve member support – and presented 14 factors to base the decision-making on the business design as well as 5 types of models to choose from. 

I had the privilege to be with over 250 sport coaches and both participate and speak at the 2011 Coaches Conference in London Ontario. Sport coaches are highly motivated, deeply committed and skilful people who are in the business of developing high performance athletes while developing them into great people through sport. It was a delight to ,see my old friend, Peter Jensen, in good form and inspiring us all by sharing his wealth of experience from coaching Olympic athletes for the past 25 years.

Here are 11 things I learned from being there that fits with our work to help people make positive change in their lives, relationships and results.

1. Inspire not tire. It’s great to be around people who are serious about helping others develop – the more time I spend with sport coaches, the more inspiring it is and the more I can learn about what it takes to really develop people – focus, commitment, perspective and deep technical knowledge applied to progressive stages of learning. FI need to find more people who inspire not tire me.
2. Focus on the process not the outcome – getting better is all about focusing on what you do and how you do it. That is what great coaches focus on, not the outcome. Do the former really well and the outcomes will take care of themselves.
3. In setting goals, always choose goals that focus on getting better than being good. Getting better goals focus on using every experience to get better versus confirming how good you already are. Getting better goals focus learning – failure is an option and a key to learning from experience and to getting better. Being good goals focus on confirming – failure is not an option because it confirms that you are not good, therefore you choose not to push yourself.
4. Give feedback fast, accurately and deliberately.  The best feedback is short, focused and instructive. It is based on what you see, feel and hear, not what you think happened. The sooner the better and the more rich in information on how to get better, the better it is.
5. There are 4 keys to getting better: deliberate practice, deliberate programming, diversification of approaches and alternate pathways. These four streams reinforce each other over time. There are no overnight champions in sport or in life. Getting better and getting great takes a long time and is full of ups and downs along the way. One estimate is that the woman who wins an Olympic Gold Medal in figure skating has likely fallen hard on her butt on a cold hard surface approximately 20,000 times. That is what it takes and great coaches use a variety of these four keys to get the athlete to the highest levels.
6. Deliberate practice is a structured approach to getting better. It is focused on learning specific elements of skills, over time, by trying things out and getting rapid corrective feedback to improve the way you execute. Learning happens by repetition, fast focused feedback, refinements and repetition.
7. Deliberate programming initially focuses on building strengths then shifts to expanding skills . However to become a high performer, it is vital to develop skills in all aspects of the performance – not simply the ones you like and are good at. Beware of falling into the ‘strengths based’ trap – I only do what I am good at and what I like to do. This is a recipe for stalling out. Think of a baseball player – you have to be able to catch, throw, hit and run. In our work, the smartest people are those that take time to  build their skills in becoming creative, more understanding, better decision-makers and build out their personal spirit. Yes and to become a high performer, one needs to use deliberate practice and a step by step progression to get better in the other skills you will need to succeed.
8. Keep your kids from specializing in one sport too soon.

One key is to ensure your kids engage in as many different activities as possible, especially early on. All of these different activities help build a physical, emotional and cognitive base of skills and experiences that transfer from one sport to another and to life. Get a balance between fun and hard training; play and competition. All work and no play lead to burned out kids who walk away from the sport

9. The journey changes from fun to hard work. The path to high performance is usually based on shifting from extrinsic rewards to intrinsic motivation – getting better and achieving mastery.
10. Over time, understanding deepens and expands and the focus shifts to subtle adjustments and fine-tuning. The benefit of selecting one activity to get better and succeed at is that you fine tune understanding and refine skills at increasingly more subtle, difference making levels. Small changes can make a significant impact at the highest levels.
11. Use the platinum rule to coach from. the only person who controls change is the other person who is performing. Get better at shifting your approach to fit who they are and give them what they need. Get out of your mind and get into theirs to help them grow. If they are in yellow, give them the information, step-by-step guidelines and compassion they need. If red, cut to the chase and tell them what to do. If green , go with what they are thinking and don’t cut them off or dismiss them. And always, always help them take responsibility for building their resilience and persona spirit.

