21 year old self made learner.

Currently in a sales role for Spitzer Ford Hartville selling 10-14 cars per month.

Before that I started Northeast Property Washes to manufacture my own sales experience.
Founding NEPW, I had to teach myself a few things:
-Door-to-door Sales
-Social Media Advertising
-If I wanted anything meaningful- it required EVERYTHING

Spitzer has allowed me to hone in my people skills and the basics of sales.
-100 cold calls/ day
-Negotiate 

Ideally a next role would be another evolution of sales- software sales, tech sales, financial planning.

I will always be learning.

Nick Villanti

I'll help you meet and collaborate better | Next FrictionFree email: Why tribal behaviour explains everything about work (and meetings...)

Meeting culture is a huge and under-scrutinised issue. It's costing productivity, employee morale and the delivery of your strategy. 

It's usually symptomatic of a deeper systems problem: 'collabureaucracy' - and THIS is why companies are drowning in collaboration communication.

5 signs you're in collabureacracy - and need more than just a set of meeting rules:
- Lots of conversations but struggling to get to decisions and action
- People are exhausted from frustrating back to back meetings each day
- Teams missing milestones because people don’t have enough time for deep work
- People struggling to collaborate across teams and feeling unclear and frustrated
- Circular conversations and poor interactions with colleagues in meetings are creating friction

Book a 25-min call with me: https://calendar.app.google/m8A2tTCZsmmMJ6Bc6 

---  Why I can help where others have failed --- 

Much of what we’re told about meetings 
- comes from the industrial era 
- is not evidence-based
- focuses on tactics like agendas and timekeeping
- fails to serve knowledge-based collaborative work

FewerFasterBolder is a mindset and meeting toolkit fit for the *collaborative* era which
- goes to the heart of what underpins meetings: culture, leadership and psychology (not process and technology)
- helps people of different styles and with different goals to collaborate together without ego
- focuses on progress, not process
- releases weary teams from meeting burnout 
- enables meetings to go deeper, faster to get to what matters
- is based on research and evidence


--- What can you expect from me and FewerFasterBolder --- 

- Reduce current meeting time by 30-50% – one org reduced theirs by 75% in 6 weeks.
- Start hitting milestones on time and solving the deep-rooted problems that have been holding you back
- Improve the quality of meetings dramatically – sharper discussions and outcomes, no more circles or rabbit holes
- Build great trust-filled relationships across the org though clear energising interactions with colleagues
- Get to the heart of what really matters sooner and make good decisions that everyone backs


Find our more: www.fewerfasterbolder.com
Book call: https://calendar.app.google/m8A2tTCZsmmMJ6Bc6

Dr Carrie Goucher

I hate breakouts 😳 

Just when I thought I was in one meeting, I'm suddenly in another - this time with a countdown clock! 

We have a superficial conversation, dominated by a couple of people. 
We are thrust back into the main group and one person from each breakout summarises the discussion.
That person repeats what they said and ignores what anyone else said.

It's the awkward gear shift no one wanted.

Every time a group forms around task, we need social contract - what are we doing, what's my role, what behaviours are needed, are we all on the same page?

But in a breakout, we don't have time to make one - plus we have to make a 'product' together with a ridiculously tight deadline!

The result is often a deeply superficial and unsatisfying conversation - only saying things that are safe/acceptable to say in a very short space of time with no guide rails.

When things are unclear, only those who are were already comfortable speak up, so we don't get the quieter voices we were hoping the smaller group would encourage.

Honestly, I would rather be hearing more content in the full group or using those 3 minutes to think on my own!

Social contracting (what are we doing, what's my role, what behaviours are needed, are we all on the same page?) is a core component of every moment of collaboration. Skip it at your peril.

Feel free to ChangeMyMind in the comments :-) 

---
👋  I’m Carrie - I share techniques every day to help you go to fewer, better meetings and get your team collaborating without the friction.

Invite me to speak and I'll teach your whole organisation how to meet 'fewer, faster, bolder' 🔥

Redesigning how we meet and collaborate: deliver what your org is capable of | PhD in Meeting Culture (Cambridge) | TEDx speaker | Trusted by big brands, NHS and government

When I get that sinking feeling about a meeting I'm going to lead, I ask myself these two questions:

1. What bad thing am I worried is going to happen in the meeting?
2. How could I reframe this as a positive ask of people in the invite?

