Maria Burke Design

07/18/2024

Book review: The Pop-Up Pitch by Dan Roam, 5 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

(note: I do not give away 5 stars lightly)

I love it when an author understands their subject so well that they can condense mind-blowing wisdom into something clear and succinct. 🤯

This book explains that the most effective way to compel people to take action is by telling a story. It breaks down the archetypical hero's journey into 10 steps that YOU can use to tell your own story.

I found it extremely valuable for organizing my thoughts regarding the value I bring to my clients.

I'd highly recommend this to business owners, sellers, or anyone who needs to give presentations regularly.



https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1541774515/

07/17/2024

New case study: read how I helped this team improve meetings and increase ownership (in just 3 hours)

Spoiler alert: pizza was involved 🍕

Finally getting around to updating my website with more recent work! Read more about this team's challenges and how we addressed them here 👇🏼

https://www.maria-burke.com/project/team-alignment-workshop/

07/16/2024

On doing hard things: hiking the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim 🏜️

🥵 It's over 100°F. I've just hiked 10 miles down 4,500 feet and still have 5 miles and 1,000 feet of descent to go. I'm cursing the people who told us we were "close" eons ago, and I'm trying not to think about the 10 miles I have to hike tomorrow.

Why am I doing this again ⁉️

One of my intentions this year was to get better at doing hard things *because I want to*.

See, I'm good at doing difficult things because I or someone else think I should. I motivate myself through shame ("if you don't do this you're a failure"). The result is that I'm never satisfied, and feelings of accomplishment are fleeting at best. 😞

I've become better at stepping back and saying no to things I don't want to do. 🙅‍♀️

But it's still hard for me to distinguish hard things that *I* want to do from things *others* want me to do. 🤔

Back to our hike. 🥾 Completing 15 miles and 5,500 feet of descent one day, and 10 miles and 4,500 feet of ascent the next day was the most physically challenging feat I've ever accomplished.

It was also the kind of beauty that no picture can capture, and I got to see parts of the canyon that only 1% of the park's visitors ever see. 🤩

There were times I didn't think I could deal with the heat, pain, or fatigue any longer — but I did. There were times I didn't think I could take another step — but I did.

Because I believe in myself. Because I don't want to let old injuries or discomfort hold me back. Because I want to be the kind of badass that hikes R2R and lives to tell the tale.

💥 And THAT is the difference. The motivation is coming from a place of aspiration instead of fear.

I'm incredibly proud of myself. Although I will be sitting on my couch for the next 5 days thank you very much 😬

(P.S. This picture was taken just before the brutal final stretch of the hike, which is why I'm still smiling 😅)

07/12/2024

Book review! $100M Offer by Alex Hormizi: 4.5 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐

TBH I wish I had read this maybe... 6 months ago? But better now than never!

I loved how actionable this book was. Alex walks through creating an offer you can sell, step by step. 💰

There were a ton of things I took and immediately applied (or things that I realized I hadn't done and needed to go back and think about). I feel like this is a book I can come back to again and again for more insights.

But by nature of it being straightforward, this book is very opinionated. So there were some things that I took with a grain of salt (I'm not going to reach out to 100 people a day, for instance 😅).

Overall would recommend to anyone in the beginning stages of starting a business!

07/12/2024

The thing that terrified me the most about starting my own business wasn't that I knew nothing...

It was that I was afraid to work by myself. 😬

I am the literal definition of "team player". Working with other people brings me joy, gives me ideas, and gets me out of my own head.

I was so afraid of losing this and feeling alone.

It hasn't been easy, but unexpectedly I've found more community now that I work for myself.

Here are the top 5 things that have helped me:

1️⃣ Asking for input from my existing network.
▪️ Just because we don't officially work together doesn't mean I can't ask for help. Whenever I'm feeling stuck, I reach out to people I know who specialize in the area I need help with.

