collaboration – Reimagine. Strategy.

June 23, 2025June 23, 2025

Strategy Sightings, Episode Four

Many of you will know that I am on a mission to avoid oblivious facilitation (or coaching, or leading or…). I have not found a word that means precisely the opposite of “oblivious” — I’d always rather be for something than against it — but for now, I’m anti-obliviousness.

I therefore can’t ignore that I am writing this post during an incredibly uncertain and destabilizing time in global affairs, and it seems oblivious of me not to acknowledge it. So, for this final installment of “Strategy Sightings” (for now), with some reluctance, I’m diving right in.

January 20, 2025January 27, 2025

Strategic Leadership

Strategic planning is not just for corporations—lots of my one-on-one coaching work feels like strategy-building for individuals too. And that’s a space I’m curious about—as group activities that also apply to individuals, and vice versa.

So over the next few weeks, I’m going to write about what strategic planning is and isn’t, and I’d invite you to view it through both an individual and collective lens, as I suspect it will apply to both.

December 9, 2024December 9, 2024

Vanilla Strategy

In this last installment of my mini-series on ‘facilitation tips from the trenches,’ I’m turning my attention to how the feedback elicited shapes the decisions we make.

Remember that I am a fan of collaborative strategy building. Multiple perspectives are protective. They reduce blind spots and build buy-in.

Except…

…when they encourage us to play it too safe.

August 16, 2024

Greater than the sum of the parts

Who’s with me in missing the Olympics?

I love watching them and give myself permission to become fully addicted while the games are happening.

One highlight for me this time was the commentary that accompanied Canada’s gold medal run in the men’s 4×100-metre relay. Each of those four runners had failed to make the final in their individual event(s). None of them individually is the fastest at that distance. But together, they won gold. Why? Because they practice as a team, they emphasize smooth handoffs, and they treat each other like brothers. The result? A relay result collectively greater than the sum of the individual sprints that comprise it.

August 1, 2024

Parallel Play

In my roles as a facilitator or team coach, I am frequently structuring group conversations to help people reach consensus. But lately, I’m noticing how often I am in settings where people are working independently alongside each other instead. Alone together.