 A recent article in Organization Science magazine has highlighted the importance of group social skills as a key success factor in high performing teams. Susan Pinker’s article in the February 21 Globe and Mail- Why Smart People Don’t Necessarily Make Smart Groups   - highlighted the finding from the research. The smartest groups were composed of people who were smart in different ways from the old IQ version of smart. The best groups had members who used skills that engaged the intelligence of the other members to produce the best results. The three key factors to success were: the overall social sensitivity of the groups members to tune in to each other; the degree of engagement of each other by turning the conversation from one member to another – versus a focus on self and the number of women in the group.

The author, Dr. Anita Wooley, professor of organizational behavior at Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business , described a phenomenon that I have seen over the years that she has called collective intelligence - where the collective brainpower of the group members, working in harmony over time, co-produce higher quality results that emerge from the collaborative problem solving process.

“ It’s about the people and the tools that will enhance collective intelligence. “ she stated. 

I look forward to connecting with Dr. Wooley. Our Smarter Meetings system was designed to help groups shift into the performing stage more quickly and consistently. We designed it to deliver simple tools to get people onto the same page and working together more effectively by following a disciplined process to tap into the total intelligence of the members and of the group. It is built on a process of high engagement and respect for individual contributions as part of the way of getting to outcomes. This is exciting and important work that is mirrors some of the finding of Marcial Losada that show success is dependent on how people talk to each other – positive, affirming and open versus negative; , questioning each other to deepen understanding vs. taking stances and group vs. self focused contributions – all three the keys to accelerating collaboration and improving the quality of business solutions.

Check out the article by Susan Pinkers - http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/managing/susan-pinker/why-smart-people-dont-necessarily-make-smart-groups/article1915600/

On March 8-9, 2011, Debora Rothermel, OneSmartWorld master trainer and President of ideaworks in Calgary, is leading a two day Smart Thinking executive development program at the Sauder School of Business in Vancouver.  The program is based on the use of the 4D-i to develop thinking skills in the four dimensions of total intelligence – creativity, understanding, decision-making and personal spirit.

In Edmonton, February 16-17, 2011 we welcomed the following people into the ranks of OSW certified associates:

Karen Carleton, President, Kaizen Instructional and Performance Consulting

Pam Clarke, Faculty Professional Development Animateur Red Deer College

Jay Lundy, CEO, Spark Innovation

Victoria Neary,  Assistant Manager, Business Operations, Defence Construction Canada

Shelby Primmett, Coordinator, Workplace Education Manitoba

Elizabeth Surridge, Supervisor and Facilitator, Home Learning Connections

We are excited to launch our collaborative relationship with each of our new associates and are looking forward to creating a smarter world together.

Being a witness to the historical transformative change going on the Arab world, I want to pay tribute to the human spirit and dignity shown by the Egyptian people over the past three weeks of wrenching drama. Through their sheer belief in themselves and the rightness of their cause, they ousted a tyrannical dictator who had terrorized them and patronized his people for 30 years. It has been a deeply moving experience to witness the triumph of the human spirit.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste. This is at the core of the work we do at OneSmartWorld. We believe in the basic human goodness that was on display everyday in the streets of Cairo. Under extremely difficult conditions, people of different ages, religions, economic backgrounds joined together in a common cause of wanting a better life for themselves and their fellow citizens. They finally refused to be put in a position to waste their intelligence or park their feelings of self worth any more. This was never about religion or resisting outside influences. It was about a compelling and emergent drive for a people wanting a better life and finally arriving at a tipping point in a courageous refusal to bow down any longer. I was astonished when Mubarak gave his speech on Thursday night. Seeing the defiance, the pride and the raw courage and commitment of the Egyptian people, a better man than he would have wept in awe for the promise his country now has going forward. The people of Egypt exhibited a powerful spirit in their unyielding resolve. Tyrants everywhere beware.

