Why Uncomfortable Meeting Attendees are Smarter

By Andrea Driessen, Chief Boredom Buster, No More Boring Meetings

On a recent adventure in China, I spent at least half the time being uncomfortable. Hot, sweaty, crushed by crowds, lost, confused. After a few days of being cranky, I realized that in exchange for this discomfort, I had the rare chance to experience forever-memorable moments that would have been impossible without first being uncomfortable:

Trekking the Great Wall, viewing Mao Zedong’s embalmed body, eating some of the world’s most delicious dumplings, communicating in a very foreign language, standing amidst some of the most gorgeous scenery on earth.

But I’m not here to talk about what I did on my summer vacation.

Via discomforting travel, I also saw a strong correlation between discomfort and meeting success….and how building in some discomfort into meetings helps attendees experience lasting—and positive—memories and deeper learning.

It can mean the difference between significant behavior change and complacency-maintaining status quo for your audiences.

How to purposefully add Discomfort to your Meeting Agenda….

It’s natural to view high levels of comfort as central to a successful meeting.
Of course, want to provide a comfy venue, lighting—and enlightenment.

Yet when attendees are UN-comfortable in particular ways…exposed to the unknown….they actually pay more attention—if anything, to regain some lost comfort.  And, they become more open to changing their circumstances and learning something new.

A few examples of intentionally building discomfort into your meeting—even at the executive level.

ENHANCE CUSTOMER EMPATHY

Let’s say you need to help employees gain more empathy for your customers as they learn to serve more effectively. In a meeting setting, put employees directly in the customers’ shoes by giving them the literal experience of how it feels to be a vulnerable new customer:

• Have everyone stand for the average length of time your customers spend on hold (our bodies hold the clearest, most visceral memories)
• Withhold the standard agenda, so they have no initial road map of what to expect, at least in the early hours of the meeting. (New customers don’t have any initial anchors either.)
• Write signage in another language. (Company jargon can feel that way to the un-initiated.)
• Serve dessert as the first course (On the premise that the best events surprise, confuse, even frustrate—and open up the learning channel).

With just a few adjustments in transforming your meeting format, attendees will physically, mentally and emotionally sense the same type of vulnerable experience that your customers do when they first consider your product or service.

Create a Twitter Fall

This popular concept in meeting formats is designed to showcase real-time input, reactions, and conversations from attendees’ Tweets. The “unplugged”/unedited nature does bring with it some level of risk—that’s where you get the discomfort. Yet again, in exchange for this discomfort, you gain fresh insights, feedback and “field intelligence” at a depth that only social networking can achieve.

In exchange for controlling all the content of your meeting, you gain richer content, longer lasting learning and more buy in to your organization’s most important initiatives.

Ask your venue AV staff how to project a TwitterFeed (AKA “TwitterFall”) from cell phones to big screens. Many planners find the TwitterFall screen one of the most popular, buzz-producing aspects of their meetings.

FORM UNLIKELY COUPLINGS

You really want to shake things up—and start problem-solving conversations that extend long beyond the life of your event?

Imagine the fascinating, unusual and perhaps sometimes-heated discussions that’ll take place with the following participants in one room:

• Gather a cross-functional mix of employees from each department (executive team, marketing, finance, sales etc). Give them (or have them generate) a list the top 5 problems that, if solved, would propel your organization to new heights.Then assign a variety of department reps to each table, and give each table one of the 5 problems to solve. Punch up the conversation further by asking: what within our processes gets in the way of exceeding these goals? After 45-75 minutes, have each table report back to the full audience.

• Olympic year or not, invite an Olympian or other top sporting figure to your event….and apply his/her experience with achieving top performance to your biggest business challenges.

Such groupings—which may first feel uncomfortable and even silly—can lead to exceptional, ground-breaking learning. And allowing the audience–not just ‘the sage on the stage’–generate content fosters more growth and positive change.

So…how will you grow more comfortable with discomfort–and give meeting attendees the chance to experience higher levels of growth? In these unusual times, it’s time for business as unusual—and for getting more comfortable with discomfort—in meetings and in life.

How will YOU foster discomfort in your next meeting?

Why most meetings suck, and what to do about it

By Andrea Driessen, Chief Boredom Buster, No More Boring Meetings

You know how we all like to complain about the problems with bad meetings…?

Here at No More Boring Meetings, we prefer to offer SOLUTIONS rather than complain about the problems.

We believe that meetings themselves should be solutions—and that we must start to hold solutions rather than hold meetings.

It’s time to a Declaration of Meeting Independence—and revolutionize how we plan, stage and experience meetings of all sizes.

