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Generative AI Prompting Formulas: The keys to your success

by jpanning | January 26, 2025 | All, Artificial Intelligence, Projects | 126 Comments

Most people think using AI is just typing a question and hoping for magic. But here’s the truth: The quality of your results depends on one key skill: effective prompting. Without it, you’ll get vague, unhelpful responses. With it, you unlock AI’s full potential....

So what can be done to make meetings more productive and enjoyable?

by jpanning | December 4, 2024 | All, Meetings | 109 Comments

What’s the first word that pops into your head when you hear the word “meetings”? My guess is that most people’s response would not be “fulfilling”, “useful” or “progress”. In fact, my guess is that a majority of the responses would be categorized as negative like “ugh”, “waste”, or “too-many”. I know that’s two words, […]

There’s an art to designing a meeting and/or workshop.

by jpanning | December 4, 2024 | All, Facilitation, Meetings | 105 Comments

It's a balancing act to have the right discussions that result in the¬†desired outcomes. Trying to fit 5 lbs. of stuff into a 3 lb. bag will only end up with a mess and a lot of stuff on the floor. Here are 5 ways to prevent adding too much into a meeting or workshop....

Have you ever heard of erasure poetry?

by jpanning | December 4, 2024 | All, Projects | 110 Comments

I heard about Erasure Poetry on a blog I follow this morning. According to Wikipedia, "Erasure Poetry is also known as blackout poetry, is a form of found poetry wherein a poet takes an existing text and erases, blacks out, or otherwise obscures a large portion of the...

Most of what we do today was once unthinkable

by jpanning | December 4, 2024 | All, Culture, Leadership | 109 Comments

We prototype. We test. We iterate. And we fail a lot. Until we don't. Astro Teller, CEO of X, the moonshot factory. Turn your problems into opportunities with curious, diverse teams that aren't afraid to ask the question How Might We? This short video gets me excited...

What’s the big deal about retrospectives?

by jpanning | December 4, 2024 | All, Facilitation, Meetings, Projects, Teams | 101 Comments

Retrospectives provide an opportunity to inspect and adapt. They allow a team to hit the pause button to really reflect about the work at hand and how the team is working together. The best retrospectives are the ones that result in a couple solid action items that...

Did you know, the hashtag (#) is technically called an octothorpe?

by jpanning | December 4, 2024 | All, Meetings | 0 Comments

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the "octo" prefix refers to the eight points on the symbol. The "thorpe" suffix remains more of a mystery. One theory is that "thorpe" comes from the old English word for "village" based on the idea that the symbol could be...

Fun Fact: Children ask over 300 questions a day on average.

by jpanning | December 4, 2024 | All, Culture | 0 Comments

Do you think adults ask more or less than 300 questions per day? My guess is LESS than 300. Why is it that adults seem to lose some of their curiosity from childhood? What might we miss out on because the lack of curiosity? How is it limiting our progress? At Matrix...

Agile Retrospectives

by jpanning | December 4, 2024 | All, Meetings | 0 Comments

I've been reading the book Agile Retrospectives and have been posting on the topic of Retrospectives in LI lately. I love the idea of pausing for reflection in both our work lives and personal lives. Until we pause, we are often too busy to really think about what we...

What do people care about hearing in weekly status updates?

by jpanning | December 4, 2024 | All, Meetings, Projects | 103 Comments

As a follow-up to my post about sending email updates as an alternative (or improvement) to status meetings, here's list of what people want to see in their status meeting update emails. What to include in the email update. Project Milestones. List the project...

You’ve likely heard about Brainstorming, but have you heard about Question-Storming?

All, Leadership, Meetings, Projects, Teams, Tools

Question-Storming focuses on generating questions rather than solutions. It encourages people to ask as many questions as possible about a given topic or challenge, promoting deeper exploration and uncovering new perspectives and insights.Here’s how to get started:✅...

Project managers: Are you using Short Bursts of Conflict to increase innovation within your team?

All, Leadership, Meetings, Projects, Teams

Short bursts of conflict, can:✨ Stimulate Creativity. Team members challenging each other's ideas pushes everyone to think outside the box. Imagine a conflicting viewpoints during a brainstorming session, about marketing strategy. This might result in a hybrid...

Are your conference rooms empty and your whiteboards looking old and grungy because everyone is meeting virtually now?

All, Meetings, Projects

If so, it's time to modernize your collaboration tools.Miro offers a dynamic solution for online virtual meetings, workshops, and collaboration. With Miro, you can:📣 Engage your teams and make virtual meetings more inclusive.📣 Convert meetings from boring to...

What if everything you thought you knew about X was completely off base?

All, Leadership, Meetings, Teams, Tools

X might be your project, your team, your strategy, or something else.What if the assumptions guiding your decisions were built on outdated data, misunderstood dynamics, or hidden biases?The reality is, no matter how confident we feel in our knowledge, there’s always a...

What we know we don’t know is scary, but what about what we don’t know we don’t know?

All, Leadership, Meetings, Projects, Teams

These aspects that are unknown to you and others are represented in the Unknown Area of the Johari Window.Project teams should be exploring new ways of working to actively seek growth opportunities.Here are three strategies to uncover hidden strengths and potential...

Facilitators as timekeepers

All, Facilitation, Meetings

Facilitators design meeting activities within time slots to cover instructions, activities, and wrap-ups. Keeping the activities within the allotted time keeps the meeting on track. When an activity goes over its' planned time it often results in: the compression of...

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