In a small way, the work we are doing at OneSmartWorld is all premised on helping people, teams and enterprises build their own better, smarter world. I developed OneSmartWorld because I believe that we need 21^st century tools to help us all figure things out. We built a universal common language to help people achieve a better mutual understanding and as a way to tap into the total intelligence that is always latent in groups and teams. I do believe that all of us are smarter than any one of us. The 21^st century leader knows that too and works hard to understand and release the minds, hearts and spirit of their people to build solutions. Our 21^st century tools are designed to enable people to think better and work smarter together. The 4D-i , our approach to smarter meetings and our RIP IT/Rapid Innovation Program are all about helping people to tap into and harness  their own minds and hearts and the collective intelligence of the people they work with to make positive change.

There will be tough times ahead in Egypt. The end of the beginning. Democracy is messy but is built on the values we believe in. The people of Egypt adapted to the events and found ways to reinforce each other and collaborate after 30 years of intimidation. The Egyptian military had a dignity and a commitment to their own people, that was absent in places like Burma, Iran, China, and even in Toronto at the recent G20. In the chaos and uncertainty of the past 10 days, President Obama was a clear beacon for positive change. He exhibited his own values-driven leadership. He was not afraid to stand up for what was the right thing to do for the people of Egypt in their moment of crisis. He trusted them to come through and they did. We need more people in leadership roles to stand up for the greater good.

The 21^st century is an intelligence economy. It will no longer be about how much you know, like the 20^th century knowledge economy, but more about how well you can think, how well you can problem solve and how well you can collaborate with others. Given the inequities that exist in our societies, education for all ages is crucial for giving everyone a shot at success. Learning will be the real work as Michael Fullan so ably describes. Education must now deliver the skills kids need to give them a chance to compete in the 21^st century intelligence economy, to find work and craft a decent life. But the education they need is not in textbooks and ‘subjects’ alone. It is in the skills of critical thinking, in creative thinking, in analysis, in problem solving skills, in appreciating others who are different from us and learning how to work collaboratively in teams. How we transform education will be a critical success factor in our social evolution.

The Egyptian people now face a phenomenal learning challenge – learning how to build and live in a democracy. They deserve all our support.  It won’t be easy, but learning anything of value never is. We are all on the same path to find ways to build a smarter, better world. We will all need to tap into our total intelligence to make that happen together.

Permanent markers are not supposed to be used on white boards. Among other things they contain nasty sounding compounds like xylene and toluene that make them particularly adhesive and tough to remove. When used on surfaces like cardboard boxes or cd’s they’re great for labeling. If used on whiteboards they’re a particularly big problem. In preparation for a meeting yesterday I went to erase the whiteboard in our office’s conference room but found that the marker had stuck. The culprit was a light green sharpie yielded unknowingly by a well-meaning diagrammer whose mind-maps and flow-charts were now indelibly marked upon the board’s white surface.

Cue scrubbing.

Cue chemicals.

Cue Windex, vinegar, and bleach.

Cue frustration.

Within minutes there were four people on the case – drawn into the room by the commotion. Everyone had a different suggestion, everyone wanted to help. We looked to Wikipedia for direction and a chemical understanding of the problem. Permanent markers, we read, contain compounds that are resistant to chemical solvents and stubborn against wear. Somewhat ironically dry-erase markers, which contain acetone, can remove persistent indelible ink. We tried this to no avail. Either the permanent marker was too strong, or the dry erase too weak. The whiteboard stayed marked. What about hot water, someone suggested? How ‘bout a lemon? Steel-wool? A priest? Soon there were five people in the room surrounded by the remnants of more seven failed marker-removal strategies and there was no less marker on the board than before. Sometimes two-heads are not better than one. Neither are four, or even five.

It made me thing about how sometimes if you don’t have the right tools, all the intelligence and co-operation in the world won’t get you any closer to solving your problem. Tools, information, and intelligence are all important. Information helps people to generate ideas and make good decisions. The right tools allow people to channel their intelligence, and genuine desire to help, in the right direction. They can also act as a lever – by multiplying the applied force of people’s brainpower.

