The Hungry Toolkit

You are what you eat.

The purpose of the Hungry Toolkit is to help you create real change in your business interactions in a way that is easier, better and funner. The blog is geared toward the palate of business leaders, presenters, Learning & Development professionals, internal and external consultants, and other human beings who want to drive results through how they communicate.

You see, not so long ago, I wrote a book. It didn’t begin as a book. The intention was to create something more along the lines of a concise, helpful pamphlet people could download to read some of our tips and learnings about facilitation. We thought of it as a “cookbook” – the first in a series of offerings (by “we,” I mean the collaborators in On Your Feet, a business consultancy that uses highly experiential methods – including improvisation – to help companies like Nike, Intel, DreamWorks, GE, Disney and others with communication, creativity and change). But there was way too much to say. (As my partner will tell you, I tend to blow right past the Pareto Principle and apply my own 95/20 rule.) Before I knew it, the pamphlet was a full-blown book, The Deeper, Funner Facilitation Cookbook.

As soon as our Cookbook arrived on the scene, readers started asking for more tools and examples they could plug into the overall framework we’d laid out—a seven-step recipe for great facilitated meetings, offsites and presentations.

“The way we’re making decisions in our leadership meetings just isn’t cutting it. What would you do?” “I’m trying to show, not tell, the value – but I’m finding it difficult. Do you have any more examples or tips to make it easier?”

Clearly, the Cookbook wasn’t done writing itself. And yes, people were asking US for more tools, but as soon as we started the conversation by putting this book out into the world, we also knew that we, too, had much more to learn – including from YOU.

When it all comes down to it, facilitating groups isn’t just about what happens in the room. It’s about driving change: helping groups learn together, tackle challenges, co-create a vision for what’s next, and stride towards that vision. How people and groups interact to lead the evolution of their businesses – and themselves – is what we’re really interested in (and what could provide enough material for an entire shelf of Cookbooks!). So this blog isn’t just about presenting or leading meetings. It’s about facilitating change, and digging into the often-mysterious ways change happens.

In the Cookbook, we strongly encouraged each reader to start their own “Hungry Toolkit” – an ever-growing collection of exercises, tools, games, books and examples that wants to be fed. This blog is the “ever-growing” part of our Hungry Toolkit. Dig in.