How to meet like a pro without saying a word
Have you heard of a brainstorm? Have you participated in one? The odds are pretty good that you have.
What about a Silent Storm? Have you participated in one? If you have, you’d know. And if you haven’t … well, buckle up buttercup, cuz I am about to blow your mind.
You can have a short, successful meeting, culminating in ideas with immediate action items, without any discussion.
Mind. Blown.
How is this possible? By the end of this article, you’ll both be able to answer this question and will likely want to try one for yourself.
The format of the Silent Storm is possible because it follows these principles:
- Using enablers, intentionally
- Creating an environment where ideas are quickly and continuously validated
- Working individually and together simultaneously
Using enablers, intentionally
There are three main constraints that the Silent Storm employs: 1) It uses open and closed thinking at specific stages along the way. Open and closed thinking are different than “open minded” or “closed minded” in that “open thinking” means to think broad (no judgements, remove constraints) and “closed thinking” means to refine and add constraints (like feasibility or desirability or interest). 2) Each step is timed down to the minute. No more. 3) And the most obvious constraint is silence.
Creating an environment where ideas are quickly and continuously validated
The four exercises build on each other and allow for consensus without discussion. This helps to level the playing field, avoid groupthink and generate more ideas and actions than in traditional meeting formats.
Working individually and together at the same time
A principle that we apply across all of our projects is working individually and as a team at the same time. We vacillate between individual generation and teamwork. It is better seen than explained, so you’ll just need to try it to get why it works. (It really does work!)
How to conduct a Silent Storm
You will need to have a facilitator that will talk through each step and run the timer. Depending on the size of your group, you may need to have team facilitators.
The Silent Storm team size is ideally 5–7 people but we’ve facilitated groups of over 250 people. Ideally, if you have a large group, break the group up into teams of 5–7, with 11 being the max (Pro tip: if you have a group larger than 15, try to have facilitators for each team). The odd number is intentional for voting but if even numbers happen, not a problem.
Preparation:
Tools needed:
- Large, white sticky post-it pads (Pro tip: the recycled ones are the best!) or full wall whiteboards (Pro tip: test the post-its stickiness to the whiteboard surface before starting the exercise)
- 1 sharpie for each participant
- 1 3x3 square post-it pad for each participant
- Sticky dots — a variety of colors, with more of one particular color (Pro tip: save the red dots for the second to last step, since that color is most visible)
Each team will have a section of wall space. Place 3 of the large post-it sheets up on the wall. Label the first one “Blockers”. Label the second one “Solutions”. Label the third one “Impact / Effort” and in the top ⅔ of the sheet draw a scale (two perpendicular lines) — the y-axis will be “Impact” and the x-axis will be “Effort”. In the bottom ⅓ of the sheet add the title “Actions” with the remaining space below it.
Scene-setting (10 minutes):
Use this time to introduce the meeting format as well as the team’s main goal. Decide on the goal before the meeting. The purpose of defining this goal is to keep participants focused on a particular problem area which allows for better outputs. This goal is not up for debate and is used to frame the exercises. (Pro tip: gain agreement of the goal beforehand so that no one is surprised or disengaged in the exercises).
Have people gather their supplies and show everyone where their wall stations are. Exercise 1 can start seated but participants will quickly be up and moving around. (Pro tip: acknowledge that this format may be uncomfortable and will require active participation from everyone as well as silence. The silence will be the hardest part. It will require constant reminders.)
Exercise 1 (10 minutes):
Participants will start by silently and individually generating blockers to the goal presented previously — “What is keeping us from achieving the goal?” Have them write one blocker per post-it in a way that can be understood by others (legible handwriting, brief but enough to get the point across).
They will have 5 minutes to write as many blockers as they can think of. No constraints; quantity over quality. Once they have generated a few post-its have them stick them to the wall on the space marked “Blockers”. Continue generating blockers for the full 5 minutes. At the end of the time have participants place all of their post-its on the wall and gather around the board to read everyone’s contributions.
The next step will be to organize the post-its into groups and vote. The reading, organizing and voting is timed for 3 minutes total. (Pro tip: There will be some discussion starting here. Remind teams that “the exercise will go smoother and quicker if you do it silently”.) Have the teams read everyone’s contribution and group post-its into areas that are similar or the same (Pro tip: for those that are exactly the same, you can stick these on top of each other so only one is showing). This should take about 1–2 minutes to read and organize. At 1 minute, 30 seconds have the teams begin to use their sticky dots to vote for the biggest challenge or threat to the goal. By 2 minutes in, all teams should be voting. For each round of voting it is important to have deliberate criteria so participants can more easily identify with what they want to vote for based on that criteria (examples: “biggest threat to the goal”, “most interesting problem to solve”, “most feasible solution in the given timeframe”, “biggest impact on the client”).
