One of the most important things we do in organisations is interact in meetings.

Yet 90% of people I speak to indicate their meetings are not as productive as they could be or worse, a waste of their time. There is a general consensus across industry that our meetings are all too often insufficiently focused, lacking sound collaborative approaches, have a limited outcome orientation and consume way more time than is necessary.

The importance of meetings in an organisation cannot be understated. In terms of knowledge-transfer and decision-making our meetings are potentially our most potent method because we:

• have the right subject matter experts invited and in attendance,
• if they are in attendance, they should be there with intent, and
• they are in a face-to-face setting where the most meaningful communication should be possible.

There are a number of methods doing the rounds that focus on improving meeting processes and many of these work well but the key to effective meetings is addressing the thinking that takes place within those processes. At Think Quick we have facilitated many difficult and potentially difficult meetings using the Six Thinking Hats and have high levels of success.

Not all meetings of course require such facilitation, I suspect a great deal could be run simply and efficiently if the participants could simply develop some tolerance and empathy for opinions that differ from their own. However, we routinely use the  parallel thinking of the Thinking Hats when:

• there are strongly held views
• there are challenging issues at hand
• there are diverse perspectives on offer
• the conversation is rambling and unfocused, and
• when time is short

The challenge is to incorporate the methods into meetings so they become a part of business practice and are routinely applied. This challenge when accepted is one that can bare great benefits.

To date, just a few of our client’s successes using parallel thinking in their meetings have been:
• Millions of dollars worth of savings in one Department where such saving could not be envisaged prior.
• A $600,000 saving within a business unit as a result of training in the thinking and its subsequent same day application to a key issue.
• The smooth planning of moving 20+ city locations into one newly constructed building.
• A business restructure planned and implemented without any of the associated angst by getting everyone thinking in parallel throughout.

Meetings can be productive, focused and enjoyable. They are the primary engine-room for transferring knowledge and making decisions in organisations, so if you get the thinking right in your meetings right, the flow-on effects are substantial.

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Late last year I had the pleasure of working with the Hargraves Institute facilitating a newly design programme of problem solving and opportunity recognition called X-Teams.

The X-Teams approach is one that delivers a team based programme that aligns and fully supports current strategy and also assists in forward design.

Each X-Team programme is customised to business unit or organisational objectives, goals and internal programmes.  The process is integrated into current work procedures, locations and staffing requirements to ensure minimal disruption and maximum contribution from all participants, sponsors and the executives involved.

X-Teams provides a cost effective means for an organisation to start to develop their own internal “hothouse” environment for testing and developing solutions to real issues as a part of normal business. In undertaking an X-Teams programme an organisation can:

• Learn powerful techniques to deliver improved productivity and new insights.
• Help identify and develop your high potential talent and future leaders to become leaders of productivity and growth.
• Help you to challenge your existing processes and cultures via the application of contemporary and proven thinking methods.
• Build your ability to build insight quickly and develop action oriented experiments and approaches that are rapid and low cost.
• Get more value, faster from your people by providing them the skills and insights they need.
• Identify those elements of the status quo that are in need of redesign or change

Typically in an X-Team programme the senior leadership of an organisation will determine the key areas they would like the process to address. Once these have been decided the programme is designed with the organisation’s imperatives in mind and the X-Teams are selected and formed. The teams will then over a five week period participate in a facilitated process of problem solving and design that will enable them to work with their colleagues to design interventions address their organisation’s most pressing needs.

For an obligation free discussion on how this new process can add value to your business or organisation contact myself or the Hargraves Institute.

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Having given some thought over the years to the way people think and interact in meetings, I have pulled together this simple model of interactive collaboration, or What is the thinking behind the behaviours that we observe in our meetings?

The model is an inclusive one with a place for all interactive styles depending upon context, however in this instance I present it as a judgmental one, suggesting that the top right quadrant is where we should be if we have some serious thinking and interaction to do.

The two key criteria I have included on the axis are FOCUS and PERSPECTIVES. Without either there’s probably not much point convening to meet.

By FOCUS I refer to: What does the assembled group want to get out of the meeting? What is the intended outcome? Too often we venture into meetings (me included) with very different expectations.

By PERSPECTIVES I refer to the diversity of views that are carried by the meeting attendees. It is important that we are able to hear and  incorporate these views where appropriate. Too often we hear a view that is contrary to our own and we shut-down our thinking because we are of course – Right! It is important to be able to incorporate diverse perspectives because it is through diverse approaches that we are more likely to gain traction on difficult issues.

The Four Thinking Quadrants

Starting in the bottom left quadrant we have adversarial thinking. Here we seek to have our own views prevail over others. It this quadrant is is usually about winning. Unfortunately most of us don’t take too kindly to having our views contradicted and opposing views expressed. When this happens we waste time and brain-power in rambling discussion and argument, which in many instances is counter-productive when you have a specific outcome you must achieve.