I then repeat that 'positive ask' at the start of the session and hold this boundary I've set throughout the session.

Doesn't fix every problem, does massively help with a lot of them though!

Like this:

⛔ Bad thing I don't want to happen:
Tension bubbling under the surface of the conversation
 
✅ Positive ask in the invite:  
“If something feels unclear or uncomfortable, name it. We will deal with tensions directly and respectfully.”


⛔ Bad thing I don't want to happen:
A polite but vague and frustrating conversation that ends with no decisions.
 
✅ Positive ask in the invite: 
“We will leave with a clear decision and named owners. If we can't decide, we will explicitly choose the next step.”


⛔ Bad thing I don't want to happen:
People staying quiet and saving their real concerns for later.

✅ Positive ask in the invite: 
“Please ask the hard questions from the start. Permission to say what you think others don't want to hear”


⛔ Bad thing I don't want to happen:
Rehashing a decision that's already made.
 
✅ Positive ask in the invite: 
"Decision X has been made. In this session, we'll progress it but we won't revisit it."


⛔ Bad thing I don't want to happen:
Multitasking
 
✅ Positive ask in the invite: 
This conversation deserves our full brains so we can finish early and well.


What do you say in invites to help get the most helpful conversation in the room?

----
👋  I’m Carrie - I share techniques every day to help you go to fewer, better meetings and get your team collaborating without the friction.

Invite me to speak and I'll teach your whole organisation how to meet 'fewer, faster, bolder' 🔥

I see you in back-to-back meetings this week.

I see you hello!-ing and how-are-you?-ing on the hour, every hour.

I see your to do list which is longer today than it was on Monday.

I see you searching every platform, channel and inbox to find that link someone sent you at 9.34am.

I see you making a cluttered company strategy clear enough so your team can to do their job.

I see you trying to get five tired people excited about slide 64.

I see you ever-so-politely breaking Sam’s flow, again, so Alej can get a word in.

I see you trying to catch up Helen who arrived at half past, for no obvious reason.

I see you juggling five sets of expectations about what should be done by May.

I see you wrestling a decision out of people who want to keep re-combining points they made earlier into new sentences.

I see you having a cereal bar for lunch at 2.55pm.

I see you at 5pm starting on that document you promised yourself you’d complete today.

If you’re wondering.

It’s not you.

Our collaboration ecosystem is broken.*

You’re doing great.



(*Not to worry, I'm fixing it)


ID: Carrie with folded arms and a warm expression says "I see you"

---
👋  I’m Carrie - I share techniques every day to help you go to fewer, better meetings and get your team collaborating without the friction.

Invite me to speak and I'll teach your whole organisation how to meet 'fewer, faster, bolder' 🔥

Today as we near the end of Black History Month (stateside), I want to celebrate and recognise just some of the brilliant colleagues whose work and leadership I learn from so you can too.


Chiyedza Heri - Where to start? You are a tenacious genius and I love how you have such a vision for the future - you are always ahead of the curve and your knowledge is encyclopaedic. As you tell me, some of these long words and acronyms are just fun to say!

Friends, if you are interested in global climate finance innovation (and you should be) follow Chiyedza… if you can keep up.


Bryony Matthews - You have been a supportive and pioneering presence in my LinkedIn world for 3+ years now and I admire how you bring so much resourcefulness and imagination to a traditionally male-dominated space. 

Friends, Bryony is the founder of Iron Out and is blazing a trail in construction hardware where safety is paramount. Watch this woman.


Manal Sayid, MBA - Thank you for teaching me so much about race, power, colonialism and pretty much everything else. In particular I watch how you introduce us to your own Somali culture and fiercely support people from other heritages and cultures. I have loved being introduced to brilliant new people through your own Black History Month posts.

Friends, highly recommending Manal’s amazing post where she helps us understand how steeped in Western culture our meetings and workshops are and highlights how different cultures view different aspects of gathering e.g. how the open gatherings, develop connect, distribute power, close them etc.  https://lnkd.in/e5u6cYHp


Rodney Daut 🟡  I’ve followed you for a long time and been lucky enough to work with you… twice now! I appreciate your gentle wisdom and how carefully you curate words and experiences. 

