Save Time Brainstorming with Remote Teams
Meetings have always been expensive. When the world went remote, that cost went higher. Now, fighting screen fatigue is at the top of a long list of meeting costs, alongside context switching and sacrificing time that could have been used to push forward other work. With all these costs to consider, how can you be confident your team’s meeting will be a good use of time?
When the pandemic hit, I was working with a team to build their understanding of users, define the problem to solve, and ideate. We originally had outlined a plan with in-person activities scheduled across 3 days, a 3-day meeting. Now that we were remote, we needed a new plan. The goal was the same, understand the users, define the problem to solve, and ideate. Since no one wants to be on a Zoom meeting for 3 days straight, I had to decide what parts of the process were critical to meet as a team and what parts could be done individually.
I drew from a concept in design thinking, divergence, and convergence, to decide how to cut back on meeting time. According to IDEO, a leader in the design thinking space;
“During divergence, we are creating choices and during convergence, we are making choices.”
I decided that during divergent stages, the team would log off, shut their computer and work individually. This was a bet that doubled down on the benefits of divergence and allowed team members to:
analyze information and process at their own pace
get creative in a comfortable space
avoid groupthink and bias
focus without distractions
We took our work offline to explore the competitive landscape, find inspiration, and sketch solutions (yes, pen and paper!). The result? Each team member's unique perspective, strengths, and personality inspired 8 unique, high-quality ideas in the form of sketches. The team was able to draw from the best elements from each, ultimately building a solution that delighted their customers. The team also had a lot of fun with it! Our meeting time was spent converging, the discussion was efficient and rich because the team had time to individually process.
Image adapted from IDEO
Often, teams make the mistake of building both divergent and convergent thinking into the same meeting. One common example is a team coming together to brainstorm ideas and wanting to walk away with consensus on an idea. If you have been to a meeting like that, you might be familiar with how ideas become limited and the best ones don’t always surface. This mistake can occur in any stage of the development process, not just ideation.
If you need to explore choices in a new problem space, consider individual work. If you have finished exploring and need to decide, a meeting could be the right tool!
Understanding if your team is in the divergent or convergent stage of problem-solving can help you to think critically about why your team is meeting and evaluate if the work can be done individually in place of a meeting. Note, this is not a substitute for prep work, a clear agenda, and good facilitation, which are all critical to a well-run meeting!
How might you apply this approach to other parts of the development cycle and save your team’s time?
