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Creativity and Cleanup Leading to Improved Culture E33

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Creativity and Cleanup Leading to Improved Culture E33

When it comes to improving company culture, there are a tremendous amount of resources out there to help companies. Finding which resources are the right fit for your company is the tricky part.

Lucky for you, we brought together two amazing ladies that offer support that can improve all companies! These resources help to bring creativity and clarity to your teams!

This conversation talked about the support and structure that both Sarah’s company and Anca’s company can help provide to others.

There is a fear of failure and these ladies are here to help build the teams so that the fear can be concurred and supported.

Investing in outside support and facilitation is one of the best things a company can do to help improve their teams and company culture. Facilitators use techniques that stimulate creative thinking and innovation- and these ladies are the pinnacle of creativity!

You should listen to this podcast if you….

are having trouble communicating with your team and trying to find the right resources to help.
would like to find a unique way to improve your meetings and sharing top highlights with the company.
need a little support defining the goals of the meetings and the communication taking place.
are ready to invest in your company to improve the culture of the people and the company as a whole.
if you need a little help capturing and synthesizing the details from your meetings.

Culture Crush is here to support and it starts with these two amazing women led companies!

Design Convo is a female-owned Human Centered Strategy and Consulting firm dedicated to empowering organizations with transformative solutions. They specialize in helping organizations navigate complex challenges and achieve sustainable growth by placing humans at the heart of their strategies.

They team of seasoned consultants brings together expertise in strategy, design thinking, organizational change, capacity building, leadership development, and digital innovation.

By combining these diverse perspectives, they create holistic solutions that blend human insights with cutting-edge technologies, unlocking new possibilities for teams and organizations.

With a deep understanding of human communication and behavior, they guide organizations in crafting strategies that resonate with their target audiences and foster meaningful connections. They believe that successful businesses are built upon strong relationships, and they work closely with teams to cultivate cultures that drive collaboration.

In addition to strategy and consulting services, they also focus on capacity building and leadership development. Through tailored training programs, coaching, and skill-building initiatives, they equip leaders and teams with the tools and knowledge they need to drive sustainable change from within.

Anca M. Castillo, MS is as a master facilitator in multiple techniques and approaches, including Strategic Storytelling, Human-Centered Design, and Visual Facilitation, to name a few.

Originally from Romania, Anca grew up in Alaska before moving to Arizona to pursue an education in business. She spent the past 6+ years in different leadership roles at ASU before taking the leap into entrepreneurship.

Anca loves to help organizations and leaders solve wicked problems using a variety of proven tools and techniques. She is passionate about helping leaders develop the skills and capabilities they need to do their best work and helping organizations to push the boundaries of the status quo. She describes herself as a “rule breaker” and “big picture thinker”.

When not working, you can find Anca performing improv with her team, doing DIY projects, and dancing around her kitchen with her family.

Follow Design Convo on LinkedIn.

26 Letters Studio’s creativity is a crucial piece to the culture work organizations do in order to grow a sustainable business.

Their graphic facilitation visually guides and captures the conversations and activities that emerge during culture meetings.

This work inspires participants in the moment and the results (called artifacts) are used to further the conversation and quickly bring new hires into the fold.

Sarah Spencer is a professional visual storyteller. With experience across multiple disciplines, Sarah is valued for her ability to listen, synthesize and draw what is emerging as people meet to discuss important subjects.

The outcome is a visual representation of the meeting used for future discussions and planning and acts as an artifact of what emerged from the group.

Sarah is a published illustrator, writer, award-winning designer, inventor, and culture expert.

Follow 26 Letters on LinkedIn and Instagram.

About Culture Crush

At Culture Crush, culture isn’t just a corporate buzzword. It’s a key factor that can either boost your company or lead to its failure.

We’re culture consultants, with a focus on leadership, appreciation, communication, processes, accessibility, mental health, diversity, inclusion, and creating a dynamic workplace.

As a growing company:

Culture Crush Business is your hub for company culture resources. With deep cultural insights and years of expertise, we evaluate your company’s needs and connect you with the precise resources to cultivate a thriving culture.

We work with CEOs, founders, HR Directors, or Culture Leaders of companies or teams, who value company culture and understand its impact on their business success.With Culture Crush you’ll learn how to transform your workplace into a place of unity, efficiency, and growth. Don’t just fix your company culture – transform it with Culture Crush Business.

On this podcast: We focus on everything surrounding businesses with good company culture. We will talk with company leaders to learn about real-life experiences, tips, and best practices for creating a healthy work environment where employees are finding joy and satisfaction in their work while also striving and growing within the company. We share the resources to help improve company culture and showcase them on the podcast with their tips and tricks for growing culture.

Thank you for our Sponsor!

There has been tremendous growth of the Culture Crush Business and the Podcast. This growth is thanks to the support from the community and now the support through our current podcast sponsor.

Thank you Gateway Bank for supporting us as our Cultivator Podcast Sponsor!

If you would like to be part of the Culture Crush team or would like to support sponsoring the show- please reach out: info@culturecrushbusiness.com

About the Host

Kindra Maples is spartan racer, past animal trainer, previous magician’s assistant, and has a weakness for Oreo cookie shakes. Her journey working with people actually started working with animals as a teenager (don’t worry we won’t go that far back for her bio).

She worked for over 15 years in the zoo industry working with animals and the public. Her passion of working with animals shifted into working with people in education, operations and leadership roles. From there her passion of leadership and helping people develop has continued to grow.

Then came the opportunity for leading the Culture Crush Business Podcast and she jumped on it. Leadership, growth, and strong company cultures are all areas that Kindra is interested in diving into further.

