Garrick (00:02.574)
Hello and welcome to this episode of the Curious Advantage podcast. My name is Garrick Jones and I'm one of the co-authors of the book, The Curious Advantage, and today I'm here with my co-authors, Simon Brown and Paul Ashcroft. We're delighted to be joined today by Alison Coward. Hello, Alison.
Simon Brown (00:13.101)
Hello?
Paul (00:15.972)
Hi there.
Alison Coward (00:21.037)
Hello, thank you for having me.
Garrick (00:23.34)
Alison, you are the founder of Bracket, a team culture consultancy and an author of Workshop Culture, a guide to building teams that thrive. That's what we want to have conversation about. But also, can you share a little bit about your journey and how you got to where you are today?
Alison Coward (00:41.239)
Yeah, no, I'd love to. So the early part of my career was working in the creative industries, in arts organisations with creative practitioners, so artists and designers that wanted to make money essentially from their creativity. And part way through working in these organisations that used to do lots of business support and networking exhibitions, I got curious about a question which is how can I support these
this group of people more effectively, what is it about creative businesses that make them so and how can I provide more effective support to them? So I decided to do an MA, Enterprise and Management for the Creative Arts, which was all about that. And through my reading and my early research at the time, this was 20 years ago, 2005, so a long time ago, in the UK, there was a big drive for the creative economy. The government had recognised that
the creative industries were a big driver of the economy in the UK. And so there was lots of research around about what the creative industries were doing. And I was reading all this research and landed on this idea of collaboration and reading books by people like John Halkins and Richard Florida, Charles Ledbetter, research reports from like Demos and Nestor talking about the creative industries and how collaboration and networks were such a key part of the creative sector. At the same time, kind of adjacent to that, I was starting to become
and more aware of online tools, online collaboration tools. And I kind of thought it might be quite interesting to bring those two things together. So my dissertation was literally how can online collaboration tools be used as a business support method for artists and designer makers. And coming out on the other side of this research project, and one of the things I wanted to do was kind of bring independent creatives together into teams and to help them collaborate.
And when I started to do that, I didn't realise that what I was doing as a person that wasn't a creative producer or practitioner, what I was doing was facilitating. And through all the research that I'd read, I've kind of learned a lot about how to manage in inverted commas creativity and the kinds of environments that you needed to create to enable that. And for me, facilitation seemed to be the thing that made sense.
Alison Coward (03:03.533)
So people started kind of looking at me and saying, Alice, and that thing that you're doing with all those creatives, can you come and do that for my team in our organisation? I didn't actually even realise that facilitation was a thing. As I said, it just felt like the most effective way to get the thing done that I needed to get done. And so started facilitating lots of workshops, loving it, loving the format, loving the energy that it brought for myself and teams. And then also getting to the end of these workshops and feeling slightly frustrated because...
I knew that the day had been brilliant. Everyone had a great time, lots of ideas generated, but I knew that once the team got back to their desk the next day and they weren't surrounded by the Post-it notes and the creativity in that environment, they'd just go back to their business as usual. And all of that energy would be forgotten. And I could see that there was a gap between teams wanting to collaborate in their day to day and what they were doing.
in workshops, it was possible because I was seeing it happen happening in these workshops, facilitating it for them. So what was that disconnect there? And that's what set me off on this journey to explore this idea of workshop culture. How can we take some of those elements of workshops, the principles and practices and infuse them into the way that we work every day so we get more of that energy and more of that collaboration on a day to day basis, not just in these these one off events.
Simon Brown (04:27.235)
So that led you to then write the book, I'm assuming, Workshop Culture, so Guide to Building Teams that Thrive. So tell us more on what really is then a workshop culture and how can we adopt that? what's the essence of the book?
Alison Coward (04:43.799)
Yeah, so workshop culture, I define it as a team culture that uses the principles and practices of workshops and facilitations to achieve team collaboration, creativity, productivity. And it's essentially that. is like looking at, what is it that facilitators do in a workshop environment that enables a team to work together effectively, productively, collaborate.
Simon Brown (04:54.862)
Mm-hmm.
Alison Coward (05:08.153)
be engaged in the content that they're creating together, have that environment of psychological safety where everyone feels comfortable to contribute or feels that they can take risks and be vulnerable in front of each other. That environment of empathy. So it's really kind of looking at what a facilitator does, looking at environment and thinking, okay, what can we take from this to infusing our day to day? And there is a very practical element there. So it can come down to...
but literally how meetings are run. I think one of things I talk about in the book a lot is how meetings are broken. it's something that we can't avoid in our organisations and our teams. Yet so many people are dissatisfied with how their meetings are run. And we spend a lot of time in meetings. If our meetings make up a lot of our day and most of those meetings are bad, then that's our experience of work.
And actually we can change the way that we experience those meetings by using some of those workshops and facilitation principles. And then there is also the sort of the other elements, like the kind of, I guess, the energy that a facilitator brings, being more curious, asking questions, having that empathy, patience, the synthesis, and being able to deal with uncertainty. All of those things are things that we need on an everyday basis.
Simon Brown (06:27.843)
So what you described of sort of workshop and then the challenge of the stickiness as you go back in and many of those other ones, what are some practical bits I guess that we can do to be able to live that? So how do we make our meetings better? How do we create that psychological safety? How do we make sure we have that curiosity, that energy that you get from everyone coming together in a workshop? What are some practical steps that we can take?
Alison Coward (06:53.581)
Yeah, I think one of the biggest misconceptions that I have noticed with collaboration and through the years I've been working on this is that many people feel or believe or feel that collaboration should just happen. You just get great people, put them together and then they will gel. And that does happen sometimes, but most of the time we have to be more intentional about it. And that's exactly what a workshop facilitator is doing. We are designing
the environment and considering the dynamics and thinking what is it that a team needs to achieve and how can we design a process that makes it more likely that they are going to get there. And this is what we need to do with our meetings. Again, you know, we often have our meetings by default. We look at time in the calendar and think, OK, everyone's free at that time. Let's send out the invite. Everyone gets into the physical room or virtual room and we run through an agenda.
without any thought about how you are going to run through that agenda. So, you know, with a workshop where thinking about the topics that a team needs to discuss, but also thinking, well, what is the best way to have the conversation around that specific topic, whether it is, you know, a full group discussion or whether it is individual thinking or whether it is small group discussions, whether we're using post-it notes, those kinds of things. We're kind of thinking about all of those devices.
and trying to be as intentional as possible to make it most likely that the team is going to get to the outcome that we intend for them.
Paul (08:26.592)
Alison, in the book, you talk about how a workshop culture can influence how we lead and organise organisations. Could you tell us a bit more about that? And also, why is this such a critical skill for the future of work?
Alison Coward (08:41.965)
Yeah, so.
Let me just have a think about the question before I answer it.
Alison Coward (08:52.259)
So one of the things that I have observed in facilitating workshops is that it almost feels to me that on a micro level, a workshop is what it feels like to lead a team through uncertainty. As a facilitator, as I just mentioned, you may design your agenda and may design your workshop outline. At the same time, you have to hold that so lightly because you have no idea.
how the day is going to go, it really depends on what the team were talking about before, the mood of the people in the room, how people turn up, how people feel on that day. So there's always going to be an element in a workshop that feels, or multiple elements in the workshop, that feels very uncertain. And as a facilitator, you kind of need to hold that uncertainty. It's almost like kind of trusting the process. And I feel that's such a key skill that we need in today's world when we're...
