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Everyday influencers matter

Have we been overlooking some of the most influential voices in our communities? In this episode, we explore how everyday interactions, beyond the usual expert networks, can highlight new pathways for change, and why this matters for enablers of change. When we think about influence, it’s easy to default to the usual suspects. People such as industry leaders, progressive farmers, researchers, or well-known advocates. These voices are important, but… Read more »Everyday influencers matter

How to do effective introductions

Have you ever sat through a round of introductions where forty people each say their name and job title, one after another, and by the end you can barely remember your own name, let alone anyone else’s! Or maybe you’ve been in a small group workshop where the facilitator skipped introductions altogether, leaving everyone wondering who else was in the room! It’s happened to us too many times, so… Read more »How to do effective introductions

The learning design dilemma

Have you ever sat through a two-hour Zoom webinar thinking, I could have just read a summary of this? Or conversely, tried to complete an online self-paced module on a topic that really needed a good conversation to make sense of it? If so, you’ve already identified one of the practical design decisions we face as enablers of change. Our dilemma is whether this learning happens together in real… Read more »The learning design dilemma

How AI is changing our work

Just over three years ago, ChatGPT entered our world and shifted the conversation about artificial intelligence almost overnight. In this episode we reflect on how far that conversation has come, exploring a recent report from the McKinsey Global Institute and what that might mean for us as enablers of change. We’ve discussed AI from several angles in previous episodes, so the report Agents, robots, and us: Skill partnerships in… Read more »How AI is changing our work

Stop nagging, start designing

Why do we so often repeat the same advice to farmers, only to see little or no change on-farm? In this episode, we explore why nagging, reminding, or pushing harder rarely shifts behaviour in the way we hope. For enablers of change, understanding this matters, because our impact depends not on how often we say something, but on whether it actually leads to action. Let’s start with a familiar,… Read more »Stop nagging, start designing

Tapping into research with Consensus

Have you ever started a project and wished you could tap into the whole world’s research in seconds? Understandably this is something that has come up for us regularly, as we draft out our Enablers of change episodes. We thought it’d be good to talk through what AI we use and how we use it to highlight relevant research and speed up our production process. In this episode, we’ll… Read more »Tapping into research with Consensus

Learning from Digital Green

Have you ever wondered what makes a digital tool feel useful to farmers, rather than just another platform they ignore? In this episode, we reflect on what makes digital technologies effective for farmers, using the work of Digital Green as a lens and asking what we can learn from their experience. John first came across Digital Green while writing the e-extension module for The New Extensionist Learning Kit for… Read more »Learning from Digital Green

Delivering extension in complex systems

As enablers of change we often find ourselves working in complex systems where change isn’t just about swapping one practice for another. We actually need to understand how the whole system works, in order to provide constructive support via extension. In one of our earlier episodes we shared a framework described by Geoff Kaine, Vic Wright and Suzanne Vallance which gave us a way to understand practice change not… Read more »Delivering extension in complex systems

More work hacks to improve our productivity

We’ve shared some simple hacks in a previous episode to improve our productivity as enablers of change. In this episode, we’re going to help you with clever ways to find books on your bookshelf, plug in those pesky USB chargers, and seamlessly copy and paste text in Windows.  Our first tip relates to finding books on a bookshelf. If you’re anything like us, you’ve probably got more than a… Read more »More work hacks to improve our productivity

Sparking creativity: Using LLMs in extension

In this episode, we’re exploring large language models (LLMs) as a tool that can help improve our writing process as enablers of change. LLMs, specifically those designed to generate creative “sparks,” can be a game-changer for us, making our science communication more engaging and effective. Just so we all know what we’re talking about, let’s do a quick overview of Artificial intelligence or AI. This is the broad field… Read more »Sparking creativity: Using LLMs in extension