Phoenix Business Radio

E72 Understanding Design Thinking with Bruce Gay

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E72 Understanding Design Thinking with Bruce Gay

Are you familiar with Design Thinking? Are you utilizing Design Thinking to run your projects? In this episode we chat with Bruce Gay, Founder of Astrevo to understand the fundamentals and benefits of Design Thinking as well as touching on several other topics.

Bruce is a leader in the PM Industry and is an active community builder. He is a PMI Volunteer with PMI Pittsburgh, leads a Healthcare PMO, teaches part time at Norwich University and started his own firm, Astrevo.

In our discussion Bruce shares that Design Thinking allows groups of people to take time and look at their customers needs to deeply understand a problem and to start to brainstorm and down select solutions to solve those problems. The benefit to using Design Thinking is you get closer to your customer’s needs and pain points to help you identify defects earlier in the process which is less expensive than defects found later in the process.

We also hear Bruce’s perspective on trends in the industry and a few of his favorite books he recently read. We also learn about Bruce’s Project Management Insights monthly list of updates and insights within our industry.

To subscribe to Bruce’s Project Management Insights visit www.brucegay.com/signup.
To learn more about Astrevo visit www.astrevo.com
To connect with Bruce on LinkedIn visit – https://www.linkedin.com/in/brucegay/

Thanks to our sponsor THE PMO SQUAD. Visit www.thepmosquad.com to learn to Empower People to Deliver Results and assist your PMO as you evolve in the new post-COVID business world.

Check out all prior episodes and upcoming guests by visiting www.projectmanagementofficehours.com.

UPMC Enterprises is the commercialization arm of UPMC, a Pittsburgh-based health care provider and insurer. As a healthcare innovation lab, UPMC Enterprises invests in two core areas: translational science (which conducts laboratory-to-human research, applying research to human subjects) and technology solutions to empower both medical professionals and patients. Since 2018, UPMC Enterprises has launched 5 companies, supported 30 internal research projects, and invested in a variety of healthcare-related companies.

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Astrevo was formed out of a desire to share knowledge of practical problem-solving approaches that managers can deploy with their teams to better understand customer needs and achieve success. Astrevo provides training, coaching, and consultation services to help teams focus on what is important: less time managing projects, more time focusing on outcomes and customers.

What makes Astrevo unique? Its 3 key principles:

(1) Experiential Learning – Embracing a growth mindset supported in hands-on learning.
(2) Creativity – Tackling problems from different perspectives and with new techniques.
(3) Collaboration – Working with others to solve hard problems.

Bruce Gay, PMP, helps individuals improve their project management skills, become better leaders, and achieve professional greatness. He has over two-and-a-half decades worth of experience managing large, complex programs and customer relationship across multiple industries. In his current role, Bruce manages a PMO and is responsible for operational and delivery excellence for a 100+ person R&D organization comprised of software engineers, product managers, machine learning and NLP scientists, security experts, and cloud engineers. For the past 15 years, Bruce managed product teams that incorporated UX Design and Design Thinking methodologies into their product development processes.

Bruce’s public speaking experience includes presenting at both regional and international professional conferences such as PMI Global Conference (Chicago, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia) and PMI EMEA Congress in Dublin, Ireland and LearnFest Caribbean in Jamaica. Bruce is an adjunct professor for Norwich University (Northfield, VT) teaching courses in a Project Management certificate program. Bruce creates and delivers educational courses and workshops that help students grow as leaders. Bruce received a Master’s in International Affairs from The George Washington University and has been a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) since 2005.

Currently, Bruce lives in Pittsburgh, PA with his wife, two daughters, and his dog. Bruce is an active volunteer with the PMI Pittsburgh chapter and is their Director of Corporate Sponsorship. Bruce shares his experiences and ideas around Design Thinking and project management on twitter: @brucegay and on his website: www.brucegay.com.

ABOUT PROJECT MANAGEMENT OFFICE HOURS SERIES

Project Management Office Hours is intended to provide Project Management professionals a place to drop in and discuss Success Stories, Best Practices, and Lessons Learned. Project Management Consultant Joy Gumz has shared with us, “Operations keep the lights on, strategy provides the light at the end of the tunnel, but project management is the train engine that moves the organization forward.”

Each of us has a unique story to tell, but collectively we share a message that organizations who embrace Project Management Best Practices perform better than those which don’t. Organizations which align Projects to Strategy perform better. Organizations with Engage Executive Sponsors deliver better results. Organizations which measure Project Management performance outperform those which don’t.

During our Project Management Office Hours, we hear directly from Industry leaders how to make an impact in our profession. How we, collectively, will Advance Project Management Best Practices, One Listener at a time!

ABOUT YOUR HOST

Joe Pusz started THE PMO SQUAD to bring real world PMO Leadership experience to the consulting space and to advocate for Project Management through his blog PMOJOE.com. The old saying is “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Following this mindset Joe left Corporate America in 2013 to start THE PMO SQUAD and work with fellow Natural Born Project Managers to advance Project Management Best Practices.

ABOUT OUR SPONSOR

THE PMO SQUAD focuses exclusively on PMO and Project Management consulting. Corporate America is full of Accidental Project Managers running projects who haven’t been trained to be PMs. To help solve this problem THE PMO SQUAD is on the Leading Edge with PMO As a Service. PMO As a Service allows our clients to focus on their respective core competencies while THE PMO SQUAD delivers Project Management expertise. Contact Joe at 678-591-7868. Follow The PMO Squad on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

Where do PMO Leaders go for Information, Learning, Networking and Services? The PMO Leader community has “Everything You Need to Become a Great PMO Leader”. One PMO World, One Community! Learn more about The PMO Leader – www.thepmoleader.com