Paul (09:44.757)
Thank
Alison Coward (09:46.905)
faced with so much uncertainty. Essentially leaders, one of the things that they're doing constantly is leading their team through uncertainty. And so we can learn from that in sort of workshops. On a sort of, guess a much more macro level, the whole reason behind what I do by, the whole reason behind what I do, what I do is kind of part of the conversation of making work better. Our workplaces are pretty broken.
We talk about disengagement a lot, leading towards burnout and the need to consider wellbeing. We've got sort productivity challenges, even down to our meetings, and we spend a lot of time at work. I really have this kind of inherent belief that if we can make people's days better at work, that obviously is going to have an impact on their lives. And if we can impact their lives positively, then what kind of, what does that make them?
Paul (10:40.084)
Thank
Alison Coward (10:46.189)
give them the availability to do. There's such a difference between people leaving the work day feeling drained and kind of a bit miserable and a bit annoyed. And then, you know, the spillover into their personal lives versus them leaving work feeling energized and, know, like they had a really great day at work. They're able to share ideas. They felt that their contributions were valued by their team. And again, the spillover into their personal lives.
I've seen that happen in workshops. You know, we get to the end of a workshop and everyone does feel on a high, feels, you energised. And so if we can bring a bit more of that into our day to day, that can have an impact on how we experience our work and how we feel about our work. And then, you know, I've got big, I guess, ambitions for this is, you know, if we do change the workplace and how people feel about work, what does that mean for society?
You know, what impact can people therefore make when they leave work feeling better with all this excess energy or motivation to do something good?
Garrick (11:50.958)
I'll just-
Paul (11:51.02)
you pick on three really, really cool themes there, right? And I'm sure the guys want to pick up on each of these. So around leadership with uncertainty, making work better, and then what's the implications for society? So you get into some quite big, very interesting topics. Let me start with uncertainty, if I could, because I've been in that mode too, where you're leading a session, could be a large session or a complicated session, but you are comfortable as a leader in that role with uncertainty.
What are some of the things in your experience that a lead facilitator, when they step out of that role and into leading, can take away from that experience in the room, out into leading their team? What are some of the practical things that they could do, think about, or change?
Alison Coward (12:39.129)
I think one of the things is shifting from feeling that that uncertainty is wrong and feeling that you need to kind of tidy it up and have the answers and kind of make it.
tie it up in a bow and make it sort of feel clean and finished. That uncertainty is part of it. So I think one of the key skills, I always talk about this as a facilitator, is almost being comfortable with that uncertainty, being comfortable with feeling uncomfortable, and also assuring the team that that uncomfortable feeling isn't inherently bad. It's kind of how we move through it. Some of the qualities that a leader...
that is valuable for a leader in those moments are the kind of the pausing, the patience, the persistence, the empathy as well for understanding that people may be feeling uncomfortable in this moment. The curiosity, the asking questions, you again, it's not a leader needing to have all of the answers in these situations. It's being able to ask the right questions to be able to guide the team.
through that and that takes kind of a genuine curiosity. You know, I don't have to have the answers as a leader, but I'm genuinely curious to understand what it is that my team are thinking or feeling or experiencing in this moment and how do we move through that together.
Simon Brown (14:10.493)
We would fully agree with the need for curiosity. I mean, I absolutely reckon, I think it's almost dangerous as a leader to be too certain about anything because things are changing so much that, I think we need to get comfortable that a level of uncertainty is actually just the reality now. And agree that if it's asking the right questions, creating the safety within the team, but yeah, we don't have to have all of the answers.
Garrick (14:40.832)
Alison, you touched lightly on something that is very close to all of our hearts, and that's idea of being together in workshops, but also being online. You talked about both of them. What's your view on, do we have to be very different because of workshops online? Can workshops online achieve the same things that being together can achieve? What's your view?
Alison Coward (14:51.512)
you
Alison Coward (15:05.357)
same
I'll think about that again in just a hours. I don't want to start this. I think there are pros and cons to each. I am not inherently for or against either online or in-person workshops. I think they both have their value. think, you know, there's some brilliant facilitators out there who are doing amazing things with online workshops and using tools in a fantastic way.
At the same time, there may be times when it makes much more sense for a team to be together in person. You know, if I was to be asked to facilitate an online workshop, it definitely wouldn't be kind of a multi-day, all-day type session because there's a different type of energy that is required when you're online versus in person. The way that I see it though is that from right from the beginning when I started facilitating workshops,
when they were in person. One of the things that I would always want to find out before the day is what the room looked like. I'd want to know, you know, are there windows? Have we got walls to stick things up on? Are we going to be, do we have space to move around? And that would give me a sense of some of the activities that I could design into the workshop. Can we stick flip charts and pieces of flip chart paper on the wall and post-it notes? Can we...
kind of, you know, move in and out of breakout rooms. If there's no windows, do we need to take more breaks? I kind of see the virtual space as a room, essentially. So before the workshop, if I'm facilitating in person, I want to know what's available to me. Likewise, if I'm facilitating an online workshop, well, what are the, what's the functionality of the space that I'm going to be using, whether it's the communication tool, whether it's a platform and therefore how do I design the exercises to support that?
Alison Coward (17:00.971)
And so I think, you know, as I say, I see it as a format, neither inherently good or bad. It's just designing around what you have available to you and kind of thinking about those different formats and how people are going to interact within them.
Simon Brown (17:16.374)
And how have you seen the impact, I guess, either virtual or sort of in person? How have you seen people doing this well, really sort of impact on the nature of work?
Alison Coward (17:29.933)
Well, I mean, the most basic thing is that online workshops provides much more accessibility. There's a lot more flexibility there. It's expensive to bring people together into a space. Not everybody has the resources to do that all of the time. For some types of conversations, it's much preferred. Some people love doing, kind of, know, say multi-day strategy, creative visioning workshops in person.
Simon Brown (17:40.281)
Absolutely.
Alison Coward (17:55.481)
But if you aren't able to do that, then online works just as well. I think I'm not sure if I've answered your question.
Simon Brown (18:04.545)
I guess it's then sort of whether effective online or face-to-face, how having that, I guess, the culture of running it really well, how that workshop culture has really then impacted either in the organisations that you've worked with or how you've seen the difference between doing it badly and doing it well really have an impact.
Alison Coward (18:26.425)
Yeah, I guess one thing that comes to mind is that with a team that say, for example, is hybrid or remote, I guess considering your workshops as meetings and knowing that we can facilitate online makes this stuff a lot more accessible. I if we see a workshop as something where we do have to be together in person and we have to be, you know, with the physical Post-it notes.
Simon Brown (18:45.261)
Mm-hmm.
Alison Coward (18:54.989)
then again, it kind of creates this distance between what we're doing on a day to day versus these kind of one-off events when we get together. Whereas if we've got a hybrid or remote team and we're kind of dropping these ways of working and perhaps in smaller ways, but more consistently over time, then again, it makes this format a lot more accessible rather than seeing it as this kind of special one-off event that we need to prepare for.
Simon Brown (19:21.497)
breaks up that meeting after meeting after meeting that you're actually bringing the creativity and the energy of the workshop format.
Alison Coward (19:24.652)
Absolutely.
Garrick (19:30.35)
your book explores five pillars of high performing teams. If I can read them alignment, cohesion, communication, design and change and can you walk us through those? Why are those five important?
