1 Hour Brainstorming Meetings

Why 1 hour meetings

Most meetings fall into 2 traps. Either no decision was made and they feel pointless, unproductive, and like a waste of time. Or they are overprescribed, over-planned, and so agenda-driven that what gets accomplished could have been done in an email.

The answer is not to abolish meetings, because meetings are good for collecting different perspectives from your team and then creating alignment on decisions.  But when we have meetings, use them to generate ideas and solutions that we couldn’t have as individuals. 

1 hour is short enough to squeeze it into our busy schedules, but also enough time to present a challenge, facilitate a creativity exercise, and collect ideas online before making a decision. This process makes a meaningful difference on the business because teams are exploring more innovative solutions rather than settling on the first idea. Also when teams make an hour a day or week for a brainstorming meeting, innovation becomes part of the routine and eventually the culture. 

What to Expect

In advance, we just need to know your objective and who will be attending the meeting. This way we can set up our system for collecting ideas and pick the best exercises for the meeting. 

Then during the online meeting, we spark ideas using stimulus, leverage the team to build up the ideas and collect them in an online system.

Afterward, the team keeps access to the system, so they can submit more ideas or refine them. Then when you are ready we organize the ideas, generate reports and offer suggestions for possible next steps.

Why It Works

There are 3 principles we use to create ideas and they are the backbone of all of our meetings.

Stimulus: We don’ expect the team to have ideas when we start. Instead, we plan to show them stimulus to spark new thoughts and ideas.

Diversity: We all have different perspectives and experiences. By reacting to each other’s ideas we can build them up and explore new possibilities. 

Fear: An idea sparked is worthless if the creator is too afraid to share it. We know fear exists and minimize it as much as possible while brainstorming.