All posts by Annette Mehlhoop

About Annette Mehlhoop

Annette Mehlhoop worked in marketing and communication roles at Structure & Process in 2015/16.

Links of the Week (Week 42/2015)

LinksoftheWeek

Here are our Links of the Week, curated from our link collection:

Sales

Need help in building a viable sales pipeline? This post is inspired by climbing. Remember to have your pins (aka Livesavers) really safe and clear before you move on: Only a strong and clear “Yes” in your sales process is a safe “pin” to move forwards.

Technology

Tim O’Reilly about “Unicorns”, startups with a valuation of over one billion USD, and how technology transforms our daily life: We’ve Got This Whole Unicorn Thing All Wrong!

Work Habits

Derek Sivers shares some surprising insights about the thin line between stress and relaxation: Relax for the same result!

Customer Relations

How organisations separate themselves from their customers and why this is an issue for both of them: Gerry McGovern in “The customer is the meme.”
We need to move away from the old culture that sees technology almost wholly as a replacement for people and a reducer of human-to-human interactions.”

Holacracy

In the Harvard Business Review George Romme examines three common misconceptions about Holacracy. He also gives some background on the roots of Holacracy and Sociocracy: The Big Misconceptions Holding Holacracy Back.

Auf deutsch:

Gunter Dueck über “Volkswagening” und was genau das mit sogenannten “Score-Man”, die überall beste sein müssen, zu tun hat: Volkswagening / volkswagieren und Supramanie.

Use your hands!

Handsigns for Meetings

SPblog-handsigns

Have you ever attended a local party meeting? People get off-topic a lot. People argue louder and louder while one person repeats their point for a third time. You have a correction to some recently shared information, but there are 5 people ahead of you on the speaking list… You name it.

In these never ending meetings, I always wished to cut all these situations short. Here comes the answer: Our partner Lara has a method she calls „Use your hands“. She has compiled and illustrated the handy list of signs you can use during meetings.

These signs have their roots in sign language and in different activist movements. For example the Occupy movement uses them, too.
„But you don’t need to be an activist to use them, right?“, points out Lara.

She advises to introduce the signs before using them, and to explain how they make things easier. „I always draw them somewhere visible for the whole group, too“, Lara tells. In her meetings and facilitation situations, she usually introduces only a few of the signs to find out whether people are curious and enthusiastic about the idea.

Maybe I will take the list to my next party meeting and see how curious my fellow party members get.

What are your experiences in meetings? Do you find the signs helpful? Would you try these signs in actual meetings?

Links of the Week (Week 40/2015)

Links of the week, curated from our Tumble-Log:

Holacracy

Reflections on holacracy implementation by Alexis Gonzales-Black, formerly of Zappos

“If you look at the trajectory of where organizations are going, it arcs towards self-management, no matter what kind of business you’re in. I think businesses have to be free to scale up or scale back these different practices to meet the needs of the company.”

Change

8 symptoms of organization on the cusp of change

“In theory, organizations are meant to enable us — to make us faster, stronger and more effective than we’d be on our own. And yet today, in listening to my clients, it feels as if the exact opposite is true — as if the organization is actually getting in their way.”

Software

Basecamp 3: Work can wait

“I do believe toolmakers can build tools that help you draw a line between work and life.”

Corporates

Dear corporates: A quarter if a million of your workforce are escaping…

Digital Economics

Not firms but commons and market networks (Esko Kilpi)

Better conversations and leadership

The core imperative: training in practice (Chris Corrigan)

Auf deutsch:

Sieben Fehler, mit denen Chefs ihre besten Mitarbeiter vergraulen