Simplify Meetings to Stir Creativity
When you're trying to get your team's creative juices flowing, ditch PowerPoint and all those other presentation programs, advises David Clarke of CIO magazine. Instead, structure the meeting as a free-flowing conversation, and use a whiteboard to jot down ideas.
Clarke actually banned PowerPoint presentations for a while because he believed they encouraged homogeneous thinking. "The problem was that our attention span had become so limited that our level of conversation had degenerated to this bullet point way of talking and thinking," he says. "We were presenting to each other, not talking with each other."
Here are some of his other ideas to spur creative meetings:
- Experiment with different seating arrangements to facilitate conversation instead of presentation.
- Design new office space with small seat groupings.
- Ban laptops to avoid distraction.
- Orient meetings to round-table discussions instead of formal topics.
When Clarke eventually rescinded the ban on PowerPoint, some team members used their newfound creativity to produce animated storyboards that inspired interactive sessions.
Source: Executive Leadership Extra
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