The thing that worked in the end was a Magic Eraser. Its an ingenious product that uses a substance called melamine foam to clean otherwise uncleanable surfaces. Long used in insulation and soundproofing, melamine foam was also discovered to have handy cleaning properties and acts like a very fine sandpaper on all kinds of surfaces. Once we all started scrubbing with Magic Erasers the whiteboard was quickly made clean and soon we all stood back to admire our work – fresh, clean, and white again. The problem, as it so often is in other aspects of work-life, is not a lack of interest, intelligence, skills, or enthusiasm – but an inability to effectively channel and capitalize on the potential abilities of employees. Whether scrubbing or brainstorming, the right tools can allow people to apply their abilities in a way which maximizes output and guarantees success. Like Magic Erasers, management tools like the Smart Agenda Manager help people to structure and synchronize their efforts in way which is more efficient and effective. It not just how much you scrub, but how you scrub. Technique matters. Its not magic, its just SMART.

By Daniel St. Germaine 

I recently read an article about meetings and the importance of “dissent” and disagreement within them (http://www.thestrategyweb.com/meetings-and-the-importance-of-dissent) for the overall success and productivity of the meeting. One of the points the article’s author made was that meetings are often unsuccessful and unproductive because they seem to create a dynamic that is perfectly opposed to the very purpose of meeting at all – that is to say, meetings encourage agreement, conformity, and reaffirmation of the status quo as opposed to challenging current practices, inviting debate, criticism, or fresh thinking. Meetings tend to reaffirm things we already know and to avoid the trickiest (and often the most important) issues because they spark disagreement and discord that is felt to be at odds with workplace harmony and the usual pecking order. Company superiors introduce ideas or pose questions to subordinates who, out of either respect or a desire to keep their jobs, agree – or at least do not disagree. Bound by norms of social grace, a desire for workplace cohesion, awareness of heirarchies, and aversion to conflict, intelligent employees waste time and money in meetings that do little to alter or redirect the status quo. 

This is a broad generalization no doubt, but its easy to see in action. Its also interesting to consider because management strategies and systems often focus on creating group cohesion. We often associate a lack of conflict with an abundance of understanding. Or the absence of dissent with the presence of agreement. Not so necessarily. While we may feel particularly enlightened because we all get along, it is more likely that we have yet to evolve to a higher state of organizational intelligence. How do you disagree without upsetting the peace?

Martin Meyer-Gossner, the author of the article linked above, suggests meeting leaders engage employees via social media such as blogs prior to the meeting as a way of generating ideas in an “input-first” strategy. People can give their thoughts and input on certain topics prior to the meeting when their ideas will be less affected by group harmony. He also explains that web-based discussions can help shorten meetings by serving as checklists. OneSmartWorld’s Smart Agenda Manager functions similarly by designating time for different styles of thinking – idea generation, information sharing, and decision making. Systems like the Smart Agenda Manager are easily be integrated with an “input-first” strategy by using the agenda’s time slots to reflect and build upon the information already gathered on the web.

The culture of business and meetings is changing as social mores, paradigms, and values change too. Social harmony was once tantamount and the pecking order carved in marble. Today, a more pluralist sun is rising. Related shifts are happening within corporate culture and even meetings. The fresh thinking is that its not important that we are all the same – there are different ways to be smart or good. It is important that we have a strategy for working together, even if it does involve the occasional disagreement. These disagreements often provoke the greatest innovation and just might be the key to success.

By Daniel St. Germaine

In preparation for a number of training sessions OneSmartWorld will be delivering in December, I found myself assigned the task of booking a meeting room for the two day event. The brief was simple: find and secure a meeting room at an appropriate venue that would be within budget and could accommodate ten to fifteen people on a specific date. Booking meeting rooms is a pretty routine task and is usually just a matter of getting a few details right. It’s not usually considered to be a highly collaborative or complicated task. Nonetheless my experience this week has underlined how even the most humdrum of duties can be challenging when people with different operating styles, and preferences for working come together on a single task.

Booking a meeting room is a lot like a meeting itself. There are goals, various options, solutions, constraints, and requirements. There are also similar opportunities for creative thinking (“Why don’t we have the session in my friend’s gallery space?”) and analysis (“That space didn’t work well for the last session, what about…”). There can also be many of the same challenges as there are in meetings. While one person is trying to offer an alternative possibility, another might be trying to hammer down a conclusion. Just like with meetings, the trick to is to do the same action at the same time.