Friends, Rod is the pioneer of the ‘atomic ecourse’ and the education email course (EEC). Watch this space for my EEC coming soon and contact him if you’d like to develop your own.


Christine E. Hall, MPH, MCHES - Another ‘where to start?’ :-) You are delivering in public/population health AND changing facilitation and meetings at the same time. 

Friends, you can read all Christine’s super helpful posts on facilitation and meetings here: https://lnkd.in/epEPQUEq


LaPora Lindsey - You are on fire right now! Love seeing your stage presence and how keen people are to hear your wisdom. Following you and learning from you, always.

Friends, you can listen to LaPora here on Melanie Smith's podcast, Modern Renaissance Women: https://lnkd.in/emCdXQdN

Most meetings suck, yes - not that interesting. 

The REALLY interesting bigger picture conversation is this:

(and you can listen to me talk for one. whole. hour. on it with Stefan Tornquist on the The Happiness Index podcast, just released - search Spotify)

• Many orgs have a great strategy but struggle to deliver it. This happens when we use industrial era habits for knowledge era work (wrong fit)
  
• I define this concept of 'collabureaucracy' and why it's the rate limiting factor for many organisations
  
• Most org cultures are still in parent-child mode. How can we possibly have healthy, crucial conflict until we shift to adult-to-adult ways of relating to each other? I show you how to think about this.
  
• We are freestyling collaboration not designing the heck out of this absolutely crucial 'connective tissue' of our organisation (thank you Elise Keith for this metaphor). One example is the Extrovert Bias Cascade. Freestyling means the first few people to speak are likely to hold the most power and/or be the most comfortable responding instantly (no reflection time). These people's opinions anchor the rest of the conversation (AKA "fixation") massively influencing contributions and disclosure by the rest of the group for the rest of the session. We need to design, design, design for the productive, inclusive conversations our org needs us to have!

This is a podcast contribution that makes me cringe as we go right to the outer corners of my knowledge and expertise ("Did I get that right? I could have said it so much better!") But for that reason, it's an important, stretching listen.

---
👋  I’m Carrie - I share techniques every day to help you go to fewer, better meetings and get your team collaborating without the friction.

Invite me to speak and I'll teach your whole organisation how to meet 'fewer, faster, bolder' 🔥

Don't say "it's safe to fail here" - failure is never the goal (and anyway, you don't mean it!)

Over the last 20 years, there is ONE cultural shift that orgs have asked for my help with.

It's this: 

"We want to make it safe to fail"

The thing is... no one wants to fail more than they already do and failure is not a goal! 

And anyway, most people find it is most certainly 𝘯𝘰𝘵 safe to fail, despite what leaders say 🤦‍♀️

I'll show you why 'safe to fail' is the wrong language and what to use instead.

And I'll give you 3 incremental ways to use meetings to develop the culture of experimentation and learning that you're after - they are ridiculously easy!

Let me know what you think in the comments...


---

👋  I’m Carrie - I share techniques every day to help you go to fewer, better meetings and get your team collaborating without the friction

Invite me to speak and I'll teach your whole organisation how to meet 'fewer, faster, bolder' 🔥

Struggling to get people to try something new? Try this.

Everything about the school system most 35+ year olds grew up in told us that to do something well, we needed to fully understand it first.

Then we joined the workplace and again, get it wrong and we quickly wished we had understood it better before trying it! 

So when we now ask our teams to experiment or try something new, it's no surprise they want lots of information before they are willing to try it.

Here's a nice question that might help.

"Do you need to understand it before you try it? Or do you need to try it to understand it?"

Clearly some understanding is needed to have a solid shot at trying it. But usually nowhere near as much as we think. And usually the only way to truly understand it is to try it.

Once people see this, they get it.



(and I know I read a variation on these phrases somewhere recently and I can't remember where if this was you, please comment/DM and I will fully credit you and your original post!)

---
👋  I’m Carrie - I share techniques every day to help you go to fewer, better meetings and get your team collaborating without the friction.

Invite me to speak and I'll teach your whole organisation how to meet 'fewer, faster, bolder' 🔥

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Nick Villanti

Dr Carrie Goucher

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