3 easy ways to revolutionize meetings so they don’t suck:

1. Declare independence from a rigid agenda

For many meetings, working from an agenda often means reporting a wide range of ideas, reports, “check in’s” and unfocused presentations, with little or no common thread. Instead, as you plan your next meeting (um—SOLUTION!) … whether a departmental meeting or a large event…first determine:

What is the BIGGEST, most pressing problem is this meeting supposed to solve? What question does my meeting ANSWER?

Then be SURE that every element of your agenda supports that concept and that desired outcome.

For example: let’s say sales reps are selling without the most current insight learned from the last three focus groups. What needs to happen so they have the most relevant data by tomorrow?

Solution: John, Mary and Amed, who each led a focus group, will meet from 9-11am. All will come to the Solution with a report showing the top three findings and product changes as a result of their focus group. Then, on their own, sometime between 11-4pm, each will enter the key product updates into the database. So, by 4pm, all sales managers can print and distribute updated product specs to their salespeople.

In the above solutions-scenario:

• Only the key players are invited to the meeting–no extraneous people who would otherwise be distracted, thinking about all the work they SHOULD be doing.
• There’s absolutely no room in the discussion for any other topic beyond focus group results and product updates. That is, whenever someone tries to meander into a different subject, you have carte blanche to table it for another time.

• When the Solution is completed, there is a tangible, measurable outcome associated with the time spent.

Even the largest meetings, including multi-day employee events, will be more focused and effective when this problem-solution question is asked.

2. Throw off the shackles of PowerPoint

We all know that too much PowerPoint can ruin a meeting. Every single day in our Free Country, we are wasting $250 Million due to bad slide decks. For proof, click this link. (Note this is 2001 data; adjusted for inflation, more than $310 Million—every day!)

Why? A lack of solutions-thinking. Most presenters use their slides as a forum to share seemingly endless amounts of data….charts, graphs, statistics….ad infinitum.

So how do we move beyond data dumping and start experiencing Power-FULL presentations?  Again, the answer lies in Solutions-thinking.

Effectively designed presentations do not start with opening a PowerPoint template and creating bulleted lists and pie charts. They begin—and end—by carefully deciding what your #1 purpose is in delivering the program. What change do you want to invoke in your audience? What SOLUTION do you want to provide? What IS your most POWERFUL Point?

Start your planning at the end—with what you want the audience to take away—so your presentation is more interesting and effective… and streamlines your thoughts, saves you and your audience time, and earns you higher ratings as a presenter.

Then it’s time to build your deck, which is all the easier, because every single slide must support your most Powerful Point.

3. Tap the Power of the People (aka listen to attendees)

We all want our contributions to matter, in and outside of meetings. Younger generations in particular crave participation. Two easy ways to ensure everyone’s voice is heard at your next meeting:

1. Use audience polling….via the next generation of audience response systems, which are much more affordable than typical audience response systems (nothing to rent!) and are extremely customizable.
2. Stage an Open Space: free or nearly free, self directed, scalable, AND you’ll generate an enormous amount of useful data, input, ideas and input from any sized group

As the old saying goes: If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.

So, get yourself—and your attendees—on the Revolutionary Road to holding SOLUTIONS that keep everyone engaged, awake, and able to do their best work.

8 Easy Ways to Extend Post-Event Engagement

By Andrea Driessen, Chief Boredom Buster, No More Boring Meetings

Your last event was a resounding success—everyone returned to work energized, educated and ready to do their best work. Buzz around the “water cooler” was high for weeks.

Now what? How do you extend event engagement—long after the meeting? How do you get more “bang from your engagement buck”—without spending a lot more time, effort and….well….bucks?

With these easy, post-event engagement enhancers:

1. The Stories of Success

Meeting participants are exposed to a wide range of tools and ideas, with the assumption they will apply them at work. Yet even in a hyper-connected organization, the ways in which individuals and teams use concepts is often left unshared.

You can easily boost application of the learning by intentionally creating a forum in which employees may share their success stories. Employee success stories can be shared:

• in an actual success story book
• via printed and framed stories on a Wall of Fame
• online and offline
• verbally and in writing
• during team meetings

Whatever mode you use, you readily give everyone the means to share what’s working for them (and what’s not). After all, success breeds more success—but only when shared openly.

2. Why not a Wiki?!A wiki is simply a knowledge base–Wikipedia is the most well-known example. Wikis are a natural way to build and share content among meeting attendees. Encourage participants to build their own wikis, before during and/or after an event, based on what they learn. Wikis deliver a two-fold benefit: ongoing learning AND more engagement. If you can use Microsoft Word, you can build a Wiki. Try WikiSpaces.com – it’s free.