Voting rules are: 3 votes each; you can vote all on 1 sticky or spread the votes around; you can vote for your post-it or anyone else’s; use all 3 of your votes.
For this exercise, in case of a tie, have the teams vote again only on the post-its that are tied. 1 vote each for this tie-breaker.
This exercise ends with facilitators taking the winning blocker and rewriting it into the “How Might We” (HMW) format. Doing this reframes the blocker into a question that make it easier to come up with solutions. This should be timed and take no longer than 2 minutes. Facilitators may ask the team for their agreement with the HMW question. This HMW question should be written on a sticky and placed in the top left corner of the space labeled “Solutions”.
Exercise 2 (8 minutes):
Participants will now have 5 minutes to generate answers to that HMW question. One idea per stickie; no constraints; quantity over quality. (Pro tip: if people get stuck here have them write down the worst idea they can think of. It will either get them unstuck or will not be as bad of an idea as they think.)
Once there are a few ideas generated, have participants start sticking them to the walls and continue to generate ideas for the full 5 minutes.
The next step will be to organize the post-its into groups and vote. The reading, organizing and voting is timed for 3 minutes total.
Same as before, have the teams read everyone’s contribution and group post-its into areas that are similar or the same (Pro tip: for those that are exactly the same, you can stick these on top of each other so only one is showing). This should take about 1–2 minutes to read and organize.
At 1 minute, 30 seconds have the teams begin to use their sticky dots to vote for the most interesting idea or the idea with the most potential. By 2 minutes in, all teams should be voting. For this round of voting, we recommend using the criteria “most interesting” because we have found that participants are more engaged with problems that interest them — and therefore the chances of successful results are higher.
Voting rules are the same except in this round we are not looking for a winner. So just have people vote for all the ideas that are interesting or have the most potential.
This exercise ends with facilitators moving all the ideas that have recieved votes to the last space labeled “Effort / Impact”. Place the post-its within the matrix quickly without too much concern on where in the matrix they are being placed.
Exercise 3 (10 minutes):
The team will gather around the Effort / Impact matrix and take 5 minutes to organize the post-its in the correct quadrant. Each person can move the post-it to the quadrant that they feel is best as well as move other post-its if they do not agree with where they are on the matrix. Post-its can be moved multiple times and over the course of the 5 minutes there may be more movement at the beginning, but that will slow down as agreement is made. This part should be done silently, use your discretion if you want to allow minimal discussion here. (Pro tip: This exercise has the most potential to go off the rails with talking. Talking will make the exercise go on way longer than allotted.)
Once the 5 minutes are up, have the teams take note of the top, left quadrant which is their “sweet spot” of high impact / low effort.
Have teams take 1 sticky dot of the color you have decided to use for this exercise. (Pro tip: If you use red for this step, don’t use red in the previous voting sessions.) The teams will vote on the idea on the matrix that has the most potential. One vote each this time.
Exercise 4 (10 minutes +/-):
Take everything in the top left quadrant (including the winner) and move them down to the space labeled “Actions”. Line them up horizontally so there is space beneath each. (Pro tip: if there are more than 5 post-its here, do a quick voting session to find the other top 4). If there are no post-its in that quadrant, move clockwise to the “High effort / High impact” quadrant.
For each sticky here, have the participants take 5 minutes to generate possible next steps for each. There may be some ideas that one person knows more about, if that is the case they can generate more than one possible next step. Ideally, there should be 3–5 next steps for each.
An optional last step would be to assign each of the next steps to some one on the team.
The benefit of this last step is that there is a responsible party to hold accountable for keeping the momentum going in case you need to move a project along quickly.
To wrap up
The total time will take a little less than 1 hour, but we recommend scheduling an hour. We have found the “scene setting” before the exercises is helpful as well as factoring in transition time between exercises and some time for the unknown. This will help you guarantee that the meeting will not run over, and more than likely will give people time back (and who doesn’t like that?).
The Silent Storm works equally well in person as it does virtually. For a video on conducting a virtual session, check out this tutorial.
Are you excited to try this with your teams now?