Alison Coward (19:47.913)
So just before I walk through the five pillars, I guess I want to take a little bit of a step back as to why that framework exists. I think one of the things that I see today is that, you know, I don't think you would ever speak to a leader that would say that team culture is important. I think most leaders will acknowledge that team culture is vital.
At the same time, if you were to ask those leaders if they had time to spend on culture, a lot of them would probably find that a lot more difficult to answer. And so I created this framework, not as kind of the ultimate team culture framework, because there are a lot out there, but from my, I guess, 20 years of experience of of research in this and practice in this area, I realised that there's kind of five areas that
feel important for a team to have regular conversations around. So these aren't things that you kind of work through and tick off and then it's done. They're almost kind of buckets of conversations that perhaps the leader or someone that has a capability in the team need to facilitate on an ongoing basis to keep that idea of team culture top of mind. So alignment is around sort of vision and purpose as a team.
Are we clear on what our goals are, what our purpose is as a team? Are we all on the same page and are we sure that we're all pointing in the same direction? From that, we can create how we need to be as a team. So this might be sort of team values or principles that hold us accountable to behaving in a way that is going to make us more likely to achieve our goals, making sure that we're acting in alignment of the team that we need to be.
Cohesion is, I guess, on two levels, the connection on two levels. The individual ensuring that they can see their contribution and their part in that bigger picture. Do they see where their skills, expertise, ways of working is necessary in that team achieving the higher level goal? And also, are the individuals in the team connected to each other in terms of...
Alison Coward (22:02.699)
understanding again the skills, expertise, perspectives that every individual brings and understanding different working styles, different ways of working. And what that creates is, know, again, in purpose of that alignment, that higher team vision and purpose, it starts to create an understanding that in order to work together, in order to achieve that goal, we need all of these different working styles on the team, we need these different ways of working. And so
building more empathy and understanding of different perspectives, but also sort of looking at how you might handle the conflict that arises between that diversity. Having that foundation of empathy and understanding is one way of kind of preempting or working through conflict when it arises. Communication is essentially what other kinds of conversations, what's the information that we need to share? What kinds of conversations do we need to have and in what format?
So it does largely come down to meetings. And as I mentioned, you know, often we kind of have a default format for meetings when actually depending on the kind of conversation that we need to have and what we want to achieve, meetings can look very different. So we may have a very short update meeting or like I've mentioned, it may be these kind of multi-day strategy sessions. And we need to design what types of conversations we need to have and when again, to make it more likely that we're going to achieve.
what we want to achieve as a team. Design is kind of anything that falls outside of that. So design are routines, rituals, systems, processes that a team may put in place, again, to make it more likely or to ensure that they are set up in the best possible way to achieve their team. So this may be sort of little checking rituals, connection rituals. It may be even technology or tools that the team need to use in order to share information or to stay.
in contact and up to date with their work. And then the final pillar, changes about continuous improvement. How frequently is a team reviewing the way that they're working in context of what's happening around them? Are they sure that the way that they're working right now is fit for purpose for the context and the environment that they work within? So this might mean looking at some of the team habits that they have.
Alison Coward (24:27.449)
and some of the ways of working. It may even be, you know, going all the way back to the team vision and purpose and seeing if that needs a refresh or renew. And so all of these pillars say they're they're kind of buckets of regular conversations that need to be facilitated within a team. And then essentially they're kind of a list of questions that a team needs to be constantly asking themselves and to make sure that they're all connected and all pointing in the right direction and doing as much as they can to optimize collaboration.
Garrick (24:57.922)
I want to ask you about curiosity and where that fits into all of this. But Alison Coward, we're talking to, she's the founder of Bracket, a team culture consultancy helping forward thinking organizations build high performing teams. She's a strategist, facilitator, consultant, and speaker with clients across creative media, tech, and digital sectors. And you're passionate about balancing creativity, productivity, and collaboration.
Alison has a background in leading and facilitating creative teams, holds an MA in enterprise management for the creative arts from UOL, and Alison has written two books, A Pocket Guide to Effective Workshops and Workshop Culture, guide to building teams that thrive. She's delivered keynotes and guest lectures on collaboration, team culture and workshop across the UK, Europe and the US. And we're having a great conversation. But where does curiosity fit into the whole picture in your view?
Alison Coward (25:49.889)
it's for me, it's embedded throughout. I mean, as I mentioned, those kind of pillars are a series of conversations and essentially those conversations are based on questions. What do we need to achieve together as a team? How do we need to be together as a team? Who is on this team? How do we like to work? You know, what conversations do we need to have? And, you know, there aren't tidy answers to this. This is really about getting curious about, you know, what do we need to design as our culture to
set ourselves up in the best possible way to thrive, essentially. Let me get curious about my colleagues, my peers. Let me find out a little bit more about how they are most productive, how they are most creative, how they like to receive feedback. Let me get curious about this meeting that we have. Is there a better way to run it? How can we run that? And also our meetings, our meetings should be based on question, should be.
ideally would be based on questions as well. I have this kind of format that I use for designing meetings and, you know, we identify the purpose, the outcomes, the outputs, but then we want to list the questions that we want to explore together in that meeting, because if we want to create value together, then we're trying to create or discuss something that we haven't discussed before. And in order to do that, we need to ask the right questions to generate that conversation. it's curiosity is
me is inherent in a workshop culture. I don't think you can kind of escape it really.
Paul (27:22.22)
and in the work culture, Alison, I imagine as well. I wanna go, you've worked extensively across both the creative sector and corporate sector. I'd love to know what your experience is in the difference when you're working in those two cultures. My bias would assume that working in the creative industry, you're gonna get more brainstorming creative ideas, but maybe less process. And in the corporate sector, maybe more process and more, but what's your view?
Utterly wrong. What would you share on that?
Alison Coward (27:53.241)
You know what, that's actually spot on. think throughout my career, particularly at the beginning when I started to move into this and I did my MA, I kind of saw myself, if you see that as a spectrum, creative industries at one end and corporate at the other, I kind of saw myself as smack bang in the middle because I wasn't a creative practitioner. Yet one of the things that led my career was helping them to put their ideas into action.
They were great at coming up with the ideas but needed the support to turn it into something productive or to be more productive. And then from a corporate side of things, I could see that, you know, again, they were great at the execution but perhaps needed a little bit more, I guess, I don't know if this is the right word, but training in kind of pausing and being creative and thinking past their first idea and...
feeling that they needed to get to their idea quickly. So I almost kind of saw myself as, or see myself as kind of in the middle of that spectrum. If you're a creative looking down the spectrum, you might look at me and think that I'm slightly more corporate. And if you're corporate looking down the spectrum, that you might look at me and kind of think that I come from a little bit more of a creative background. So I like to think that probably one of my unique viewpoints has been able to see both sides of that. And that's where my passion comes from.
Paul (28:52.363)
Mm-hmm.
Alison Coward (29:15.245)
balancing this creativity and productivity. I do see that there's a real tension there, but they're both sides of the same coin and for me.
Paul (29:24.491)
And have you seen similar challenges when you were working to instill this workshop culture in the culture of an organization? You know, is there an example where you've done this with a more creative organization or indeed with a corp?
Alison Coward (29:38.297)
I think, so within a more creative organisation, I think, you what you mentioned before, I'm just thinking of one client that I worked with, they're a lot more oriented to the whole brainstorming post-it note kind of, you know, way of thinking. So, you know, I might walk in with some sharpies and some post-it notes and they're just much more oriented to that way of working. It doesn't feel alien to them. So they can pick that stuff up much more quickly.
