Design Thinking can make your meetings more productive

Renata Gomide
Sep 7, 2018 · 3 min read

How many meetings have you had this week? You probably lost count by Tuesday. And how many of these meetings were productive? If your answer is between “a few” and “not many”, you are not alone.

Most of my meetings are virtual, many of them are with people I haven’t met before (not even virtually) and I also get invited to a few meetings that I have no context about (and there is no information besides a vague title). If this sounds familiar, there is way out of this cycle, and you can apply Design Thinking to help you organize and run productive meetings. Here is how:

  • Plan your meeting: Set the goal, choose the attendees accordingly, develop an agenda with the activities and their duration. Send relevant material prior to the meeting and inform if pre-work is expected.
  • Start with introductions: If you are starting a new project, don’t skip the introductions, even if you’ve already worked with the team before. And go beyond the basics Name — Position — Area — Tenure. Talk about a passion, a fun fact, what you did in the weekend, something you are great (or not) at. The purpose is to literally break the ice, learn more about the people you’ll be working with, build empathy and maybe laugh a bit.
  • Set the stage: Take a few minutes to reinforce the agenda and goal of the meeting. Set the rules for brainstorming activities (open mind, “yes and” instead of “yes but”) and talk about the props that the team will use (sticky notes, virtual whiteboard).
  • Co-create with Design Thinking: A key principle of Design Thinking is divergence and convergence of ideas, in all stages of the process until getting to the expected outcome. You can apply Design Thinking frameworks to ideate, collaboratively decide on the ideas that the team will pursue and align an action plan for next steps. Let’s suppose you are working on a project to streamline the process in a finance department. You can start with a brainstorm — give the team a few minutes to generate ideas before the group discussion. This will allow people to think through the problem and will help them with the creative process. Then, with the help of the team, cluster the ideas according to themes. For this project you could have process, people development, technology. In the next step you could use the Importance Difficulty Matrix to classify the ideas according to the impact in the organization and the cost/complexity of execution. With this view, the team will be able to prioritize the initiatives. You can close the meeting with an action plan with next steps, key milestones and owners, or, you can keep ideating about the solutions that were prioritized using Concept Posters for example. You can get a lot done even in a short meeting. Most important, the team that collaborated in the creation process will likely be more engaged in the project.
Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

Are you convinced that you can have more productive meetings (and have better outcomes in your projects) by using Design Thinking? Time to start planning your next meeting!

If you are not the meeting organizer, I encourage you to suggest some of the approaches above in the meetings you participate, like introductions (you can tell something personal or fun in your turn and I am sure other participants will follow) and objectives set up upfront. It will help to get people more engaged, decreasing multitasking.

I would love to hear your feedback and your tips to make meetings more productive! Leave your comment here!


For more posts on related topics, check out www.ideasfordivas.com and follow me on Twitter @renata__gomide

Renata Gomide

Written by

An analytical mind venturing into the creative world of human-centered design. Blog: www.ideasfordivas.com

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