The HivePad Meeting IBYOD

IBYOD - Stands for: Interactive, Bring Your Own Device. These are meeting where everyone has a voice and a vote. We are raising the bar on audience response. Not only can your participants comment live, they can also rank ideas, vote on priorities, brainstorm in break out groups, contribute by electronic flip charts, and create a team or organization wiki - all at your next meeting.

The meetings are fun, informative, energizing, and creative. And the results from the meeting can be instantly downloaded or shared with those who were not able to attend. Remote participants can also attend. Just be aware of the time differences.

We can also work the data collected at the meeting in real time - bringing a here and now relevance to any discussion. iPads, tablets, android devices, kindle fire, laptops all work. Participants can also participate before, during, and after your meeting.

We design and facilitate. You lead. We can also train your people to do a HivePad meeting. Take a test drive when you are ready. Just leave a comment. We will get right back to you.

Find It With Style

Looking to something different with your team? Would you like to play a bit with high tech and high touch? Try geocaching. It’s orienteering with a flair! Teams get a GPS hand held device, although team members can also use their smart phones. Apple’s iPhone has a great app. They are given a set of instructions for how to operate the device and additional instructions on what the goal of the exercise is all about. The goal is to find a series of hidden “caches” specifically designed for you particular outing. These caches can have very particular meaning and be anything you want them to be. For example, teams can search for their own accomplishments, new product ideas, team norms etc. They use the device and their team wits to create a strategy and then execute against it. Creating sub-groups intensifies the experience by adding the possibilities of collaboration and competition.

It’s fascinating to watch LIFO styles interact with instructions. The high Controlling - Taking types want to get the GPS and start running. High Conserving - Holding typically want more information. High Supporting - Giving team members are the strategists. They want to get it right. High Adapting - Dealing folks just want to have fun. So we have some interesting choice points in terms of the design. Sub teams can be formed with all the same styles, or max mixed. I find it best to create groups randomly by counting off. I leave the sorting of styles to Karma. Doing LIFO styles first followed by a geocaching event has enormous potential for a high energy team learning experience.

I like to design four parts to the exercise:

1. Receiving the instructions
2. Sub-team strategy session - How do we go about doing the tasks. How do we win?
3. Execution - Doing, recovery, redoing etc.
4 Debriefing - Telling the stories of the hunt.

 In a few hours teams can have a powerful team learning experience while having a lot of fun together. A skillful debrief really adds to the experience by helping teams talk through the experience and go deeper, collecting insights about team development, leadership, follower-ship and style difference. I like to add the Drexler Sibbet Model into the mix because it helps reinforce an understanding of how high performance is created and sustained. There are lots of variation to this theme. Geocaching can be combined with a trip to retail stores to find the best position of products. Teams can be given small video cams and be tasked to create a short video highlighting learnings during their hunt.

Look for new and innovative ways to create deep meaning for your teams that focuses on their particular products, services, markets, or industry. If you’d like some additional information, contact me. Have fun with this one!

The Always Dangerous Conference Call

The worst part of being on a dispersed team these days is The Conference Call. I will bet we all have some wild stories about how badly these can go. The problem is that connecting people with audio over a number of time zones, with people of different cultures and language is awkward, difficult, expensive, and often punitive. Talk about losing membership, lots of poorly executed conference calls will do it.

However, conference calls are also necessary, even critical. Here is a source of great pain that needs relieving. Hey entrepreneurs out there, listen up. Create a better conference call and you can be the next big thing. In the mean time the rest of us need to look very hard integrating our work flows into our team dynamics. A bad call risks a lot.  We risk understanding.  We risk follow-up. We can create dependency because by not having the ability to discuss issues freely and openly. So what’s one to do. Here are some ideas to help with your next conference call.

Design the Call - Many calls are critical. Give them the same time and attention you would put into a critical meeting. Even better make this the norm. No call gets made without a meeting design. Put some forethought into what you actually want to accomplish. Is it a call to impart information only. What is the best way to do this? Think hard about what the team needs. A call may not be the answer. Eliminate every conference call that is not critical. Every time you host a non essential call you are setting a norm that it is OK to waste time.  

Shorten every call. (No need to explain)

Mix it up. Rotate the person in charge of the call. Make call design a competency. The regular Monday afternoon call should not be made by the same team member each week. Rotate the times as well. Give your Asian team mates a break. Let them have the 9 AM call instead of the 9PM call.

Go Deeper with your Call-Ware. If you have purchased a sophisticated conference calling solution, require team members to get trained in using it. Require them to use it and all of it’s bells and whistles. Make this part of the call design. Make experimenting and risk-taking part of the calls. Do polls, and use them for call feedback. How did we do today? What can we do to improve this call? Share screens. If you have video conferencing - use it. But use it wisely. Learning how to make use of call-ware is a competency like any other. Good team-building is about building strong competencies.

Have a Third Place to Go. Make the best use of “The Cloud” for critical documents, time lines, anytime / anyplace discussions. Give team members a place they can visit, track projects, modify their work. I happen to like BaseCamp for this work, but their are other apps that may fill your particular needs. Set time aside to agree on how you will make the best use of your cloud service.

Contract with a Call-Facilitator. It’s an new but upcoming job. Just like with face-to-face meetings, a facilitator will help you with design and also help you with running the meeting. However, many face-to-face facilitators haven't figured this out yet. If you are leading the call, a facilitator will allow you to actually listen to what everyone is saying. It’s very hard to lead and facilitate a call at the same time. Critical calls are not a place to experiment with how well you can multi-task.

Make use of Sub-Teams. Not everyone needs to be on every call. Have the team figure this out. Then create a way for what’s discussed to be shared.

As Steve Jobs would say, “One last thing.” If you are not on to talk, use your mute button. Nothing like hearing disagreements come across as disparaging comments from a de-motivated sub-team in the middle of a critical call . Failure to do this can be career limiting. :-) However, if this does happen, you know that you have some additional work to do.

Just for fun: Add a comment today in which you disclose the funniest thing (worst thing, or something you heard, but wish you didn’t hear) you have ever heard on a conference call. One caveat. Swear to tell the truth! Feel freee to tell a story. It's Friday here, and a little laughter would be greatly appreciated. :-D

Happy Martin Luther King Day!

Celebrating Dr. King's Day! Can't help but wonder how he would have been using techology to further the conversations about social justice, equality, and peace. Well, we can always use our creative imagination to think about the possibilities.

Personally I think he would have continued to make some amazing contributions to shaping our conversations. Our task is to cary on without our heroes, relying on their footsteps to show the direction, but leaving it to us now to lead the way.  Let's keep his vision in mind as we forge new ways to connect and dialogue. We will all be better for it.

Note:

For our fans near Philadelphia, we are thinking about creating a workshop series on how to facilitate large town meetings at Fellowship Farm outside of Pottstown. Email us if you are intersted in learning or in being a future facilitator at one of our Citizen Summits.

The Power of The Hive

Imagine Box.net, Survey Monkey, Electronic Voting, Threaded Discussions, Project Management, and the most powerful electronic brainstorming tool all in one suite. And imagine it coming with a bee keeper, an experienced faciltator who can advise you on the best ways to collect, organize, present, and store your data. Imagine using the suite in face-to-face meetings and online collaboration. Well you can. It's called:

We have used The Hive for stragtegic retreats, town halls, voice of the customer sessions, project management, remote focus groups, innovation clinics, and large stakeholder meetings. Click on the graphic above and you can be taken to a sample hive. Sign up and do your own demo. We will be happy to answer your questions. Enjoy!