When I've, one of the clients, in fact, one of the first clients that I worked with that was from a professional services firm. And it was actually then that I started to see the potential of a workshop culture because I actually talk about this case study in the book. And I was asked to facilitate a session for them. And I sort of walked into this room and it's this really long conference table. The CEO was sitting at one end and hardly anyone spoke. And I kind of...
came in and I was asked to facilitate a small part of their sort of longest strategy day that they usually had and sort of walked around the room, put the post-it notes and the sharpies out and it just was completely alien to them and it was, you know, it was like again the curiosity like what is this woman asking us to do and I had the pleasure to kind of work with them over a period of time so running more of these workshops and I remember distinctively there was one workshop that they'd asked me to come in and facilitate with them where they'll bring in
partner organisations in and one of things that they remarked was that, know, again with the Post-it notes and the Sharpies, that's kind of one device, but they instantly knew what to do. It wasn't an alien concept to them, whereas their partners were kind of a little bit more apprehensive. So we really did see that shift in that kind of opening up and that creativity over time. They were much more oriented to it at the beginning rather than sort of having to, I guess, help them to work that muscle.
Simon Brown (31:37.721)
So, Alison, something we're super curious about over many episodes now is around the impact AI is having on the world of work. So how around a workshop culture can we be leveraging AI, I guess? And I can think of a few examples where certainly how I've been involved in workshops has changed as a result of AI, but love to know, yeah, what you're seeing is the best practice, what you're seeing is the impact of AI, how our listeners can leverage AI if they're wanting to head towards it.
more of a workshop culture.
Alison Coward (32:10.039)
Yeah, I mean, think one of the most practical ways that I've seen and I have used, and I'm sure probably many of your listeners have used this in some way, when we are in a workshop format, particularly when we're working in an online space, a big part of workshops, particularly in idea generation, is a synthesis. And AI can do that, you know.
Simon Brown (32:30.733)
You
Alison Coward (32:33.131)
very easily, very quickly, saves a lot of time, saves a lot of kind of writing up notes, particularly for facilitator afterwards. I think one of the areas that I'm more curious about when we think about a culture, workshop culture, is going back to kind of what I mentioned earlier when in the conversation, most leaders will acknowledge that this is important, but they're struggling to find the time to do it. And I think I'm really curious as to where AI can support
Simon Brown (32:38.083)
Yes.
Alison Coward (33:01.561)
caught in making some of these processes or conversations around culture much more efficient? Is there a way that we can kind of shortcut some of that so that we get to the end result of a team being able to have these conversations more regularly without having to spend as much as the time that it takes? Yeah, yeah, that's my kind of earliest
early stoo on it.
Simon Brown (33:32.883)
Certainly some of the ways that I've been or we've been applying it has helped in that efficiency of getting to the end piece that typically a workshop environment, know, start with the post-it notes, you everyone put down their ideas, you know, that's your first 20 minutes or whatever. Whereas I found actually, if you ask whatever that first question is of Jack GPT or whatever it may be, you get your list of 20 ideas.
that's going to be probably a pretty good starting point and save you that first 20 minutes. And then you can go to the sort second level or third level straight away versus getting what often may be the fairly obvious stuff out on the table. First of all, that I think that's certainly where I've found it very helpful to sort of fast track to the meaty discussion and let the sort of that first level of idea generation get taken over by AI.
Alison Coward (34:21.625)
Absolutely.
Garrick (34:30.446)
How do you, sorry, I was trying to get off mute. I sorry, I was talking mute. Sorry, start again. Allison, how do you personally define curiosity and curiosity for yourself? And what are you personally most curious about right now? How about that?
Simon Brown (34:30.553)
Okay.
You
Alison Coward (34:45.29)
Ooh.
Alison Coward (34:50.329)
So, I mean, one of the things that I've learned about myself is that I'm kind of in this constant fact, constant, what's the word that I'm looking for? I this constant phase of figuring things out. And I guess the reason I'm always in a constant phase of figuring things out is because I'm curious about things and, you know, get into that phase of having figured it out, then I need to find another thing.
to try and figure out. I guess curiosity for me is, yeah, it doesn't sound like a completely profound definition, but just that ability to keep asking questions and enjoy the exploration of those questions as much as finding the answer.
Garrick (35:37.592)
I'm curious about, we were just talking about AI and short-circuiting the conversations that Simon was talking about. Do you think AI can have application in other workshop areas beyond the initial research or dig up new ideas and the synthesis?
Alison Coward (35:57.675)
I mean, one thing that I feel that I'm slightly apprehensive about is using AI when the conversation about the thing would also be useful. admittedly, I did mention earlier that there is a way that AI can be used to synthesize information. Sometimes the conversation that happens during that synthesis is extremely valuable.
And it's almost like sometimes you have to go through that hard work of the sorting and that chaotic feeling that, you know, AI can very quickly cut through in order to build that connection as a team. So I feel like I'm kind of slightly, I'm pushing back a little bit on sort of using AI only all the time for synthesis and thinking about when might be the best time to use it.
Garrick (36:46.286)
There's something about having to, know, what they say, sometimes the best way out of a problem is through the problem. And sometimes it's good for a team to struggle and figure it out and deal with the differences between ourselves as we come to some sort of collaborative understanding or consensus, I guess. And then there's the idea of AI becoming a companion or to treat AI as an equal member of the team, not necessarily just a.
Alison Coward (36:52.215)
Right.
Garrick (37:16.078)
synthesizer. know, AI, Gentic AI sets up team members and then that has an impact on culture too. How do we start to identify with a companion tool that has equal status to us but we can't necessarily see them?
Alison Coward (37:34.153)
And you know, ask it questions like what am I missing? What are we missing here? You know, we've covered all of this. What else could there be?
Garrick (37:38.327)
Yeah.
Garrick (37:42.99)
I have to ask you, if there is one thing to leave our listeners with today, what would it be?
Alison Coward (37:50.017)
So I think a massive quick win would be to look at your meetings. How do you make your meetings much more about creating value and therefore almost how do you make them as hubs of curiosity? I do feel that great meetings are based from great questions that a team needs to come together and work through.
And so where is your next opportunity to pose questions to your team as opposed to working through a list of agenda items?
Garrick (38:28.396)
Well, we've been talking to Alison Cullard today about workshops and team culture. We talked so much about physical workshops and online workshops and what is the workshop culture, what do facilitators do, and how do we be vulnerable and be empathetic in those situations? How do we fix broken meetings and practical steps like being intentional and designing the process and looking at the environment that you bring people into?
How do we all have the energy of a facilitator and that how does that feed into leadership going forward? Synthesis and the idea that collaboration doesn't just happen on its own. How do we work in large groups and small groups and individual groups and bring those things to bear amongst her five pillars, which include alignment, cohesion, communication, design and change. And the idea that uncertainty is okay and how do we get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable?
as leaders. Leaders don't need all the answers. Speaking our language about the difference between corporate and creative sectors, being about the difference of attitudes towards action, creativity and productivity, and finally AI and synthesis and AI's relationship to workshops and to teams and where that's taking us into the future. But finally, meetings as hubs of curiosity, which I of course...
absolutely endorse and enjoy. from myself and from Simon and Paul, thank you so much, Alison. It's been a great conversation today. I appreciate it very much.
Alison Coward (40:04.877)
Thank you so much for having me.
Simon Brown (40:06.637)
Thanks Alison.
Paul (40:07.493)
Thank you.