After speaking with representatives from several organizations I was struck by how many different styles there are for approaching the same task. Some people just wanted to hear the facts, tell me the price, and hear me say yes or no. Others were very interested in hearing about what the room was going to be used for, if we would need internet access, and what table configuration I preferred. Different still were those people who didn’t have a space available at all, but suggested a number of other options.

These different approaches are likely reflective of these particular people’s preferred operating styles, as well as the rules and character of the organizations they work for. It made me think about how you don’t have to be IN a meeting to experience some of the same challenges they bring out. There are many situations in which we are required to cooperate with others in order to gather information, make decisions, and secure the best possible outcome. While it may not be realistic to expect everyone to be able to communicate with the OneSmartWorld common language of colour, an awareness of different preferences and operating styles goes a long way. The best solutions will ultimately be found when operating styles are respected, combined, and each given a turn. 

I found the perfect meeting room this afternoon. I chose it for the view.

By Daniel St. Germaine

The field of study into the so called “Generational Collide” happening in the modern workplace is expanding by the day. A quick Google search shows that there is a growing interest and concern about the outcome of having employees from four different generations working together in many workplaces. Its a relatively recent phenomenon and it is not fully understood and indeed many academics, authors, and professionals from around the world make their living speaking, writing, researching this issue.

The basic logic goes like this: Generations are defined by a period of time (usually about 30 years) as well as major events that happen in people’s lifetimes. Events like The Great Depression, 9/11, the invention of the personal computer, or the moon landing define generations and contribute to a shared set of experiences, values, and beliefs. Since different generations are exposed to different events and circumstances, it follows that they would hold values and beliefs that are unlike those of other generations. The core principles held by each generation can be expressed in powerful ways and come out in all aspects of social life - especially careers. When it comes to working, different generations may hold highly divergent sets of values, and opinions. While the pre-war generation tends to hold values such as loyalty and hard work and wisdom of experience over technical knowledge, their offspring, the Baby-Boomers are known for being more accepting of stress and being quite non-conformist. Different still are the Gen-X’ers who are generally willing to work within the system and are more comfortable with technology. Although the core principles of each generation are somewhat different, this is not to say they are mutually exclusive or incompatible - its more likely a matter of emphasis or degree.

The theory of Generational Collide wraps up with the a reference to workforce demographics and a prophesy of difficulties to come: People are living longer and working to an older age. There is also a narrowing gap between generations and people often re-enter the workforce after reaching the usual age for retirement. This means that we have people from four different generations all working together at the same time as opposed to before where there was a more clear division by age. The question is how to manage employees of different generational orientations and help them to work together effectively and successfully?

There is a lot of material written on the subject and much of it points to the increasingly important role that human resources management will play in the recruiting, retention, training, and leadership of employees. Academics such as Linda Duxbury (http://www.sprott.carleton.ca/faculty_and_research/lduxbury.html) call for an approach to employee management that is sensitive to the difference in values and perspectives of its employees, enables autonomy and independence, and which seeks effective strategies for communication among employees, organizational units, and generations. 

The theory of Generational Collide is valuable because it calls attention to a dimension of experience that is key to understanding why some people like to do things one way as opposed to another. The reason may not be a lack of experience, knowledge, or skill - but a different emphasis on one value over another (for example lets do it thoroughly vs lets do it quickly). When employees gather around a meeting table they are asked to consider the same set of issues, but may be coming at them from very different directions. As anyone who has ever attended a meeting can attest, differences in approaches can cause problem-solving or decision-making processes to shut down. Even being aware of the differences in generationally-derived preferences at the table can help foster effective communication and meeting success. 

The problem with the theory of Generational Collide is that it presupposes the inevitability of clashes between generations and emphasizes the innate differences between people of different age brackets. A solution may be to regard the differences of generations as an opportunity for multiple perspectives on a single issue enabled by a common language that is not hierarchical, nor derived from unchangeable attributes such as age. Anyone can learn to be thorough, or decisive. Anyone can learn to brainstorm, and be analytical. No business is likely to succeed just being any ONE of these things. Similarly, individuals who can learn to adopt different thinking styles - even if only temporarily - will be more successful as well. Meetings can be a great opportunity for people to pool their knowledge, experience, and skills - but only if the contributors are willing to consider other perspectives or methods, and occasionally say, “Hey, I hadn’t thought of it like that!”.

