Clay Parker Jones profile image

Clay Parker Jones

I'm an organization designer at Black Glass. I was a Co-Founder of August, and the Managing Partner of Undercurrent.

125 Posts
Brooklyn, New York

Five Creativity Things

Challenges facing creativity; owning ideas from beginning to end; opinionated palettes; are we doing zines again?; randomness that didn’t fit in the first four categories

How to Eliminate Slippery Decisions

Most of the time when I ask teams how they make decisions, I get a lot of ... silence. And then either: a) "nobody's ever asked me that"; or b) "I don't think we ever know when we are making a decision"; or c) "we make too many decisions to have a 'way' to make decisions."

How to Fix Your Prioritization Problem

Prioritization isn't a tool problem. Or an individual performance problem. It's a strategy problem, and not one that you can fix with a better slide deck. It's about good diagnosis, a clear guiding policy, and truly connected actions... *made memorable* and *made practical.*

How to Improve Team Performance

So you want to improve the performance of your team? Start with good team design. I started doing this method with clients and teams in 2013? 2014? and it’s still the undisputed champ.

Most Teams are Low Performing

Sometimes, it's hard to get teams and leaders to understand that *most teams* have a ton of performance upside. I think that stems from thinking that the average team has pretty middling performance: not great, but not terrible. The truth is that the average team is low-performing.

Repeatable Workshop Methods

My ~sorta default setup for a workshop these days is to run these two sessions back-to-back: Future Backwards (from Dave Snowden/Cynefin), to sort out key topics that the team needs to address, then World Café, to actually work on those topics.

Use DICE instead of RACI (Video)

Don't use a RACI. If you must use something like it, use DICE (Decides, Informs, Consults, Executes). It's easier to understand, and shines a brighter spotlight on problems.