What does Bill Murray speak about?
Three things, and they are the same three things I coach: how sponsors and managers become mentors by asking instead of telling; how teams get customer evidence before they build; and why most innovation ideas are solutions wearing a disguise. Keynote, half-day workshop, virtual session or a classroom visit, for conferences, corporate innovation programs, non-profit and government teams, and the educators who teach entrepreneurship.
The question I open with
When is the last time you saw a committee do something amazing? I ask the room that, and I wait. Somebody laughs. Somebody frowns at the person next to them. Then the real conversation starts, because everyone in the room has sat in that committee, and most of them have run one.
That is the whole method in miniature. I do not come to tell an audience what to do. I come to ask the question they have been avoiding, and to give them a way to answer it with evidence instead of opinion. If you want forty minutes of motivation and a standing ovation, book someone else. If you want a room that leaves arguing about the right thing, keep reading.
Three talks
- Enquire to Inspire: twenty questions that turn managers into mentors. For leaders who sponsor innovation teams. What a sponsor actually is, why managing people limits them and mentoring expands them, and the questions to ask at each stage of the work. Built on the book of the same name.
- Experiments before pilots: cheap evidence for expensive decisions. For product and innovation teams. Why the pilot is where good ideas go to die quietly, how to design an experiment a team can run next week, and what to do when the result is not what anyone wanted. Includes a worked example.
- Your idea is a solution: finding the problem underneath it. For anyone who has ever fallen in love with a feature. How to get from observations to insights, why the ‘why’ chain matters, and why innovation ideas fail when the problem stays unexamined.
Four formats
- Keynote. Forty-five to sixty minutes, one idea, questions from the floor. Works for a conference, an off-site or an innovation program kickoff.
- Half-day workshop. Teams bring a real idea. We find the riskiest assumption, design the experiment, and they leave with something to run. It is the in-room version of The 3-Hour Innovation Plan.
- Virtual session. Sixty to ninety minutes online. I coach virtually every week, so the format is the day job, not a compromise. Cameras on; the questions come from you.
- Classroom. For educators who teach entrepreneurship or innovation: a guest session built around the book’s questions, with students working a live problem instead of a case from 2009.
What a room gets that a deck cannot
A talk should leave a room with a question it cannot put down. Slides do not do that; people do. So every session has three things in it: a story from real coaching work (the sponsor who derailed a team with an idea from a trade journal, the team that pivoted the day before its big walk-through), one tool the audience can use on Monday, and a question I hand to them and refuse to answer for them. Questions provoke action. Answers, in my experience, provoke nodding.
Some free advice for organizers: tell your audience to bring a real problem. The sessions that go best are the ones where somebody stands up with a thing they are actually stuck on, and the room works it together.
How to book a talk or workshop
Email coach@coachingup.us with the date, the format, who will be in the room, and one problem they are working on. You will hear back within one business day. I am based in Wisconsin; virtual sessions are available anywhere, and in-person dates are arranged case by case. If you are not sure which format fits, say so: choosing it is a fifteen-minute conversation, and it is free. There is more about how I work on the about page.
Frequently asked questions
How long is a keynote?
Forty-five to sixty minutes, with time for questions from the room. If the organizer wants ninety, the extra time goes to the audience working on one of their own problems, not to more slides.
Do you run workshops for a single team?
Yes. A half-day workshop is the in-room version of The 3-Hour Innovation Plan: the team brings a real idea, we find the riskiest assumption, and they leave with an experiment they can run the following week.
Can the talk be virtual?
Yes. I coach virtually every week, so a virtual keynote or workshop is not an afterthought. Sixty to ninety minutes works best online, with cameras on and the questions coming from the audience.
What do you need from us to book a date?
The date, the format, who will be in the room, and one real problem they are working on. Email coach@coachingup.us and you will hear back within one business day. I am based in Wisconsin; virtual is available anywhere, and in-person dates are arranged case by case.
Have a date and a room?
Send the date, the format and the audience. I will send back what we can get done with them.