Friction Free Collaboration at Google
THE 3-TALK SERIES FOR T/PgMs IN 2026
Get the Async 5-email series
Warm hello from me, Dr Carrie Goucher in Cambridge, UK!
In this series, I'm going to show you how to reduce the friction of collaboration in three different ways.
I will be sharing my best tools and techniques with you over three talks this spring, including an AI prompt guide to help you implement everything you learn.
View the talksThree talks to transform how you meet and collaborateÂ
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Five power meetings that will change your life as a PgM
Learn the five highest-leverage meeting designs, how process authority (not job title) makes each one work and how to get max value from every slot you've fought to book.
My diary is full and Chat's on fire!
Discover how to break the collabureaucracy cycle where broken async generates more meetings, which leaves less time to fix async. Design your collaboration ecosystem so the system does more work and beats overwhelm.
The parent/child dynamic: activate adult mode
The more you drive everything forward, the more your team waits for you to. Learn the three foundations of adult-to-adult dynamics, and the moves that break the parent/child cycle so your team leads itself.
Your toolkit
Session 1: The 5 power meetings that will change your life as a PgM
đ 5 power meetings cheatsheetÂ
Everything you need to remember on one page.
đ Gemini prompt guide
Here are my best prompts for getting Gemini to be your meeting thought partner and do the heavy lifting for meeting preparation.
đ Download the 5 power meetings markdown fileÂ
[immediately downloads to your Downloads folder]
This is the knowledge file you upload to your Gemini chat to teach it the techniques so the prompts work brilliantly for you.Â
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Deep dive guides
How I get people to do the friggin prep for meetings I lead đ¤Śââď¸
Introduction to scaffolding - 13 techniques I use all the time
How to change a meeting you're not leading
A creative technique for resetting a regular meeting that has 'got lost'
3 ways to open a meeting with psychological safety
Over-talkers: the most common meeting challenge people bring to me
My 3-step conversation pattern for handling unhelpful behaviour in meetings
A conversation pattern for resolving under-the-surface tension
A simple format for capturing the value of every meeting
The simplest way to improve any meeting
The only 6 collaboration leadership skills you will ever need
Session 2: Chat's on fire! Streamline and power up async...
đ Google slides version of the talk slides
The slides from the session in Google Slides format for you to make a copy and edit.
đ Gemini prompt guide
Here are my best prompts for getting Gemini to be your meeting thought partner and do the heavy lifting for async design and communication.
đ Download the knowledge markdown file
[immediately downloads to your Downloads folder]
This is the knowledge file you upload to your Gemini chat to teach it the techniques so the prompts work brilliantly for you.Â
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Deep dive guides
Stop presenting slides in meetings and use the 5in5 video techniqueÂ
Should you be using the Jeff Bezos silent memo technique?
Flashtagging AKA hill-dying status
5 norms I would implement in your team if I took over from you tomorrow
How to shift an update meeting to async and gain deep work time back
Even more tools and resourcesÂ
Scaffolding playbook
Browse 20+ ideas for meeting scaffolds that hear all voices rapidly.