3. Meeting in a Box Post event, send attendees back to work with Meeting Engagement Extenders in a Box. Based on your industry and goals, these can include:

• DVDs with a range of short trainings they can play during team meetings to extend concepts discussed at your larger event
• Game shows and quizzes that test retention and build on core meeting education
• Ask us for a customized Meeting in a Box for your team

4. The Gifts that Keep on Giving

Your fundraiser brought an entire community together to fiscally and emotionally support your mission. Now 1000s are benefiting from the gifted funds and resources. Keep that energy, buy-in and belief going with:

• A phone tree in which every donor is thanked in real time within a day of the event
• A handwritten thank you note from individual beneficiaries to individual donors, describing how they have been personally touched by the fundraising efforts. (naturally, keep clients’/recipients’ names anonymous, if needed)
• An added line to donation cards, reading “My wish for this organization is _________. “ Using this input, create a word cloud or some other visual of all  wishes. This tree-like image can then become a vision for future fundraising efforts, a volunteer recruitment tool and a vibrant symbol of the value your organization’s efforts create in the community.

5. The Sound of Music Music and memory are natural partners. Somewhat freakishly, we can often remember an entire set of song lyrics…even from junior high. When your work force is faced with the need to memorize complex information—material that would normally be taught over the course of a longer meeting—set some of it to music.

• Maybe people need to learn and memorize a brand promise, an organizational mission or a customer service strategy in the weeks after your event. Our Team will write and produce a custom-written song, and all the lyrics will feature your key content. The tune can be posted on an intranet as a downloadable song or MP3, or burned on a “[Your Company’s] Greatest Hits” CD, played at smaller departmental meetings, and/or sung into everyone’s voicemail to spread the word. This is extremely memorable, affordable and easy to execute. Get an entire work force to memorize a boatload of information in a short time, and extend the engagement long after the live event ends.

6. Read Best Sellers—and Foster Better Sellers!

Perhaps a well-known author has spoken at your event or sales kickoff. Boost revenue and keep buzz alive by starting a book club, so everyone is reading and discussing a book written by your headlining speaker. Increase learning and intimacy even more by integrating a 20-minute talk from your keynoter via www.TED.com– thousands of topics and thought leaders are available here at no cost.

7. Open Up to Open Space

Open Space is a free, self-directed, scalable meeting format. You can integrate one into your live meeting, and/or at work after the meeting. Open a Space to this method of engagement, and you’ll generate an enormous amount of useful data, input, and ideas from any sized group.

8. Post-Program Pair-Up This format can be used immediately after speakers or trainers complete their programs at your live event.

1. Have the audience: A. Find a partner. B. Discuss what goal you will each reach in the next 60 days that’s related to the just-delivered education–and, presumably, to your organizational mission. C. Record the goal—and each other’s contact information—on paper or in a PDA. D. Commit to supporting each other in reaching these goals in the next two months. E. If your audience is small, take everyone’s commitments to an even higher level: Invite everyone to the mic to state their goal with the whole group. After all, committing to a target in public means you’re all the more likely to meet it.

Find this Boredom buster helpful? Share it with your colleagues.

Money-Saving Meeting Formats

6 Creative Ways to Engage, Excite & Ignite your Audiences—on a budget

By Andrea Driessen, Chief Boredom Buster, No More Boring Meetings

If, in the current economic climate, you think you can’t hold a best-in-class meeting, think again. Try one or more of these no- or low-cost, easy-to-implement meeting formats, and you’ll quickly raise the bar on audience engagement and takeaway.

Oh, and by the way….everyone will wonder how you pulled it off—on or under budget.

Most of the following can be scheduled in addition to your “regularly scheduled programming” (i.e. keynoters, executive presentations, breakouts), OR offered instead to save money while you maximize meeting time.

