How to – Create Spontaneity in Your Meetings So many meetings - so many that are a waste of time! Even when clients know this, I’m rarely asked to help people develop the skills and strategies to create more productive and efficient meetings. Whether it’s a question of an inflexible corporate culture or a lack of openness to learning on the part of meeting leaders, the complaints about meetings abound. At the same time, folks create them, arrange for them, attend them and endure them. I often hear that the best ideas come from those informal discussion people have in the hallways.

That is often the case! And it’s true that many meetings are boring and unproductive. The problem is that meetings in the hallways and elevator lobbies are too spontaneous. You can’t control them and you can’t create them when you want them! The situation with the best potential seems to be a formal meeting with a little planned (or “forced”) spontaneity. Your meetings can be transformed into interesting generators of ideas.

Here are three techniques you can use right now:

Small Group Discussion - Break into small groups of four and assign each group a specific problem or issue to discuss. Appoint someone in the group to keep the conversation focused. Someone else should record the results of the discussion. After a period of time, reconvene into the larger group and ask the recorder to share the results of the discussions.

Brainstorming - This works especially well for groups of about 8. Define an issue and then ask for ideas. Allow no judgments, opinions, negative comments, or criticism or even praise. There should be no discussion of the ideas either. Have someone write out each idea on a white board or flip chart. After the flow of ideas stops, analyze each idea. Focus on how to create criteria for judging the value of each idea. This should help you winnow the list to a few viable ideas.

Problem Polling - Using a white board or flip chart, ask participants to call out the problems or issues that are of the greatest concern for them. Have someone write them where everyone can see them. Don’t discuss or analyze the problems and issues. Don’t interrupt the flow until it stops. Then restate each concern in positive terms. So, “I’m worried about quality assurance” becomes, “Our goal is to improve quality assurance in order to reduce returns by 10%”.  11:07 AM •