Garrick (40:10.198)
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Hello and welcome to this episode of the Curious Advantage podcast. My name is Garrick Jones and I'm one of the co-authors of the book, The Curious Advantage, and today I'm here with my co-authors, Simon Brown and Paul Ashcroft. We're delighted to be joined today by Alison Coward. Hello, Alison.
Simon Brown (00:13.101)
Hello?
Paul (00:15.972)
Hi there.
Alison Coward (00:21.037)
Hello, thank you for having me.
Garrick (00:23.34)
Alison, you are the founder of Bracket, a team culture consultancy and an author of Workshop Culture, a guide to building teams that thrive. That's what we want to have conversation about. But also, can you share a little bit about your journey and how you got to where you are today?
Alison Coward (00:41.239)
Yeah, no, I'd love to. So the early part of my career was working in the creative industries, in arts organisations with creative practitioners, so artists and designers that wanted to make money essentially from their creativity. And part way through working in these organisations that used to do lots of business support and networking exhibitions, I got curious about a question which is how can I support these
this group of people more effectively, what is it about creative businesses that make them so and how can I provide more effective support to them? So I decided to do an MA, Enterprise and Management for the Creative Arts, which was all about that. And through my reading and my early research at the time, this was 20 years ago, 2005, so a long time ago, in the UK, there was a big drive for the creative economy. The government had recognised that
the creative industries were a big driver of the economy in the UK. And so there was lots of research around about what the creative industries were doing. And I was reading all this research and landed on this idea of collaboration and reading books by people like John Halkins and Richard Florida, Charles Ledbetter, research reports from like Demos and Nestor talking about the creative industries and how collaboration and networks were such a key part of the creative sector. At the same time, kind of adjacent to that, I was starting to become
and more aware of online tools, online collaboration tools. And I kind of thought it might be quite interesting to bring those two things together. So my dissertation was literally how can online collaboration tools be used as a business support method for artists and designer makers. And coming out on the other side of this research project, and one of the things I wanted to do was kind of bring independent creatives together into teams and to help them collaborate.
And when I started to do that, I didn't realise that what I was doing as a person that wasn't a creative producer or practitioner, what I was doing was facilitating. And through all the research that I'd read, I've kind of learned a lot about how to manage in inverted commas creativity and the kinds of environments that you needed to create to enable that. And for me, facilitation seemed to be the thing that made sense.
Alison Coward (03:03.533)
So people started kind of looking at me and saying, Alice, and that thing that you're doing with all those creatives, can you come and do that for my team in our organisation? I didn't actually even realise that facilitation was a thing. As I said, it just felt like the most effective way to get the thing done that I needed to get done. And so started facilitating lots of workshops, loving it, loving the format, loving the energy that it brought for myself and teams. And then also getting to the end of these workshops and feeling slightly frustrated because...
I knew that the day had been brilliant. Everyone had a great time, lots of ideas generated, but I knew that once the team got back to their desk the next day and they weren't surrounded by the Post-it notes and the creativity in that environment, they'd just go back to their business as usual. And all of that energy would be forgotten. And I could see that there was a gap between teams wanting to collaborate in their day to day and what they were doing.
in workshops, it was possible because I was seeing it happen happening in these workshops, facilitating it for them. So what was that disconnect there? And that's what set me off on this journey to explore this idea of workshop culture. How can we take some of those elements of workshops, the principles and practices and infuse them into the way that we work every day so we get more of that energy and more of that collaboration on a day to day basis, not just in these these one off events.
Simon Brown (04:27.235)
So that led you to then write the book, I'm assuming, Workshop Culture, so Guide to Building Teams that Thrive. So tell us more on what really is then a workshop culture and how can we adopt that? what's the essence of the book?
Alison Coward (04:43.799)
Yeah, so workshop culture, I define it as a team culture that uses the principles and practices of workshops and facilitations to achieve team collaboration, creativity, productivity. And it's essentially that. is like looking at, what is it that facilitators do in a workshop environment that enables a team to work together effectively, productively, collaborate.
Simon Brown (04:54.862)
Mm-hmm.
Alison Coward (05:08.153)
be engaged in the content that they're creating together, have that environment of psychological safety where everyone feels comfortable to contribute or feels that they can take risks and be vulnerable in front of each other. That environment of empathy. So it's really kind of looking at what a facilitator does, looking at environment and thinking, okay, what can we take from this to infusing our day to day? And there is a very practical element there. So it can come down to...
but literally how meetings are run. I think one of things I talk about in the book a lot is how meetings are broken. it's something that we can't avoid in our organisations and our teams. Yet so many people are dissatisfied with how their meetings are run. And we spend a lot of time in meetings. If our meetings make up a lot of our day and most of those meetings are bad, then that's our experience of work.
And actually we can change the way that we experience those meetings by using some of those workshops and facilitation principles. And then there is also the sort of the other elements, like the kind of, I guess, the energy that a facilitator brings, being more curious, asking questions, having that empathy, patience, the synthesis, and being able to deal with uncertainty. All of those things are things that we need on an everyday basis.
Simon Brown (06:27.843)
So what you described of sort of workshop and then the challenge of the stickiness as you go back in and many of those other ones, what are some practical bits I guess that we can do to be able to live that? So how do we make our meetings better? How do we create that psychological safety? How do we make sure we have that curiosity, that energy that you get from everyone coming together in a workshop? What are some practical steps that we can take?
Alison Coward (06:53.581)
Yeah, I think one of the biggest misconceptions that I have noticed with collaboration and through the years I've been working on this is that many people feel or believe or feel that collaboration should just happen. You just get great people, put them together and then they will gel. And that does happen sometimes, but most of the time we have to be more intentional about it. And that's exactly what a workshop facilitator is doing. We are designing
the environment and considering the dynamics and thinking what is it that a team needs to achieve and how can we design a process that makes it more likely that they are going to get there. And this is what we need to do with our meetings. Again, you know, we often have our meetings by default. We look at time in the calendar and think, OK, everyone's free at that time. Let's send out the invite. Everyone gets into the physical room or virtual room and we run through an agenda.
without any thought about how you are going to run through that agenda. So, you know, with a workshop where thinking about the topics that a team needs to discuss, but also thinking, well, what is the best way to have the conversation around that specific topic, whether it is, you know, a full group discussion or whether it is individual thinking or whether it is small group discussions, whether we're using post-it notes, those kinds of things. We're kind of thinking about all of those devices.
and trying to be as intentional as possible to make it most likely that the team is going to get to the outcome that we intend for them.
Paul (08:26.592)
Alison, in the book, you talk about how a workshop culture can influence how we lead and organise organisations. Could you tell us a bit more about that? And also, why is this such a critical skill for the future of work?
Alison Coward (08:41.965)
Yeah, so.
Let me just have a think about the question before I answer it.
Alison Coward (08:52.259)
So one of the things that I have observed in facilitating workshops is that it almost feels to me that on a micro level, a workshop is what it feels like to lead a team through uncertainty. As a facilitator, as I just mentioned, you may design your agenda and may design your workshop outline. At the same time, you have to hold that so lightly because you have no idea.
how the day is going to go, it really depends on what the team were talking about before, the mood of the people in the room, how people turn up, how people feel on that day. So there's always going to be an element in a workshop that feels, or multiple elements in the workshop, that feels very uncertain. And as a facilitator, you kind of need to hold that uncertainty. It's almost like kind of trusting the process. And I feel that's such a key skill that we need in today's world when we're...
