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Whether you're facilitating workshops, leading teams, or navigating complex decisions, here you'll find practical tools, frameworks, and lessons drawn from my real-world work with leadership teams and organizations.
I'm Jackie Colburn. Strategist, facilitator, human.
For nearly two decades, I've partnered with teams across industries to navigate complexity, unlock possibilities, and design a better way forward.
Resources to help you walk away from burnout
A few months ago, I shared an honest account of how I got into and managed to walk away from burnout. I never imagined that sharing my story would reach 20K+ people and receive so many replies. In response to all the emails and messages, I put together a list of suggestions and resources for beating burnout. Take what works and leave the rest!
How to have hard conversations: The 4-step guide
How many times have you dreaded having a hard conversation, or over-thought how it might transpire in anticipation of it being difficult, uncomfortable, or unproductive? The inevitability is that most of us will have a hard conversation at some point in the not too distant future. So, what can we do to make them better? This article includes 4 practical approaches we can start using today to make our interactions more productive.
5 tips for leaders who want to get more out of team collaboration
If you’re a leader kicking off a new project with your team, or ideating on a new product your company could launch, it’s essential to be intentional about how you plan for and guide collaborative sessions to make them a success. Apply these five facilitation learnings to your work to ramp up the effectiveness of your collaborative sessions, and have a more powerful impact on the teams you lead.
5 reasons leaders should love Design Sprints (and use them!)
Design Sprints have the incredible ability to unlock the full potential of a team’s creativity and push innovation to new heights – that’s why they’re such a powerful leadership tool. After nearly eight years of facilitating Design Sprints, I can confidently say they’re just as effective now as they ever were. If you’re having a hard time getting over the commitment hump, here are 5 reasons why you really can’t afford not to Sprint with your team.
How to design a winning workshop: Step 5 of 5
Don’t let the ideas and energy you’ve generated in your workshop stall out. End on a high note by facilitating the fifth and final part of a winning workshop: wrap-up activities. This article covers my favorite methods – the ones that outline a path forward to ensure your team maintains momentum.
How to design a winning workshop: Step 4 of 5
In today’s installment of my series on intelligent workshop design, I’ll be sharing my favorite facilitation activities for idea generation – the ones that elevate brainstorming sessions from mere discussions to the kind of collaboration that produces actionable, viable possibilities.
How to name a product: From brainstorm to buzzworthy
Naming a new product isn’t easy, but it doesn’t have to be painful. It can be tempting to slap an acronym on it and call it a day, but taking time to come up with the perfect name is truly worth the effort. Here are my tips for picking a great product name, and a guide to get you get started on the naming process with your team.
Lessons learned from quitting Facebook and Instagram 3.5 years ago
I quit social media 3.5 years ago and am opening up about the initial change and impact on my brain, some longer-term effects, and practices for eliminating or reducing the use of social media in your own life.
What do workshop facilitators do?
Most workshops and complex problem-solving endeavors are far more successful with a facilitator present. So, what is it about a great facilitator that unlocks this potential? Check out the three key abilities that a great facilitator brings to the table – think of them as the ingredients that, when present, make a workshop feel fruitful and satisfying.
A survival guide for Product Managers working with challenging stakeholders
In a perfect world, we'd have perfect professional chemistry with all of our colleagues. But alas, it's not a perfect world—not even close. Fortunately, even if there are certain stakeholders you mesh with less than others, it's almost always possible to overcome personality clash and find a way forward. Here are the tips I've found to be most helpful for working with, not against, your most difficult teammates.
How I walked away from burnout (and 3 tips to help you do the same)
How did a self-care promoting, work-life-balance advocate wake up one day and realize that burnout had gripped my life? And what could I do to escape the cycle and find a new, more sustainable way of being? This is the story of my “burnout intervention” and how I’ve spent the last year of my life making a concerted effort to break free from the toxic cycle.
Steal these guidelines for your next meeting
There’s no magic button to eliminate unruly behavior among workshop participants, but there are a few things facilitators can do to get ahead of it. In this post, I share my four favorite ground rules that set teams up for better meetings and workshops, along with a few bonus rules that apply to virtual sessions.