It’s 11:00, and you’ve been sitting in the same meeting now for almost 3 hours. Huddled together with your team around the boardroom table, you see that they are disengaging: the energy has dropped out of the room long ago, and you are the only one talking. You need more ideas, but it’s just not happening. You adjourn the meeting at lunch, only to have everyone back within the hour. It’ll take 2 hours for the sleepiness of lunch to wear off, and then it’s almost the end of the day. By meetings end, decisions have had to be made, but you are unsure of their viability. Meanwhile, the world is moving very fast, and so are your competitors. You know you have to be more “innovative”, but you just don’t know how that could be done. You don’t know how to close the complexity gap, or get on the right side of change.
Been there before?
This is common practice. And yet, we all know that it’s highly inefficient and suboptimal. There are countless books and TED Talks about the importance of new ways of thinking, creating, and innovating, and yet, when the meeting begins, for some reason all that good stuff falls through the cracks of the boardroom table, down in the creases of the leather recliners, and somehow miles away from the PowerPoint screen.
Process facilitation is different–it’s all about making meetings easier. Process facilitation is the art of taking groups from vision to strategy to action plans in ways that maximize time, creativity, and collaboration, and minimize distraction, lost information, and poor decision making. Process facilitation is like having a team of waiters at a restaurant preparing the meal and the experience for you, leaving you to do your thing: enjoy your time and the company you’re with. Process facilitation is like having a limo-driver, freeing you up to take calls, make important decisions, and maximize your time without worrying about getting to your destination.
Being in a facilitated creative process significantly amplifies you and your organizations productivity and ability to create and capture new information, and take an idea from concept to prototype to final product in 1/3 to 1/2 of the time of conventional meetings. With a team of people designing and facilitating a customized experience for you and your organization, you are freed up to do what you do best: working on your organization, building it to its fullest potential. Not to mention doing so in a totally creative environment that supports and amplifies your group creativity.
Like Einstein said, the problem is that we are using the same way of thinking to solve problems as what created them in the first place.
It’s time to break out of the boardroom, and into the design studio.
Wanting to know more? Stay plugged in. More on this and other similar topics in future entries…
Kultur Design Blog 