Engage Your Audience, Please

Recently I went to a webinar on ‘how people learn’. The first slide stated “people learn by doing,” and the last slide said “don’t give a lecture.” Yet the 45 minute webinar was a lecture with no interaction with the attendees and certainly no learning by doing.
This was especially ironic because of the topic, and the message, but is true of so many webinars. What is stopping people from making online webinars engaging?
Is it Time for a 4 Day Week?

Andrew Barnes is one of the leading promoters of the four-day week across the world. As Founder of Perpetual Guardian in New Zealand, he implemented this approach back in 2018.
Andrew will be speaking at the 2022 Happy Workplaces Conference on 12th May.
Impact Players: How to Have a Real Impact in Your Job

What makes the difference between somebody who is simply a contributor and somebody who makes a real difference? That is the question that Liz Wiseman addresses in her new book, Impact Players.
Liz was a standout speaker at our 2020 conference, and is back again for our 2022 Happy Workplaces Conference on 12th May.
Vivek Menon at Danfoss: Building a Teal Bubble in a Large Company

I am often asked whether you can build happy trust-based workplaces within a larger more hierarchical organisation. So I was very interested to hear about the eSteering team at Danfoss, a 120 person unit within a 40,000 strong company.
Vivek Menon, a Senior Director at the Danish company Danfoss, explained at the Teal Around the World Conference how they created a culture of trust and freedom. Vivek will be speaking at the 2022 Happy Workplaces Conference.
How Do You Help Your Interviewees Succeed?

Last year, Happy held our first recruitment for online facilitators. As we always do in our interviews, we avoid asking questions and get people to do what they would do in the role.
After a disastrous first round of interviews, find out how Henry and the team set up their interviewees to succeed in this blog.
How to Make a Dynamic Data Validation Drop-Down List in Excel
Are you fed up with having to continually add new data to your data validation drop-down lists? Are you also fed up with having to modify the source data to extend the list manually each time new data has been entered?
In this blog, Edmund, one of our Office experts, will show you how to make dynamic data validation drop-down lists and extend the lists automatically when new data is entered.
How to Use the Excel Dynamic Array FILTER Function

What do you do if you want to Lookup multiple criteria that returns all match results, not just the first match? Then the new Excel Dynamic Array FILTER formula will come to the rescue. It will take you to the future!
This function is only available to Office 365 subscribers.
Book Review: No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention

For me the best business books include stories and No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer is packed with them. By the end you will understand all about the remarkable Netflix culture. And you will be challenged.
Reed Hastings, founder of Netflix, has teamed up with Erin Meyer, a Professor at INSEAD business school and author of The Culture Map. She interviewed 200 Netflix staff and so produces an interesting balance to the normal totally gung-ho approach of a book like this.
Teach For All: A Global Self-Managing Organisation

Five years ago staff at Teach For All came together and proposed dismantling the senior team, changing the role of managers and exploring new ways of working. “The senior team was abolished on the spot!” explains Marwa Farouq, Global Head of Operations.
Marwa will be speaking at the 2022 Happy Workplaces Conference on May 12th about Teach for All’s journey towards self-management. It is a remarkable story with a lot to learn from.