“Tell me and I will forget
Show me and I will remember
Involve me and I will understand”

We’ve all seen that quote. I’m sure many of us have discussed it in leadership teams or pondered on it at conferences where it’s been up there in lights as the presenter goes on to tell their story.

It’s a quote that really resonates with me. Too often we all go to tell mode .. it’s not intentional .. it’s the quick fix approach .. it solves the ask or the problem in that moment and life moves on.

Show me / train me / teach me takes a bit more time and often we may feel as if no-one has the time or inclination to go through that “show” or what often is a “train” process – depending on how the show is done (it can fall back into tell) the ability for someone to go on a master the challenge in the future can be hit and miss but it is a step up from just tell.

The involve approach is one that the more I see it and the more I try and practise it the more I love it.

In many ways it involves stepping back, stepping up asking more questions, considering different perspectives and getting insight – without doubt you see people on all sides of this type of approach learning, developing and often a new way emerging that is a step change in what would have been told before.

The new addition I’ve seen to the infamous quote is..

“Give me a platform and I will contribute”

And this for me is a step up again – it draws me to the collaboration tools and how they are and could be viewed as the perfect platform to enable contribution and reach “Uber” levels of involvement.

The Miro and MURALS of this world are the perfect platforms to “host” canvases, to create “miroverse” and enable people to contribute, to reflect, to consider. They could be the perfect platforms to drive inclusions and address diversity and enable people to participate where and when ever they can.

The world of those two day workshops with everyone in a room will be looked back with the same restrictions of the “flip chart paper” .. they restricted thinking to the size of the room and the time that they had – if you weren’t in the room you couldn’t contribute – the rekeying into PowerPoint or Visio may have lost some of the discussion and only those with the biggest budgets who had a team of people keeping the boards up to date as you wrote on post it notes could evolve the story.

The world with virtual boards means the boundaries of “involvement” can be extended – time can be spent discussing and exploring ideas rather than rekeying and remodelling the physical paper post it’s into an online tool.. people can reflect and add to the canvases outside of the two day event.

For those that fully embrace the online platforms I can see the “boards” taking over from the “team rooms” and “PowerPoint decks” as the “board” is place to go to contribute, review and make decisions on the way forward. “Board” masters/facilitators will emerge who can create a buzz, encourage and analyse the contribution and manage “campaigns” and 100 day sprints.

We will have steering group meetings and maybe board room discussions where the virtual boards are front and centre .. more post it’s will be added .. better outcomes shaped and the creative environment of the “board” rather than the “deck” will move us all more away from the “tell” mode. The death by PowerPoint era will be over.

The black belt and masters of this environment will have AI operating across the “miroverse” that goes beyond the basic “templates” you might like to “post it’s” that others have raised around this subject in other boards across the “miroverse”. Sentimental analysis will be embedded and we will move from spell checking to some form of predictive texting post its.

I’m excited about where the world is heading .. how the Tell era could be over and the involve era and human centred era supported by collaborative platforms is emerging.

What about you? What do you think? Am i smoking something?