Paul (09:44.757)
Thank
Alison Coward (09:46.905)
faced with so much uncertainty. Essentially leaders, one of the things that they're doing constantly is leading their team through uncertainty. And so we can learn from that in sort of workshops. On a sort of, guess a much more macro level, the whole reason behind what I do by, the whole reason behind what I do, what I do is kind of part of the conversation of making work better. Our workplaces are pretty broken.
We talk about disengagement a lot, leading towards burnout and the need to consider wellbeing. We've got sort productivity challenges, even down to our meetings, and we spend a lot of time at work. I really have this kind of inherent belief that if we can make people's days better at work, that obviously is going to have an impact on their lives. And if we can impact their lives positively, then what kind of, what does that make them?
Paul (10:40.084)
Thank
Alison Coward (10:46.189)
give them the availability to do. There's such a difference between people leaving the work day feeling drained and kind of a bit miserable and a bit annoyed. And then, you know, the spillover into their personal lives versus them leaving work feeling energized and, know, like they had a really great day at work. They're able to share ideas. They felt that their contributions were valued by their team. And again, the spillover into their personal lives.
I've seen that happen in workshops. You know, we get to the end of a workshop and everyone does feel on a high, feels, you energised. And so if we can bring a bit more of that into our day to day, that can have an impact on how we experience our work and how we feel about our work. And then, you know, I've got big, I guess, ambitions for this is, you know, if we do change the workplace and how people feel about work, what does that mean for society?
You know, what impact can people therefore make when they leave work feeling better with all this excess energy or motivation to do something good?
Garrick (11:50.958)
I'll just-
Paul (11:51.02)
you pick on three really, really cool themes there, right? And I'm sure the guys want to pick up on each of these. So around leadership with uncertainty, making work better, and then what's the implications for society? So you get into some quite big, very interesting topics. Let me start with uncertainty, if I could, because I've been in that mode too, where you're leading a session, could be a large session or a complicated session, but you are comfortable as a leader in that role with uncertainty.
What are some of the things in your experience that a lead facilitator, when they step out of that role and into leading, can take away from that experience in the room, out into leading their team? What are some of the practical things that they could do, think about, or change?
Alison Coward (12:39.129)
I think one of the things is shifting from feeling that that uncertainty is wrong and feeling that you need to kind of tidy it up and have the answers and kind of make it.
tie it up in a bow and make it sort of feel clean and finished. That uncertainty is part of it. So I think one of the key skills, I always talk about this as a facilitator, is almost being comfortable with that uncertainty, being comfortable with feeling uncomfortable, and also assuring the team that that uncomfortable feeling isn't inherently bad. It's kind of how we move through it. Some of the qualities that a leader...
that is valuable for a leader in those moments are the kind of the pausing, the patience, the persistence, the empathy as well for understanding that people may be feeling uncomfortable in this moment. The curiosity, the asking questions, you again, it's not a leader needing to have all of the answers in these situations. It's being able to ask the right questions to be able to guide the team.
through that and that takes kind of a genuine curiosity. You know, I don't have to have the answers as a leader, but I'm genuinely curious to understand what it is that my team are thinking or feeling or experiencing in this moment and how do we move through that together.
Simon Brown (14:10.493)
We would fully agree with the need for curiosity. I mean, I absolutely reckon, I think it's almost dangerous as a leader to be too certain about anything because things are changing so much that, I think we need to get comfortable that a level of uncertainty is actually just the reality now. And agree that if it's asking the right questions, creating the safety within the team, but yeah, we don't have to have all of the answers.
Garrick (14:40.832)
Alison, you touched lightly on something that is very close to all of our hearts, and that's idea of being together in workshops, but also being online. You talked about both of them. What's your view on, do we have to be very different because of workshops online? Can workshops online achieve the same things that being together can achieve? What's your view?
Alison Coward (14:51.512)
you
Alison Coward (15:05.357)
same
I'll think about that again in just a hours. I don't want to start this. I think there are pros and cons to each. I am not inherently for or against either online or in-person workshops. I think they both have their value. think, you know, there's some brilliant facilitators out there who are doing amazing things with online workshops and using tools in a fantastic way.
At the same time, there may be times when it makes much more sense for a team to be together in person. You know, if I was to be asked to facilitate an online workshop, it definitely wouldn't be kind of a multi-day, all-day type session because there's a different type of energy that is required when you're online versus in person. The way that I see it though is that from right from the beginning when I started facilitating workshops,
when they were in person. One of the things that I would always want to find out before the day is what the room looked like. I'd want to know, you know, are there windows? Have we got walls to stick things up on? Are we going to be, do we have space to move around? And that would give me a sense of some of the activities that I could design into the workshop. Can we stick flip charts and pieces of flip chart paper on the wall and post-it notes? Can we...
kind of, you know, move in and out of breakout rooms. If there's no windows, do we need to take more breaks? I kind of see the virtual space as a room, essentially. So before the workshop, if I'm facilitating in person, I want to know what's available to me. Likewise, if I'm facilitating an online workshop, well, what are the, what's the functionality of the space that I'm going to be using, whether it's the communication tool, whether it's a platform and therefore how do I design the exercises to support that?
Alison Coward (17:00.971)
And so I think, you know, as I say, I see it as a format, neither inherently good or bad. It's just designing around what you have available to you and kind of thinking about those different formats and how people are going to interact within them.
Simon Brown (17:16.374)
And how have you seen the impact, I guess, either virtual or sort of in person? How have you seen people doing this well, really sort of impact on the nature of work?
Alison Coward (17:29.933)
Well, I mean, the most basic thing is that online workshops provides much more accessibility. There's a lot more flexibility there. It's expensive to bring people together into a space. Not everybody has the resources to do that all of the time. For some types of conversations, it's much preferred. Some people love doing, kind of, know, say multi-day strategy, creative visioning workshops in person.
Simon Brown (17:40.281)
Absolutely.
Alison Coward (17:55.481)
But if you aren't able to do that, then online works just as well. I think I'm not sure if I've answered your question.
Simon Brown (18:04.545)
I guess it's then sort of whether effective online or face-to-face, how having that, I guess, the culture of running it really well, how that workshop culture has really then impacted either in the organisations that you've worked with or how you've seen the difference between doing it badly and doing it well really have an impact.
Alison Coward (18:26.425)
Yeah, I guess one thing that comes to mind is that with a team that say, for example, is hybrid or remote, I guess considering your workshops as meetings and knowing that we can facilitate online makes this stuff a lot more accessible. I if we see a workshop as something where we do have to be together in person and we have to be, you know, with the physical Post-it notes.
Simon Brown (18:45.261)
Mm-hmm.
Alison Coward (18:54.989)
then again, it kind of creates this distance between what we're doing on a day to day versus these kind of one-off events when we get together. Whereas if we've got a hybrid or remote team and we're kind of dropping these ways of working and perhaps in smaller ways, but more consistently over time, then again, it makes this format a lot more accessible rather than seeing it as this kind of special one-off event that we need to prepare for.
Simon Brown (19:21.497)
breaks up that meeting after meeting after meeting that you're actually bringing the creativity and the energy of the workshop format.
Alison Coward (19:24.652)
Absolutely.
Garrick (19:30.35)
your book explores five pillars of high performing teams. If I can read them alignment, cohesion, communication, design and change and can you walk us through those? Why are those five important?