- Daniel St. Germaine

If you are a business professional you more than likely have attended a wide variety of business related meetings and events and I expect you will have many of the same observances that I have listed below, so please feel free to share.

If you want to bore your audiences and ensure a minimum retention of program content at your next meeting please consider the following…

1.) Cram as much content into the meeting as possible. Limit breaks and social opportunities and be sure to cover everything in the limited amount of time a meeting lasts.

2.) Never change your presenters, trainers or facilitators from meeting to meeting. Once you have people who your audience likes, never offer professionals with different perspectives or presentation styles as they might not be received well by your group.

3.) Don’t take risks. If your venue contact, meeting planner or meeting content professional offers some unique but different ideas it is always best to state “our group won’t go for that.”

4.) Consider meeting rooms with no windows or access to outside as the outdoors is just a potential big distraction to the learning process.

5.) Never consider adding an interactive experience or networking opportunity that might reinforce the learning from the meeting itself. Nobody likes to have a little fun when they get together at a meeting and certainly if people are having fun they cannot be learning as well.

6.) Always try to top the last meeting. Don’t worry about cost or that the last meeting was very productive, just focus on making this one bigger and showier.

7.) Never involve participants in the learning process at a meeting. Stay with the traditional “data dump” from speaker to audience as who knows what the audience might say, contribute or do during a presentation or workshop.

8.) Stay away from technology. Technology is scary and not everyone is familiar with the newest trends, applications and gadgets. And certainly there is not enough time or budget to offer “tech” training or rentals as needed.

9.) Don’t mix up your meeting guests so they have opportunities to meet others at the meeting. Let people stay in cliques as they will be more comfortable and enjoy the meeting more.

10.) When planning a meeting only consider the ideas of top management. Don’t bother to survey your audience as top management certainly knows best what the meeting content and design should be.

Original posting found at: http://www.corpevent.com/blog/?p=425

OneSmartWorld Launches Smarter Meetings.com! We are delighted to announce that after 2 years of research and development, we have launched SmarterMeetings.com, our complete online meeting productivity solution for progressive team leaders and project managers everywhere (www.smartermeetings.com). This is the program WestJet used to achieve a 558% ROI/return on investment. SmarterMeetings.com gives progressive managers a complete set of tools to engage people to get great results from meetings and to get more done in less time. The tool kit includes a set of online video tutorials and a PowerPoint show to use with your team to explain how the Smarter Meetings system works, a PDF of Bob Wiele’s book, Smarter Meetings, handouts for your team to use in the meeting and most importantly your online Smart Agenda Manager to use as often as you want to plan all your conversations and meetings – all for $99.95 for 2 years.

Where SmarterMeetings.com is being used right now:

NCSPOD: North American Council for Staff, Program and Organization Development Conference – On October 27, 2010 Bob Wiele will present two workshops – Thinking and Working in 4D-i: It’s Not Just How Smart You Are, It’s How You are Smart and Smarter Meetings: The Death of Bad Meetings Everywhere! to delegates from around the world at the upcoming NCSPOD annual conference in Vancouver (www.ncspod.org). NCSPOD is the forum for internal organizational change and staff development for leaders in community colleges.

CSTD November 2010: At the annual Canadian Society for Training and Development Conference in Toronto in November, Pam August from WestJet and Bob Wiele, OneSmartWorld are presenting: Flying Smarter - How WestJet Achieved a 558% ROI/Return on Investment Using Smarter Meetings. www.cstd.ca The workshop will engage participants in learning practical ways organizations can increase productivity, save time and money using a common language in a meeting management system. www.cstd.ca - see Research/Investing in People project The

Canadian Cancer Society and Smarter Meetings – on October 1, 2010, under the inspired leadership of Dan Holinda, Executive Director of the Alberta and NWT Division of the CCS, OneSmartWorld launched a two year site license partnership for Smarter Meetings for all the volunteer leaders and professional staff administrators of the national organization and a five year license for the Alberta/NWT Division. GESCAN Team Building and Strategic Planning – Deborah Rothermel, our colleague at Ideaworks www.ideaworks.ca in Calgary will be facilitating a team building and strategic planning workshop with the Canadian leadership team of Gescan, the Canadian division of Sonapar, the world’s leader in the distribution of electrical equipment.