1. Prancing with the Stars.
   Let’s say you’ve invested in a speaker whom your event attendees are clamoring to see and deeply respect. In the weeks leading up to your meeting, hold a contest in which the top 20 or so winners [and perhaps your event sponsors] get their own intimate, elbow-rubbing reception and photo opp with this presenter while he’s onsite. Timed right, this addition has a FIVE-fold benefit: It costs you almost nothing…generates huge event buzz….builds productivity (presuming that the contest is work related 😉 …..creates a longtime memory among everyone who participates…..AND makes you the meeting hero.
2. Pecha Kucha.
   Sounding like a new tea leaf plucked from a tree in Mongolia, Pecha Kucha is actually Japanese for chatter. And as author Dan Pink writes in Wired, “Get to the PowerPoint in 20 Slides Then Sit the [Heck] Down.” It’s all about fast-paced, furiously focused presentations that cover a specific topic in just 20 minutes. Read more about it here.
3. “60 Ideas in 60 minutes.”
   Banish boredom with this free, fast-moving, no-room-for-boredom session. First, choose a key challenge of great interest to your audience….AND a trained facilitator. Get a stop watch. Then invite to the stage your best experts (whether outside speakers, internal subject matter gurus, your customers—or a mix).  Ready, Set, GO: each expert gets just ONE minute to provide a tip or idea on that subject….and BING!, we move to the next panelist until 60 minutes are up. EVERYONE gets practical strategies directly associated with the originally scheduled topic.
4. Talk, Text, Tweet.
   Get the most mileage from your keynote or breakout—and keep the entire audience absorbed. People will talk, text and Twitter during sessions anyway. Why not give them a forum—AND boost the value of the session? Ask speakers to break for these submitted questions, or include a lively, “organic” Q&A right after the presentation, to bring the content “home.”
   Contact us to find out more about the technologies behind this concept.

5. Ask the Expert Roundtables.

Break up your standard (and boring!) meeting format with a roundtable instead of—or as a follow up to—a breakout or keynote. Ask already scheduled presenters, and/or others who fit with your agenda, to facilitate table top discussions based on your most relevant topics. Each “round” of these roundtables is just 20 minutes, so time is maximized and conversations BUZZ. At the sound of the bell, everyone moves to a different table. Many groups report these to be the highest rated programs of any meeting.

6. Post-Program Pair-Up.

After your speaker is finished, ask her or a company leader to elicit a challenge to the audience: A. Find a partner. B. Discuss what goal you will each reach in the next 60 days that’s related to the just-delivered keynote–and, presumably, to your organizational mission. C. Record the goal—and your contact information—on paper. D. Exchange papers with your partner, and commit to supporting each other in reaching your goals in the next two months. E. If your audience is on the small size, take everyone’s commitments to an even higher level: Invite everyone to the mic to state their goal with the whole group. After all, committing to a target in public means you’re all the more likely to meet it.

4 Rules for Banishing Brain Boredom

Brain Research Support for UN-Boring Meetings

By Andrea Driessen, Chief Boredom Buster, No More Boring Meetings

Dr. John Medina’s ground-breaking research about how the brain works has a lot to tell us about how to hold more engaging meetings.

A Seattle-based developmental molecular biologist, Dr. Medina has written “Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home and School,” an engaging, real-world look at how to make the most of our minds.

To help you apply his research to more effective business meetings, we summarize here four key points from Dr. Medina’s efforts:

1. IN PURSUIT OF THE UN-BORING: Dr. Medina’s findings reinforce—with science—what we all instinctually know every time we try to endure a dull, mind-numbing meeting: “The brain does not like boring things,” he says. And when the brain tunes out, or when we’re tired and stressed (all of which are often true at work and at meetings!), we don’t engage. We don’t learn. And we don’t participate….all crucial elements of successful meetings. So, what’s a way to alleviate the UnBoring Meeting? That brings us to #2…
2. YOU HAVE NINE MINUTES TO CHANGE. It seems we all have some level of Attention Deficit Disorder. Dr. Medina’s data show that after only about 9 minutes, our brains start losing their capacity to pay attention. The antidote? Inject new material into your meeting every 10 minutes or so…to connect information and facts to something more emotional or inspirational. Perhaps in the form of story…or an interactive exercise…to re-invigorate dulling brains. But only if you want people to remember and be engaged.
3. EXERCISE MAKES YOU SMARTER. When we picture meetings, we likely imagine a sea of people with butts in their seats. Yet according to Dr. Medina, exercise—and movement—ensure that what we are learning is actually moving from short- to long-term memory. His findings make a clear case for Walking Meetings. Or at least for building in more opportunity for people to talk, move and connect, even during formal gatherings.
4. REPEAT TO REMEMBER. REPEAT TO REMEMBER. Whether your meeting is for all 500 employees or just your immediate team of 5 colleagues, every brain requires that key material is repeated. Common sense, right? Dr. Medina’s research adds a specific, measurable Rule: the information you want your people to remember and apply most is best repeated within just TWO hours of their first exposure to it. So, it’s not overdoing it to revisit 10am keynote content over lunch, for example. Reiterating it the next day or even worse, next month, means you may as well…forget it!

Additional resources:

Dr. Medina’s interactive website: www.BrainRules.net

Seattle Times article on Brain Rules: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/entertainment/2004313818_brainrules310.html

No More Boring Meetings
www.NoMoreBoringMeetings.com
206-783-MEET (6338)
Seattle, WA