2️⃣ Joining a co-working space with an active community, and attending all the events.
▪️ My fellow co-working space members are my new coworkers. I say hi to people when I come in, I gossip with people to procrastinate, we bitch about our jobs together, and we support each other.

3️⃣ Finding a relevant online community, and developing individual connections.
▪️ Online communities are awesome, but they can be overwhelming. What's worked best is finding reasons to connect individually with people -- whether that's engaging in their LinkedIn posts, getting involved in what they're doing, or setting up 1:1 calls.

4️⃣ Attending small, focused in person events (bonus points if they're recurring).
▪️ Perhaps this is an introvert thing, but I've found the most success meeting people at smaller in-person events. I'm still working on this one but my dream is to find a few groups that meet regularly so I can see the same people on a consistent basis!

5️⃣ Developing social hobbies outside of work.
▪️ This is the entire reason I took up golf last year. During my sabbatical, I joined every ladies' golf league I could find, and now I have a solid group of friends that I play with regularly.

Building a community as a solo entrepreneur requires a little more work, but I think that might make it more rewarding. Plus, I get to choose my own "team", which means I like everyone 😁

Anyone who also works for themself: any other ways you combat feeling alone?

07/10/2024

What's the best use case for ChatGPT (or similar solutions)?

🤔 It's something I've been mulling over for the past few months.

🌎 Is ChatGPT a "universal" solution that ANYONE should be using to solve ANY problem?

👩🏼‍💻 Or will all software companies eventually add AI into their products to solve SPECIFIC problems?

On the one hand, we should be training ourselves to write better prompts, adding it to our workflows, etc.

On the other hand, maybe we should wait until other companies figure out how to do all that, and just buy their software.

This article does a fantastic job of breaking it all down: https://lnkd.in/g6ue7jt7

My favorite line: "However, ... it’s not the user’s job to work out how a new tool is useful."

🤯

ChatGPT is exciting and powerful, but we are leaving it up to the users to figure out how to use it right now. And I see A LOT of people trying to panic-fit genAI into use cases that don't make sense.

If you're struggling to make sense of all of this, you need an AI strategy. You need to match the problems within your team to opportunities that AI can help you with.

That's why I offer ✨AI Strategy Workshops.✨ In as little as 90 minutes, you create an action plan for making AI for YOU.

Interested? DM me for more info!

PS. Also if you're not subscribed to Ben Evans' newsletter what are you even doing !

We’ve had ChatGPT for 18 months, but what’s it for? What are the use-cases? Why isn’t it useful for everyone, right now? Do Large Language Models become universal tools that can do ‘any’ task, or do we wrap them in single-purpose apps, and build thousands of new companies around that?

07/09/2024

Last week I helped this amazing group get started using AI for their businesses & teams!

⏱️ In *just 1 hour* I guided them through the best way to brainstorm opportunities to use AI, prioritized ideas, and determined next steps.

🧑‍💻 Most of the group did not have a technical background and were not using AI currently, but by the end they were prepared to get started! We had some great discussions and I was excited to see what they came up with.

💭 While I LOVE a good full day workshop, there's also something so satisfying about helping people in such a short time frame. Looking forward to incorporating some more workshops in this format in the future!

07/08/2024

My #1 secret to planning working sessions (whether it's a formal workshop or informal team meeting):

Define your goals and outcomes up front.

I like to think about this as answering two questions:

1️⃣ "Why are we here?" (The workshop goal)
2️⃣ "What do we want to get out of this?" (The workshop objectives)

For example:
We're here to discuss & decide what's next for our product.
By the end, we want prioritized ideas and a roadmap for next year.
or
We're here to improve collaboration between team members.
By the end we want to discover the key problems holding us back and create an action plan to overcome obstacles.

Setting these up front allows you to
⚡ Manage client/participant expectations — everyone is clear on why they're there and what they're doing
⚡ Create an agenda that allows you to successfully achieve your outcomes (no more pointless meetings!)
⚡ Adapt the agenda on the fly based on how conversations go

What do you think? Do you ever do something similar?