OneSmartWorld Certification Program in Vancouver, October 25-26, 2010. Bob Wiele is leading this program with participants coming from a number of organizations including the Alberta School Boards Association, the government of British Columbia, North Island College, the Boys and Girls Club of Central Vancouver Island, BC based school board administrators, the Texas Education Agency as well independent consultants including Peter Norman, Gail Donohue, Gary Young and Vince Batistelli.

The Centre for Aboriginal Human Resource Development – David Church, our colleague in Winnipeg is leading a 3 month program to prepare students for career and vocational success. The program is based on soft skills, math and computer training. David uses the 4D-i to help students develop their thinking skills, improve problem solving and decision-making, set 30 day personal development goals, address obstacles and complete daily journals to track their progress.

The MIX M Prize –OneSmartWorld team put in their submission for the M Prize, based on the new OSW meetings productivity system, Smarter Meetings (www.smartermeetings.com) Gary Hamel’s Management Innovation Exchange is a place where maverick management thinkers from around the world meet online to discuss ideas and practices on how management can change to meet the needs of today’s fast-paced organizations. The M-Prize submission was based on smarter meetings as a true management innovation. You can check out the submission by going to www.managementexchange.com and search for Bob Wiele. Make your comments on any of the interesting submissions you find there.

Red River College Student Association – David Church of Wildwood Consulting is using the OSW platform to do team building and planning work with the student association leadership team at Winnipeg’s Red River College.

Dalhousie University Corporate Residency MBA Program - Scott Comber PhD, program director, selected the 4D-i as the assessment for learning system, to build out the critical 21st century skills in thinking, problem solving and collaborative teamwork for students in the new Corporate Residency MBA program, the only MBA program of its kind in Canada. This MBA focuses on leadership development and intensive on the job skill development through corporate internships.

Alberta School Boards Association. The Alberta School Boards Association has selected the OneSmartWorld 4D-i as the team orientation and team-building platform for newly elected school trustees. The 4D-i was chosen because it delivers a simple to use common language for building relationships and appreciation of differences as well as enabling better problem solving and decision-making. Jim Gibbons and Terry Gunderson will be leading the orientation and board training workshops.

George Brown College – Canada’s largest downtown college in Toronto, has chosen the OneSmartWorld’s SmartSkills solutions to pilot with their students to learn collaborative teamwork skills for success in group projects and in the 21st century workplace. Horace Patterson Foundation – Working with our colleague David Church of Wildwood Consulting, OneSmartWorld recently donated the SmartSkills 4D-i personal and professional development licenses to the 15 outstanding youth leaders selected as scholarship recipients by Winnipeg based Horace Patterson Foundation www.horacepatterson.ca

Switch Marketing Alliance – Switch Marketing, a leading web video animation firm in North America and OSW recently formed a strategic alliance to work together to support each other’s objectives www.switchmarketing.com . OSW is providing online solutions, team building and planning services in exchange for the production of web videos for OSW.

Youth Leadership Development Gift to the Boys and Girls Club of Central Vancouver Island - we strongly support youth leadership development. OneSmartWorld recently donated 120 4D-i licenses for board and youth leadership development to this club. Ian Kalina, Executive Director and Jen Holden, Board member, are spearheading the youth leadership development pilot. Peter Norman, our associate, lead a 4D-i training and RIP IT workshop for board to build out plans going forward.

Career Success course at Georgian College - The OneSmartWorld tools have been instrumental in creating a platform for identifying and developing student’s workplace and interviewing skills. The course outcome is that students have confidence in their interviewing skills and powerful functional resumes that highlight their skills, abilities and knowledge aligned with potential employer’s requirements.