Those who are more senior or the best at argument and debate will usually prevail in this quadrant, irrespective of whether or not their perspective is the best one. In this area we have a minimal number of perspectives tolerated and little agreement on how to achieve our focus. For a great example of adversarial thinking watch our Parliament in action.

Top left we have disparate thinking. Here the approaches are less adversarial but remain scattered and unfocused. We have many views here but not all are overly productive and add little value to the meeting. In this quadrant there is often the diversity required but insufficient focus to incorporate its value.

Bottom right is the quadrant where group-think happens. Here we tend not to have a sufficiently diverse group in the room to offer alternate views and opinions, or more commonly we have dominant or more senior personalities who everyone will tend to agree with once they have expressed their view. The reasons people do this are varied and can included the assumption that because person is senior they must know better than me. (The most dangerous of assumptions I’ve always found!)

In group-think mode people will just tend to agree with the prevailing view for fear of being seen as different. Often, in a hierarchical organisation group-think happens because expressing a view that is different to more senior views can be a career limiting move. With Group-think there tends to be little exploration of the possible outcomes and even less exploration of possible means of achieving the outcomes.

The top right quadrant is where parallel thinking occurs. Parallel thinking is a term coined by Edward de Bono and it finds its best expression in the application of the Six Thinking Hats methods. Here the focus of the session is clear, people know why they are in the room and what is expected of them. Here also there is a very deliberate incorporation of the multiple perspectives that are around the table. This is achieved by the group examining the topic at hand from the same thinking perspective at the same time. Diverse perspectives are welcomed but do not bring people into conflict because they are expected and welcomed!

With parallel thinking we have a single Focus and multiple perspectives incorporated. The inclusion of the multiple perspectives allows a full subject matter exploration – something we rarely get when time is short and argument prevails. An important side benefit of getting your people thinking in parallel is also that the meetings will dramatically reduce in length, a valuable outcome in itself when work demands increase and our time-poverty increases with them.

Most meetings will not stay within the one quadrant throughout, often they will tend to move between quadrants. We shouldn’t seek to eliminate this movement entirely, rather we must get participants to maximise their time in the parallel space and minimise their time in the less productive thinking spaces. We do this by using a range of techniques that assist meeting participants to move from Adversarial, Disparate and Group-think into Parallel thinking. When such techniques are incorporated, interactions becomes more focused,  inclusive and outcome oriented.

If you’d like your meetings to be more oriented toward outcomes and business results, Think Quick can help you  -  Just give us a call.

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We often see strategic plans, change projects and innovation approaches struggle to gain traction in organisations for a range of reasons. The reasons are many and varied depending upon context, yet from experience I have found that there is one key area that is often taken for granted or ignored.  Getting the collaborative approaches and attitudes right to start off with.

The premise behind this brief post is that you cannot develop sound strategy and then the new ideas you need to evolve unless you can incorporate multiple and diverse perspectives from the start.

The problem is that that when we elicit perspectives, their diverse nature brings us into disagreement and conflict.

Despite our claims to the contrary, we are not good at collaborating in ways that allow these perspectives to both emerge and be fully considered. This is almost a default position for us given 1000′s of years of relying largely on the winning and losing of debate to determine the best outcome.

We all bring very diverse ranges of experience, education, learning, backgrounds and knowledge to the table. These in themselves are powerful forces for addressing difficult issues.  However, this very diversity can be  an impediment to our success. So, before we start to ask our people to become more innovative and produce new ideas,  we need to assist them with techniques that allow them to collaborate in a manner that allows alternate opinions to prevail and be considered, instead of being rejected out of hand.

This diversity is an essential element of good strategy. A good strategy involves broadly scanning and incorporating multiple perspectives. Once we have a good strategy in place we are then well place to generate new insights, perspective and ideas to achieve that strategy. To get the best possible perspectives and ideas we need to have a broad and inclusive strategic view of the world. To be able to develop up a broad and inclusive view of the world we must learn learn to Collaborate and Interact better. If we ignore this aspect we are building on sand.

Therefore before you attempt to drive innovative approaches and new ideas to generate better business results, get your broad and inclusive strategic scanning done first, but don’t forget, that to do this well you must have you people interacting in a manner that allows the inclusion of diverse and multiple perspectives. This is the hard part and the part we most routinely ignore. As a result our strategies, new approaches and outcomes are often not quite as good as they might be.

First Collaborate, Second Strategise and then the best Ideas will come!

Do it by the numbers and your business results will improve.

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People and organisations are seeking improvement and quality across many areas except that which is the most important – the quality of the way we think.

If we improve the quality of our thinking the quality of the actions that follow correspondingly improve.