Alison Coward (19:47.913)
So just before I walk through the five pillars, I guess I want to take a little bit of a step back as to why that framework exists. I think one of the things that I see today is that, you know, I don't think you would ever speak to a leader that would say that team culture is important. I think most leaders will acknowledge that team culture is vital.
At the same time, if you were to ask those leaders if they had time to spend on culture, a lot of them would probably find that a lot more difficult to answer. And so I created this framework, not as kind of the ultimate team culture framework, because there are a lot out there, but from my, I guess, 20 years of experience of of research in this and practice in this area, I realised that there's kind of five areas that
feel important for a team to have regular conversations around. So these aren't things that you kind of work through and tick off and then it's done. They're almost kind of buckets of conversations that perhaps the leader or someone that has a capability in the team need to facilitate on an ongoing basis to keep that idea of team culture top of mind. So alignment is around sort of vision and purpose as a team.
Are we clear on what our goals are, what our purpose is as a team? Are we all on the same page and are we sure that we're all pointing in the same direction? From that, we can create how we need to be as a team. So this might be sort of team values or principles that hold us accountable to behaving in a way that is going to make us more likely to achieve our goals, making sure that we're acting in alignment of the team that we need to be.
Cohesion is, I guess, on two levels, the connection on two levels. The individual ensuring that they can see their contribution and their part in that bigger picture. Do they see where their skills, expertise, ways of working is necessary in that team achieving the higher level goal? And also, are the individuals in the team connected to each other in terms of...
Alison Coward (22:02.699)
understanding again the skills, expertise, perspectives that every individual brings and understanding different working styles, different ways of working. And what that creates is, know, again, in purpose of that alignment, that higher team vision and purpose, it starts to create an understanding that in order to work together, in order to achieve that goal, we need all of these different working styles on the team, we need these different ways of working. And so
building more empathy and understanding of different perspectives, but also sort of looking at how you might handle the conflict that arises between that diversity. Having that foundation of empathy and understanding is one way of kind of preempting or working through conflict when it arises. Communication is essentially what other kinds of conversations, what's the information that we need to share? What kinds of conversations do we need to have and in what format?
So it does largely come down to meetings. And as I mentioned, you know, often we kind of have a default format for meetings when actually depending on the kind of conversation that we need to have and what we want to achieve, meetings can look very different. So we may have a very short update meeting or like I've mentioned, it may be these kind of multi-day strategy sessions. And we need to design what types of conversations we need to have and when again, to make it more likely that we're going to achieve.
what we want to achieve as a team. Design is kind of anything that falls outside of that. So design are routines, rituals, systems, processes that a team may put in place, again, to make it more likely or to ensure that they are set up in the best possible way to achieve their team. So this may be sort of little checking rituals, connection rituals. It may be even technology or tools that the team need to use in order to share information or to stay.
in contact and up to date with their work. And then the final pillar, changes about continuous improvement. How frequently is a team reviewing the way that they're working in context of what's happening around them? Are they sure that the way that they're working right now is fit for purpose for the context and the environment that they work within? So this might mean looking at some of the team habits that they have.
Alison Coward (24:27.449)
and some of the ways of working. It may even be, you know, going all the way back to the team vision and purpose and seeing if that needs a refresh or renew. And so all of these pillars say they're they're kind of buckets of regular conversations that need to be facilitated within a team. And then essentially they're kind of a list of questions that a team needs to be constantly asking themselves and to make sure that they're all connected and all pointing in the right direction and doing as much as they can to optimize collaboration.
Garrick (24:57.922)
I want to ask you about curiosity and where that fits into all of this. But Alison Coward, we're talking to, she's the founder of Bracket, a team culture consultancy helping forward thinking organizations build high performing teams. She's a strategist, facilitator, consultant, and speaker with clients across creative media, tech, and digital sectors. And you're passionate about balancing creativity, productivity, and collaboration.
Alison has a background in leading and facilitating creative teams, holds an MA in enterprise management for the creative arts from UOL, and Alison has written two books, A Pocket Guide to Effective Workshops and Workshop Culture, guide to building teams that thrive. She's delivered keynotes and guest lectures on collaboration, team culture and workshop across the UK, Europe and the US. And we're having a great conversation. But where does curiosity fit into the whole picture in your view?
Alison Coward (25:49.889)
it's for me, it's embedded throughout. I mean, as I mentioned, those kind of pillars are a series of conversations and essentially those conversations are based on questions. What do we need to achieve together as a team? How do we need to be together as a team? Who is on this team? How do we like to work? You know, what conversations do we need to have? And, you know, there aren't tidy answers to this. This is really about getting curious about, you know, what do we need to design as our culture to
set ourselves up in the best possible way to thrive, essentially. Let me get curious about my colleagues, my peers. Let me find out a little bit more about how they are most productive, how they are most creative, how they like to receive feedback. Let me get curious about this meeting that we have. Is there a better way to run it? How can we run that? And also our meetings, our meetings should be based on question, should be.
ideally would be based on questions as well. I have this kind of format that I use for designing meetings and, you know, we identify the purpose, the outcomes, the outputs, but then we want to list the questions that we want to explore together in that meeting, because if we want to create value together, then we're trying to create or discuss something that we haven't discussed before. And in order to do that, we need to ask the right questions to generate that conversation. it's curiosity is
me is inherent in a workshop culture. I don't think you can kind of escape it really.
Paul (27:22.22)
and in the work culture, Alison, I imagine as well. I wanna go, you've worked extensively across both the creative sector and corporate sector. I'd love to know what your experience is in the difference when you're working in those two cultures. My bias would assume that working in the creative industry, you're gonna get more brainstorming creative ideas, but maybe less process. And in the corporate sector, maybe more process and more, but what's your view?
Utterly wrong. What would you share on that?
Alison Coward (27:53.241)
You know what, that's actually spot on. think throughout my career, particularly at the beginning when I started to move into this and I did my MA, I kind of saw myself, if you see that as a spectrum, creative industries at one end and corporate at the other, I kind of saw myself as smack bang in the middle because I wasn't a creative practitioner. Yet one of the things that led my career was helping them to put their ideas into action.
They were great at coming up with the ideas but needed the support to turn it into something productive or to be more productive. And then from a corporate side of things, I could see that, you know, again, they were great at the execution but perhaps needed a little bit more, I guess, I don't know if this is the right word, but training in kind of pausing and being creative and thinking past their first idea and...
feeling that they needed to get to their idea quickly. So I almost kind of saw myself as, or see myself as kind of in the middle of that spectrum. If you're a creative looking down the spectrum, you might look at me and think that I'm slightly more corporate. And if you're corporate looking down the spectrum, that you might look at me and kind of think that I come from a little bit more of a creative background. So I like to think that probably one of my unique viewpoints has been able to see both sides of that. And that's where my passion comes from.
Paul (28:52.363)
Mm-hmm.
Alison Coward (29:15.245)
balancing this creativity and productivity. I do see that there's a real tension there, but they're both sides of the same coin and for me.
Paul (29:24.491)
And have you seen similar challenges when you were working to instill this workshop culture in the culture of an organization? You know, is there an example where you've done this with a more creative organization or indeed with a corp?
Alison Coward (29:38.297)
I think, so within a more creative organisation, I think, you what you mentioned before, I'm just thinking of one client that I worked with, they're a lot more oriented to the whole brainstorming post-it note kind of, you know, way of thinking. So, you know, I might walk in with some sharpies and some post-it notes and they're just much more oriented to that way of working. It doesn't feel alien to them. So they can pick that stuff up much more quickly.
