Do you feel guilty taking your morning coffee to the back deck on a work day?
The thought crossed my mind as I soaked up this morning’s early spring sunshine.
As I batted it away, another thought took its place.
This is where the real thinking happens. Where dots connect. Where ideas gel.
That stolen half hour is what psychologists call diffused thinking. It’s where we work without feeling like we’re working.
Most of the time we operate in focused thinking. Head down. Tail up. Thumping the keyboard.
Both are not just useful but essential.
It’s why my learning programs happen in small chunks.
Not just for digestibility, but to let ideas percolate between sessions. To leave room for the thinking that doesn’t feel like thinking.
When did you last allow yourself 15 minutes in the sun on a work day? Did anything surprise you when you did?
Go on. Even if you are in the office, sneak off for 15 minutes to think.
You’ll be glad you did.
More soon,
Davina
Whenever you're ready, here are five other ways I can help you:
Elevate, the book – helps leaders set their teams up to set up a new dynamic across their team that will elevate everyone’s skills, helping the team get better, faster decisions.
Engage, the book – helps individual contributors prepare papers and presentations that leaders can approve without reworking.
Engage, the self-paced course – supports both individuals and leaders prepare more insightful papers and presentations for senior leaders and boards.
Extreme Clarity, the 2-hour workshop – introduces techniques for structuring your messaging.
Board Paper Bootcamp, the 2-week program – helps you clarify and convey complex ideas to senior leaders and boards.
WANT TO LISTEN?
- Risk Management = Change Management
- Richard Medcalf - Making Time for Strategy
- Baking Learning & Growth into BAU
- Helping Leaders 'shift testing left' to derisk projects
- A Case Study in Digitial Transformation
- How to help a senior leader come back from a misstep
- How to hit the ground running in a big new role
- How to communicate during great change
- How to turbo charge your transformation
- How to make your presentation butterflies fly in formatio
- Introducing my two new books: Engage and Elevat
- Implementing unpopular decisions with minimal political damage
- Overcoming resistance to coaching
- How to match your method with your message
RELATED POSTS
Nervous about presenting? That's good news.
Nervous about presenting to senior people? Good. It means you care. Here's how to build real influence before you even walk in the room.
Addition bias – why your messages aren't landing
Why your messages aren't landing might come down to one bias: addition. Here's the simple fix that changed how IKEA's teams worked.
From template mode to thinking mode
Learn a better way to get to the heart of your message in half the time. It's about focusing on ‘thinking' first, not ‘writing'.
5 communication clangers
Have you ever finished a presentation and wondered if you drowns them in detail? You aren't alone! Here are 5 ways to avoid common communication mistakes.
Precursors to persuasion
Want your great idea to gain traction? Focus on these foundational precursors to persuasion and increase your proposal's chances of influencing decisions.
How to align your messaging without creating a monster
Learn five strategic techniques to socialize your messaging effectively without creating a Frankenstein document.
ABOUT AUTHOR: DAVINA STANLEY
I love what I do.
I help senior leaders and their teams prepare high-quality papers and presentations in a fraction of the time.
This involves 'nailing' the message that will quickly engage decision makers in the required outcome.
I leverage 25+ years' experience including
- learning structured thinking techniques at McKinsey in Hong Kong in the mid 1990s before coaching and training their teams globally as a freelancer for a further 15 years
- being approved to teach the Pyramid Principle by Barbara Minto in 2009
- helping CEOs, C-suite leaders and their reports deeply understand their stakeholder needs and communicate accordingly
- seeing leaders cut the number of times they review major papers by ~30% and teams cut the amount of time they take to prepare major papers by ~20%*
- watching senior meetings focus on substantive discussions and better decisions rather than trying to clarify the issue
My approach helps anyone who needs to engage senior leaders and Boards.
Recent clients include 7Eleven, KPMG, Mercer, Meta, Woolworths.
Learn more at www.clarityfirstprogram.com
(*) Numbers are based on 2023 client benchmarking results.
