The lack of education on how to manage collaborative groups – especially when you don’t manage the members – leaves many opportunities for Organizational Monsters to undermine the success of collaboration which can cost more than just money. You don’t learn how to build collaborative productivity in school and often this important skillset is excluded from the workplace trainings offered. If it is covered it always fails to focus on the actual mechanisms of collaboration.
That is why Planosaurus offers an original and unique collaboration management training program for professionals who manage and lead collaborative work. This program is unique because it focuses on the mechanisms of collaboration so participants are better equipped to envision, design, and manage collaborative work even when they don’t supervise other collaborators.
Planosaurus blends original content, monsters, humor, and activities in order to take an in-depth look at common collaboration management challenges and help participants develop both confidence and actionable skills. Our programs seamlessly blend elements from project management, program management, process improvement, change management, storytelling, strategic planning, and emergency management to extract the best concepts and tools a collaborative manager can have.
Planosaurus designs training programs for collaborative leaders and/or managers to meet the specific resources and needs of our clients. That means if our standard formats don’t work, we can work with you to utilize the best fit for your organization such as shorter modules, more group work, and facilitated discussions to break through tough issues.
Sometimes, you don’t have enough people for an onsite course or someone needs guidance working through real collaborative problems. That is why Planosaurus offers coaching to help individuals increase their knowledge, skills, and confidence in private sessions which can be conducted onsite or virtually.
Whether you’re organizing a large conference, small meeting, or anything in between, Organizational Monsters make for a great keynote and breakout topic. We work closely with your education department or meeting planner to deliver engaging sessions designed to generate the greatest value so participants can immediately put into place what they’ve learned.
There is a running joke about a committee being a Black Hole for a reason. Collaborative groups are the framework for all collaborative work even when they are informal and unnamed. Ensuring boards, committees, and teams can achieve collaborative productivity free of stressful politics or infestations of Organizational Monster requires serious skills especially if the group can withstand normal turnover. This flagship program also serves to introduce many of the concepts and tools that are explored in more detail in other programs.
Technical project management (e.g. PMI) can be a valuable tool for certain types of projects. However, if you are managing a collaborative project that is not under the normal hierarchy – it can fall short. This program simplifies the technical aspects of project management and translates them for a collaborative environment. Unlike technical project management (e.g., PMI), it explores how to manage people and work outside of a hierarchical reporting line so you can manage work when you don’t manage the workers.
Effectively communicating with stakeholders can provide valuable insight, better results and ensure a smoother process. However, it is more art than science and requires a balance of knowledge and skills in order to work with stakeholders in a way that is mutually beneficial. This program will show participants techniques for managing stakeholder expectations and communications.
Project life cycles are commonly used to structure the planning process for major initiatives. Unfortunately, technical project management ignores the complexity of collaboration and collaborative groups throughout each stage of the process. This course introduces the Planosaurus Life Cycle which can be used by any organization to plan any collaborative initiative from beginning to end. This program will show participants how to design a project life cycle for collaborative-based work. Without a tool to help articulate the big process, you’d end up with a Circle of Strife.
Boards, committees, and teams can produce a plethora of meetings with little to show for them. Bad meetings often reflect bigger, solvable problems within a group that rear their ugly heads when people come together. Effective meetings that people want to participate in require planners and facilitators to understand the life cycle of a meeting and demonstrate competency throughout the planning, facilitating, and follow-up processes. This program shows participants how to address the root cause of meeting fatigue and read the fine print before buying a ticket to Meetapalooza.
Occasionally, you can just Wing It and everything turns out ok. Technically ‘not planning’ is a strategy, it is rarely a good one. Strategic planning has become synonymous with c-suites, boards, retreats, and vague (i.e. “high level”) documents. Typically, ‘strategic planning’ often fails to generate enough ‘planning’ to measure results and guide those responsible for implementing the strategy. This program will show participants how to conduct the strategic planning process so that it provides a strong framework for further planning, production, and evaluation.
Planosaurus believes that collaboration can be an effective strategy for producing better quality results faster and in a cost-effective way. Whether you need help achieving collaborative productivity or supporting collaborative work – we are here to help.