When I've, one of the clients, in fact, one of the first clients that I worked with that was from a professional services firm. And it was actually then that I started to see the potential of a workshop culture because I actually talk about this case study in the book. And I was asked to facilitate a session for them. And I sort of walked into this room and it's this really long conference table. The CEO was sitting at one end and hardly anyone spoke. And I kind of...
came in and I was asked to facilitate a small part of their sort of longest strategy day that they usually had and sort of walked around the room, put the post-it notes and the sharpies out and it just was completely alien to them and it was, you know, it was like again the curiosity like what is this woman asking us to do and I had the pleasure to kind of work with them over a period of time so running more of these workshops and I remember distinctively there was one workshop that they'd asked me to come in and facilitate with them where they'll bring in
partner organisations in and one of things that they remarked was that, know, again with the Post-it notes and the Sharpies, that's kind of one device, but they instantly knew what to do. It wasn't an alien concept to them, whereas their partners were kind of a little bit more apprehensive. So we really did see that shift in that kind of opening up and that creativity over time. They were much more oriented to it at the beginning rather than sort of having to, I guess, help them to work that muscle.
Simon Brown (31:37.721)
So, Alison, something we're super curious about over many episodes now is around the impact AI is having on the world of work. So how around a workshop culture can we be leveraging AI, I guess? And I can think of a few examples where certainly how I've been involved in workshops has changed as a result of AI, but love to know, yeah, what you're seeing is the best practice, what you're seeing is the impact of AI, how our listeners can leverage AI if they're wanting to head towards it.
more of a workshop culture.
Alison Coward (32:10.039)
Yeah, I mean, think one of the most practical ways that I've seen and I have used, and I'm sure probably many of your listeners have used this in some way, when we are in a workshop format, particularly when we're working in an online space, a big part of workshops, particularly in idea generation, is a synthesis. And AI can do that, you know.
Simon Brown (32:30.733)
You
Alison Coward (32:33.131)
very easily, very quickly, saves a lot of time, saves a lot of kind of writing up notes, particularly for facilitator afterwards. I think one of the areas that I'm more curious about when we think about a culture, workshop culture, is going back to kind of what I mentioned earlier when in the conversation, most leaders will acknowledge that this is important, but they're struggling to find the time to do it. And I think I'm really curious as to where AI can support
Simon Brown (32:38.083)
Yes.
Alison Coward (33:01.561)
caught in making some of these processes or conversations around culture much more efficient? Is there a way that we can kind of shortcut some of that so that we get to the end result of a team being able to have these conversations more regularly without having to spend as much as the time that it takes? Yeah, yeah, that's my kind of earliest
early stoo on it.
Simon Brown (33:32.883)
Certainly some of the ways that I've been or we've been applying it has helped in that efficiency of getting to the end piece that typically a workshop environment, know, start with the post-it notes, you everyone put down their ideas, you know, that's your first 20 minutes or whatever. Whereas I found actually, if you ask whatever that first question is of Jack GPT or whatever it may be, you get your list of 20 ideas.
that's going to be probably a pretty good starting point and save you that first 20 minutes. And then you can go to the sort second level or third level straight away versus getting what often may be the fairly obvious stuff out on the table. First of all, that I think that's certainly where I've found it very helpful to sort of fast track to the meaty discussion and let the sort of that first level of idea generation get taken over by AI.
Alison Coward (34:21.625)
Absolutely.
Garrick (34:30.446)
How do you, sorry, I was trying to get off mute. I sorry, I was talking mute. Sorry, start again. Allison, how do you personally define curiosity and curiosity for yourself? And what are you personally most curious about right now? How about that?
Simon Brown (34:30.553)
Okay.
You
Alison Coward (34:45.29)
Ooh.
Alison Coward (34:50.329)
So, I mean, one of the things that I've learned about myself is that I'm kind of in this constant fact, constant, what's the word that I'm looking for? I this constant phase of figuring things out. And I guess the reason I'm always in a constant phase of figuring things out is because I'm curious about things and, you know, get into that phase of having figured it out, then I need to find another thing.
to try and figure out. I guess curiosity for me is, yeah, it doesn't sound like a completely profound definition, but just that ability to keep asking questions and enjoy the exploration of those questions as much as finding the answer.
Garrick (35:37.592)
I'm curious about, we were just talking about AI and short-circuiting the conversations that Simon was talking about. Do you think AI can have application in other workshop areas beyond the initial research or dig up new ideas and the synthesis?
Alison Coward (35:57.675)
I mean, one thing that I feel that I'm slightly apprehensive about is using AI when the conversation about the thing would also be useful. admittedly, I did mention earlier that there is a way that AI can be used to synthesize information. Sometimes the conversation that happens during that synthesis is extremely valuable.
And it's almost like sometimes you have to go through that hard work of the sorting and that chaotic feeling that, you know, AI can very quickly cut through in order to build that connection as a team. So I feel like I'm kind of slightly, I'm pushing back a little bit on sort of using AI only all the time for synthesis and thinking about when might be the best time to use it.
Garrick (36:46.286)
There's something about having to, know, what they say, sometimes the best way out of a problem is through the problem. And sometimes it's good for a team to struggle and figure it out and deal with the differences between ourselves as we come to some sort of collaborative understanding or consensus, I guess. And then there's the idea of AI becoming a companion or to treat AI as an equal member of the team, not necessarily just a.
Alison Coward (36:52.215)
Right.
Garrick (37:16.078)
synthesizer. know, AI, Gentic AI sets up team members and then that has an impact on culture too. How do we start to identify with a companion tool that has equal status to us but we can't necessarily see them?
Alison Coward (37:34.153)
And you know, ask it questions like what am I missing? What are we missing here? You know, we've covered all of this. What else could there be?
Garrick (37:38.327)
Yeah.
Garrick (37:42.99)
I have to ask you, if there is one thing to leave our listeners with today, what would it be?
Alison Coward (37:50.017)
So I think a massive quick win would be to look at your meetings. How do you make your meetings much more about creating value and therefore almost how do you make them as hubs of curiosity? I do feel that great meetings are based from great questions that a team needs to come together and work through.
And so where is your next opportunity to pose questions to your team as opposed to working through a list of agenda items?
Garrick (38:28.396)
Well, we've been talking to Alison Cullard today about workshops and team culture. We talked so much about physical workshops and online workshops and what is the workshop culture, what do facilitators do, and how do we be vulnerable and be empathetic in those situations? How do we fix broken meetings and practical steps like being intentional and designing the process and looking at the environment that you bring people into?
How do we all have the energy of a facilitator and that how does that feed into leadership going forward? Synthesis and the idea that collaboration doesn't just happen on its own. How do we work in large groups and small groups and individual groups and bring those things to bear amongst her five pillars, which include alignment, cohesion, communication, design and change. And the idea that uncertainty is okay and how do we get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable?
as leaders. Leaders don't need all the answers. Speaking our language about the difference between corporate and creative sectors, being about the difference of attitudes towards action, creativity and productivity, and finally AI and synthesis and AI's relationship to workshops and to teams and where that's taking us into the future. But finally, meetings as hubs of curiosity, which I of course...
absolutely endorse and enjoy. from myself and from Simon and Paul, thank you so much, Alison. It's been a great conversation today. I appreciate it very much.
Alison Coward (40:04.877)
Thank you so much for having me.
Simon Brown (40:06.637)
Thanks Alison.
Paul (40:07.493)
Thank you.
Garrick (40:10.198)
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