07/03/2024

Big thanks to Funsize and Lindsay Rife for having me speak at their facilitation training!

Sure I have formal education in running workshops now, but my early days were largely trial & error (emphasis on "error"). Picture me, terrified, trying to get a group of skeptical software developers to write ideas on sticky notes. 😅

So this was a bit of a "pinch me" moment, to be able to share my experiences with this amazing and thoughtful group. Can't wait for them to grow into kick-ass facilitators!

07/02/2024

When I read this article, I felt like the author crawled inside my head and summarized my career…

(The article in question: “The big design freak-out: A generation of design leaders grapple with their future”)

Probably because he did, in a way; I was one of the “thousands of design foot soldiers” that IBM trained, after all.

I lived through Design Thinking going viral, and experienced firsthand the effects of design infiltrating the highest levels of the biggest businesses.

I realized early on in my career that in order for my designs to see the light of day, it wasn’t enough for them to be beautiful or visionary.

I also needed to know how the business worked, and how to play the game. Except there were very few people around who could tell me the rules of said game.

Or as the author puts it: “even as design thinking packaged itself successfully as a mainstream business process to senior management, we neglected to mention that designers, by nature, are pretty lousy managers.” 🎤💥

It’s not a coincidence that there’s a generation of design leaders having an identify crisis at the same time that I chose to step away from being an in-house UX designer.

The landscape is changing, in large part because of economics and technology (yes, AI 🐘). I think it’s right that we’re questioning how we define “design” and what its value is.

But design has never been just pretty graphics or user flow diagrams or a well-marketed workshop framework called, of all things, “design thinking”. I believe that at its heart, design is creative problem solving.

And that is a skill that transcends industries and economies.

And even though my LinkedIn job title may not say “designer” at the moment, I’ll always consider myself one 😎

The first generation of corporate design leaders are transitioning out of their executive roles at companies like IBM, McKinsey, and others. What comes next?

07/02/2024

Amazing session today with Rebecca Courtney and the AJ&Smart team on finding your unique facilitation style. We did lots of introspection, and I especially resonated with this diagram of moving from your comfort zone to a growth zone.

Starting my own business has definitely put me in the fear zone at times, but this reminded me WHY I did it: because I had grown stagnant in the comfort zone for too long. We talked about how moving past that comfort and fear is what ultimately leads to fulfillment and purpose. It's always good to have a reminder that the uncomfortable work is worth it.

Cheers to growth!

06/29/2024

Why you should aim for group buy-in, not consensus.

Early on in my career, I focused a lot of energy into getting group consensus because I thought that would lead to the best, most successful decisions. Eventually I realized that it was energy and time wasted. Let me explain.

When solving big problems (improving products/services, choosing where to invest time & money, increasing quality & efficiency), the solution will likely involve behavior change from many people.

No matter how good a solution is, it won't work if people don't change their behavior. And people aren't going to be motivated to change if they didn’t feel involved in the decision-making process. Think about it. If your boss came to you and said "you need to change what you're doing because I decided so", you're going to resist that. (How dare they presume to know how to do your job?!)

However, *involving* people in a decision NOT the same as decision by committee.

Involving people in a decision requires giving them space to express their opinions. If people feel that their opinions were taken into consideration, they'll respect and buy into a decision, even if they don't fully agree with it.

Imagine your boss had asked for your input. Even if you don't agree with their final decision, you're more likely to listen to them now.

It's unrealistic to expect a group of humans to reach consensus everything, but luckily they don't need to; all they need is to get buy-in.

This is why workshops are so powerful. When run correctly, they create space for everyone to express opinions, disagreements, and concerns. And when run well, they also create space for a clear decision to be made. That way even if the group doesn’t reach consensus, they’ll still all be bought into the solution, making it possible for them to achieve their goals.

Struggling to make an important decision, or get group buy-in? Let me help! Reach out for more information or learn more at maria-burke.com.