Girl Guides – Girl Guides Centenary Camp Celebration – Mandy St.Germaine from OSW and her Guiding colleagues lead a group of 8 girls ages 14-16 from across Canada. In preparation for camping in rainy England amongst 15,000 teenaged girls the team completed their 4D-I’s and learned interpersonal, decision making and conflict resolution skills. The girls committed to using the UCDI (Understand, Create, Decide and Initiate)process in times of conflict or when decisions were needed. The leaders modeled the process the first time and then after that the girls initiated the UCDI process several times with great success.

Competing from the Neck Up: Education for the 21st Century – Canada and the western world needs to take its education to the next level to deliver the skills students need to succeed. Bob Wiele and Candice Currie recently published Competing from the Neck Up,( LINK TO ACCESS THE DOCUMENT) a call to community colleges to deliver 5 Essential 21st Century Employability Skills. The paper highlights 5 core skills- resilient self management, thinking, problem solving, communication and collaborative teamwork, all based on research from the US based Partnership for the 21st Century, the Conference board of Canada’s Employability Skills and the work of the HRSDC from the government of Canada.

SMARTERMEETINGS.COM LAUNCHES

On September 1, 2010, we launched www.SmarterMeetings.com, the world’s best, team meetings management system. We are really proud to bring this system to you. We believe the Smarter Meetings will be the breakthrough cure for unproductive, time wasting, expensive, soul-destroying meetings! Teamwork, productive meetings, cooperation and collaboration have all just got a whole lot easier.

Our goal at OneSmartWorld is to help build a smarter, better world. We build tools that help people get smarter and teams get more done. With Smarter Meetings.com we produced a simple to use, innovative application that enables people in teams to work smarter together and take their business results to the next level.

“ It’s amazing how quickly, the slower everything gets, when you have more than two people involved in making decisions.” This was the observation our daughter Lisa made after she and her friend, travelling across Africa for six weeks, were joined by two additional people, for the next leg of their journey.

Leaders and project managers are dealing with highly complex problems  working in teams of different types of members. They need practical tools to help the people in their teams think through the challenges and issues they face to make better decisions and come up with better solutions.

The Smarter Meetings system is the result of 10 years of blood, sweat, tears and cheers. We built it by working with progressive leaders in hundreds of organizations - in business, government and the not for profit sector - that were looking to find practical ways to help their teams and meetings work better. Our amazing clients and associates worked with us to develop and fine-tune the methodology and finally the technology itself. Along the way, we helped Shell Canada add $40M to their bottom line by providing a systematic way to tap into the intelligence of their people on a critical business challenge. The Canadian Cancer Society used the smarter meetings system to bring in national change management initiatives ahead of time and under budget. We helped WestJet realize a 558% ROI/return on investment, by saving time and talent in meetings, after they trained managers in the smarter meetings system.

Thanks to our great clients for believing in us through all the highs and lows, bugs and delays. Thanks to the perseverance, grit, talent and determination of our intrepid team of writers, software developers, web designers, graphic artists, public relations and marketing folks, strategists, videographers, bankers, administrators and production people who all played a key role in building this true game changer for meetings. Thanks to especially to Candice Currie, Travis North, Tim Desjardins, Dan Holinda, Donna Laitre, Pam August, Mary Raymond, Gary Young, Bill Noyes, Judy Pilling, David Gouthro, Glenn Clarke and the Techno Wizards, Mike Waterhouse, Lee Kea, Eric Wiele, Warren in the wings, Elton Clemente, Ace Cruikshank, John Geddes, David Church, Cindy Burgess, Ron Percy, Anne Marie Wright, Nick Murray, Mary Gibson, Matt Wiele and Mandy St Germaine and everyone else who contributed their ideas, time, feedback and support along the way.

Smarter Meetings is built as a complete an all-in-one solution. I hope you try it out for free or purchase it online for $195 at www.smartermeetings.com.

Based on the experience of our customers, we believe the Smarter Meetings system will pay for itself in the first or second time you use it. How? Simply by saving time, reducing frustration and giving people a universal common language and use a disciplined process and rules of engagement to get on the same page and work smarter together.

Looking forward to bringing you smarter meetings tips after the Labor Day weekend. Take a break – take a breather – it’s back at it come Tuesday!