The Six Thinking Hats are designed to dramatically improve the way we think. The methods are used to look at issues from multiple perspectives and help us to move beyond our habitual thinking styles to achieve a more rounded and thorough view of a given situation.

In this full day session participants will develop:

• a sound understanding of multiple thinking styles,
• the ability to design and facilitate effective, outcome oriented meetings,
• the ability to generate new ideas using lateral thinking methods,
• the ability to design and lay out a thinking process, and
• become a more thorough and objective thinker.

The session will be held at Melbourne’s premier training venue and all participants will be provided with an optional work-based assessment with which to immediately start to apply the methods back in the workplace. Successful completion of this assessment provides the “Blue Hat Facilitator” Pin.  Email & telephone coaching will be provided to assist with this at no additional cost.

Date & Time : 8:30am – 4:30pm, Friday March 18, 2011

Where: The Airlie Leadership Development Centre, 260 Domain Rd South Yarra

Value: $490/person with an early rate of $440/person up until Feb 25

Other: Participants from all sectors are welcome. Coffee/Tea will be provided upon arrival by qualified Baristas and the highest quality morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea will be provided. (If you’ve been to Airlie before you’ll know what this means!)

Many thanks for your response to this. The session is now fully subscribed and we look forward to a big day on the 18th!

We will be scheduling another session within the week so please watch this space!

Flyer: Six Thinking Hats training ALDC Mar 18

Any enquires may be directed to Frank at think.quick@me.com / 0400 109727 or Laurel on 0417 321296

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I attended at KMLF meeting last month and someone shared an interesting observation; i.e. “70% of all KM strategies have failed.” As bad a figure as this is, I suspect the overall failure rate is actually closer to the 90 percentile given the degree to which we rationalise our efforts in hindsight, selectively tout good aspects and neglect to encompass the whole longer-term picture..

I’ve heard many a strategy spruiked as a major success by practitioners, but conversations with the troops on the ground often tell a very different story. (I too, have been complicit in this type of behaviour in the past … guilty as charged your honour!)

Having worked (or at least been employed) in the “knowledge management” field for 10 years now, I’ve seen many a noble endeavour designed to get meaningful knowledge-transfer happening.  I can’t help but think however, one of the key areas in the transfer of knowledge has been largely ignored throughout the journey.

Anyway, the point I’m laboriously moving toward is,  that maybe it is radically different thinking that is needed to achieve the kind of successes that we envisage and are so fond of making Powerpoint presentations about. My humble contribution to this is, I concede, a rather simple thought and one therefore that has perhaps been overlooked for this very reason.

We spend millions on IT systems to capture, store and disseminate ‘stuff’. We endlessly attempt to codify “what we know” into different forms of media for those who might benefit from it, so they can completely ignore it. We set up communities of practice to connect the unconnected and link our structural silos. We endlessly promote the virtues of Web 2.0 and social media as the panacea of all our knowledge ills. We do all sorts of things in the name of KM it seems – except tackle potentially the most productive and lowest hanging of all our fruits …. our meetings.

In terms of knowledge-transfer and decision-making our meetings are potentially our most potent method because we:

• have the right subject matter experts invited and in attendance,
• if they are in attendance, they should be there with intent, and
• they are in a face-to-face setting where the most meaningful communication should be possible.

Why then are our meetings so unmemorable and unproductive? And more importantly, why don’t we do anything about it?

There are a number of methods doing the rounds that focus on improving meeting processes and many of these work quite well but the real key to effective meetings is addressing the thinking that takes place within those processes. Now, this is one area where I can, with hand on cold heart, claim to have a good degree of success using the parallel thinking methods of de Bono’s “Six Thinking Hats.”

Not all meetings require such facilitation, I suspect a great deal could be run simply and efficiently if the participants could simply develop some tolerance and empathy for opinions that differ from their own. However I routinely use parallel thinking when:

• there are strongly held views
• there are challenging issues at hand
• there are diverse perspectives on offer
• the conversation is rambling and unfocused, and
• when time is short

Contrary to popular belief there is rarely any reference made to hats or colours in a meeting and I find that skeptics who like to dwell on this aspect are those who do not understand the methodology and are unwilling to learn it. Unfortunately, when this is raised I do myself no favours by didactically explaining that “one needs to be sufficiently adult enough to understanding why such “seemingly” childish concepts are used.” (Simply put, the hats and colours create ‘mental hooks’ for the language and methods to embed and exist in the mind.)

Anyway I digress, what I really should be making reference to are the substantial quantifiable outcomes I can direct their attention to, that we have managed to save in such meetings that the usual meeting modus operandis have failed to deliver, particularly when we have incorporated some lateral thinking techniques to gain some traction on some of the more difficult issues.

Now that’s my primary way of dealing with the difficult issue of meetings and there are other efficient ways of doing so as well – I’m just wondering why they are not absolutely mandated and being put into use?

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