Meeting Expectations

As we continue to develop our thinking facilitation tools (Thinklets), MindSights  is moving away from the concept of “meetings”.  Nobody likes them.  Everybody hates them.  So how do we change our expectations about meetings?  And how do we insure that our meetings meet our expected outcomes?

We have decided to think about meetings as collaborations rather than “meetings.”  Changing the word may help us change our expectations.  Collaboration is a natural outcome of interpersonnal communicaitons.  Meetings put an artificial shell around that collaborative process.  It often forces us to compartmentalize the time we spend in meetings into structured discussions that often seem designed more for the “minutes” and  the hours spent in unproductive discussions that just result in more minutes.

So instead of avoiding meetings let turn them into productive collaborations.  Every job related conversation should move something toward closure, develop an original thought, improve a process, identify a need, etc.  Instead of a “meeting of the minds”, let’s encourage a “collaboration of the minds”.

So, wasn’t that easy?  No more meetings!  Simply said.  Simply done …with Thinklets from MindSights.

Thinklets and Facilitation Technology

The Role of Facilitation Technology

Rarely can people bring to mind all the tools, questions or information relevant to a thinking task when they need to do so. In fact, our brains retain 100% direct recall of our learning and experiences for about five minutes. So when the time comes to apply learning and experience during a meeting … much may have been forgotten.

Typically, what happens is most meeting participants rely on using their normal or routine thinking patterns (called scripted thinking). This works fine if the participants thinking fits the meeting’s task. But, when the wrong thinking (script) is applied, people (meetings) generally produce the wrong results. Routine/scripted thinking prevent us from gaining innovative and problem solving insights by always channeling thought down certain rigid mental pathways.

What if, however, your meeting could benefit from the wisdom of many of the best facilitators, consultants and mentors? What if you could bring Ed De Bono into your meeting to help with creativity, or Peter Senge with systems thinking? Or, what if there was a technology that could have much the same effect? There is. It is Nth Degree Software’s Facilitation Technology that uses a proprietary Thinking Emulation Grid that duplicates the way humans provide intellectual guidance.

The Facilitated Thinking Emulation Grid follows a process that improves meeting participant thinking productivity in similar ways that the invention of the assembly line improved manual-worker labor productivity. With a just-in-time approach and one click of a button, a Virtual Meeting Facilitator can deliver within a precise thought process the right questions to ask, the correct thinking tools to use, and the proper thinking methods. It’s as if you had the human expert at your meeting. Components are:

A. Thinking Processes

There are 7 types of thinking processes that occur in meetings. Understanding which one(s) your meeting is using helps focus thinking.

1. Reactive thinking: Quickly resolve urgent problems, situations or conditions.
2. Systems thinking: Resolve the “whole” complex problem, issue or challenge.
3. Corrective thinking: Restore something to an original, past or standard condition.
4. Creative (Innovative) thinking: Develop something new and of value that has never existed.
5. Improvement thinking: Make current levels of performance better.
6. Planning thinking: Anticipate and prepare for future opportunities or problems.

B. Thinking Tasks

Thinking tasks are the basic building blocks of thinking. There are essentially 24 such mental tasks that can be applied to virtually all thinking processes. For example, Decision-making is one of the basic tasks. But it can also have sub-tasks like: Developing decision criteria, Identifying the right decision strategy, Validating the correctness of the decision, etc.

C. Thinking Points – Go links

Thinking Points are the intersection of “Thinking Processes” and “Thinking Tasks”. They reflect the fact that “thinking” generally occurs at “one” point in time. It is at these points that human facilitators and consultants are emulated and where cognition tools “Thinklets” are applied.

D. Thinklets – What are they?

They are “question” oriented cognitive tools that give the mind the best chance to find the right ideas, solutions or answers. They can be as simple as one question, questions embedded into a template, a thinking process or even a short tutor. And just like choosing the right manual tool (there are more than 125 types of pliers to perform different manual tasks), selecting the right cognitive tool follows the same principle: Choose the tool appropriate for the task at hand.

Additional Information>  www.yourmindatwork.com 

Meeting Technologies

Meeting Technologies – Conferencing, Collaboration, Facilitation, Knowledge Capture

• Web conferencing technologies have been growing by leaps and bounds over the last 5 years. The ability to meet virtually (around the world or around the corner) at lower cost is an easy ROI for many organizations. These technologies do a great job of getting people “TO” meetings.
• Collaborative Technology provides the communication mediums that bring synergy that raises each participant’s level of thinking. Collaboration helps to create a shared understanding that no one person previously possessed, and fosters the co-creation of new ideas that no one person could develop alone.
• New Facilitation Technology is designed to get people “THROUGH” meetings productively. It works by enhancing the thinking effectiveness of the meeting leader and participants. Only people (not technology) can make meetings successful, and the real ROI comes from shorter and better meetings.
• Knowledge Capture / Content Management focuses on the idea that a well prepared participant is a productive participant. There is a direct correlation between data and thinking. Effective thinking occurs only if meeting participants acquire the right “critical mass” of relevant background data and information to think upon.

Integration of these technologies is very powerful and results in significant meeting productivity gains. For example, the following schematic shows this integration.

1. A brainstorming meeting might be called for a variety of reasons: A new product idea, Solving a problem, Improving a process, Developing strategic plans, etc.

2. Depending on the type of brainstorming task, Facilitation Technology delivers cognitive tools, called Thinklets, to enhance participants thinking. Thinklets are described in section IV of this document.

3. Collaboration technology like electronic flip charts, videoconferencing, and smart-boards further enhance brainstorming by surrounding you with a room where you are immersed in the content. Web conferencing products like Web IQ, Elluminate, and GDSS tools like Group Systems add more collaboration and decision making value.

4. Capturing relevant information is essential to minimize “re-thinking” and refreshing of memory in future meetings. The use of Wikis and SharePoint not only enables capture of current meeting data but also pre-meeting preparation of information, and post-meeting participant follow-up. A great meeting with brilliant decisions and action items has little or no value if not implemented.

More information> www.yourmindatwork.com

Meeting Facilitation

The Secrets of Professional Meeting Facilitators

Literature describing how to hold successful meetings has been widely disseminated and in abundance for over 40 years. Today, Amazon has over 300 offerings for “improving meetings”. One of them, How to Make Meetings Work, a book published by Michael Doyle in 1976, is still selling well. So WHY ARE so many people still complaining about wasted time in unproductive meetings?

The reason is current meeting practices focus on agendas and “WHAT” the meeting should accomplish. But as professional facilitators know, it is more critical to focus on process and “How” to accomplish results. The secrets for successful meetings come from having a “Facilitator Mindset” that concentrates on “How” to improve meeting participants’ “productivity of thought” in the following ways:

1. Finding the right two to three questions to ask: Asking the right questions at the right time gives the participants’ minds the best chance to find the right ideas, solutions and answers. It is amazing how powerful the effect on team thinking can be by asking “the perfect question”.
2. Providing the right cognitive (mental) tools: Just as a craftsperson needs the right physical tools, meeting participants need the right cognitive (mental) tools to best think about the task at hand.
3. Thinking within the right process framework: Like an athlete getting into a high-performance physical groove, meetings have their own process flow and groove that enhances high-performance thinking.
4. Ensuring the right “content-within-context” understanding. Effective thinking can only occur, if meeting participants have the right understanding and data to “think upon”. It’s difficult to solve a problem if you don’t understand it.

More information> www.yourmindatwork.com

Improving Meeting Quality

The Growing Importance for Quality Meetings – Every Time

THE TIME IS RIGHT … to improve organizational performance is by enhancing employees’ ability to plan and run better meetings … BECAUSE:

• Successful teams … need successful meetings: “As teamwork and cross-organizational projects increase, meetings become the setting in which much of the really important work gets done. Now more than ever team and organizational success is reliant on the quality of its meetings”. From “Death by Meeting” by Peter Lencioni.

• Managing Time as a Resource: One of the biggest complaints of employees is they do not have enough time to get their work done. Ineffective meetings are often cited as the biggest time waster. Studies from the Wall Street Journal show that 30% to 65% of a manager’s time is spent in meetings, with almost 40% of the meetings characterized as generally unproductive and a waste of resources.

Today, everyone who leads and manages people needs to understand how meeting technologies may lead to quantum leaps in quality meetings. Knowing how to use them can elevate meeting participant thinking effectiveness (thinking faster … more innovatively … more productively) and lead to reducing time spent in meetings while significantly improving meeting results.

 

Additional information> www.yourmindatwork.com