9 Tips for Creative and Successful Meetings
1. Title Instead of Agenda Items
"Untitled" is written on paintings that have no title. Most meetings are also "untitled." Agenda items are worked through, tasks are assigned, and employees are informed about things they cannot change. All of this could be done faster via email.
Give your next meeting a title - just like a piece of art! The title is the goal of your meeting. Create a creative atmosphere and utilize the collective knowledge and years of experience of all participants. And then, with seven meeting participants, look forward to creative connections to the power of 7.
What do you wish for from your meetings? New ideas and solutions? Strengthening of teamwork? Efficiency? Set the title and be excited to see what masterpiece your team creates in an hour of meeting.
2. The Big Picture
It is in vogue to talk about visions, mission statements, and corporate culture. But what image do your employees bring to the meeting? Success, enthusiasm, team spirit? Or is it more the image of boredom, wasted time, and stale air?
Create a large common collage for your meeting room. Let each participant select three strong images from company brochures, recruiting posters, Manager Magazine, Vogue Business, etc. What is the image of your success? For one person, it might be the strong feeling of having achieved something together. A photo of several laughing people in business attire could symbolize this. Another may choose a chart showing a rising revenue line, and a third may choose a sporty car as a symbol of personal success.
- What needs to happen in this meeting,
- so that we get one step closer to our common task
- and each individual to their personal image of success?
Ask yourself this in every meeting! Only then is your personal success authentic and leads to the success of your company.
3. Who Participates?
For both the effectiveness and efficiency of your meetings, it is important to precisely determine who participates in the meeting.
- Today we know: Decision-makers must be part of the team.
- You also know: the more diverse the team members, the better the results. A meeting of all salespeople is less productive than a meeting where employees from sales, product development, marketing, and IT departments work together.
Both can be demonstrated with a wonderful example from art history:
The famous painter Peter Paul Rubens had specialists employed for every detail, each responsible for a part of the paintings: there were painters for animals, painters for flowers and fruits, painters for landscapes. Rubens himself mainly focused on the design of the painting and on important customers in the final touch-ups. This way, he ensured that each person contributed their strengths and that he had enough time to acquire new orders. However, Rubens, as the boss, determined when a painting left the workshop.
Who will participate in your next meeting?
4. The Culture in the Meeting
Originally, culture means on the one hand the cultivation of fields and on the other hand the care of intellectual goods. What does this mean for our meetings?
From field cultivation, we could learn a goal-oriented approach, initiative, and adaptation to life cycles. For the care of our intellectual performance, strategic approaches and alternating between growth and rest phases are helpful.
Ask yourself the following questions from time to time:
- What resources can we access? Are these the ones we need to handle our task?
- Does the planned meeting fall into a growth or a rest phase? Is it necessary to consolidate all energies? Or is a breather in order?
- What is the current energy level of your team members? Who is currently performing at their best? Who needs a rest phase to then perform at their best?
This may seem to have little in common with the concept of culture as we know it. But only the totality of all intellectual (and artistic) activities forms a shared culture.
How does your meeting enrich our culture?
5. How Often? Dealing with Productivity
This leads to the next question: How often should meetings take place?
Adjust the frequency to the life cycle of your current projects.
Not only your employees or your products have life cycles. Your projects also "experience" typical phases. Typically, projects start intensively and productively and require a corresponding meeting frequency. A typical planning fallacy, according to Daniel Kahneman, is that this highly productive initial phase is extrapolated to the entire project.
But as the term suggests, this is a fallacy!
The Schönefeld Airport, my novel about the history of art, and many corporate projects have fallen victim to this planning fallacy.
Many projects would not have been started if it had been known how much time, money, and other resources are needed to successfully complete them.
Would that be the solution? I think: NO!
Would Leonardo da Vinci have started painting the Mona Lisa if he had known that he would work on it for years and his client would never receive the portrait? Would Thomas Alva Edison have invented the light bulb? Would the Saadiyat Island Museums in Abu Dhabi have been started?
What do we learn from this? Ask yourself during the preparation of your meeting in which phase you are. How can you optimally use the meeting to take a decisive step forward? And allow yourself a break after completing the project: even from meetings.
Because that is the prerequisite for starting the next project intensively and productively.
PS: I am sure to complete my novel. Unfortunately, not by the planned opening of the Louvre Abu Dhabi in December 2015.
But who knows, maybe the planning fallacy of the Louvre Abu Dhabi project will benefit me, and the opening will be postponed once again?
6. The Whole is More Than the Sum of Its Parts
Each of your employees has a unique profile of knowledge and experiences. In a favorable environment, numerous connections and ideas arise that, ideally, delight customers and colleagues and make your company more successful. When several employees come together in a favorable environment, the potential ideas and connections multiply - the more diverse the team, the more.
The only requirement is:
Each employee must contribute something to the meeting. Otherwise, their participation is useless.
Then the whole is more than the sum of its parts.
Like the painting that recently changed hands. Basically, it consists of canvas and oil paints. Both can be purchased for a few euros in an artist supply store. Not so with "Les Femmes d'Alger" by Pablo Picasso. The painting was auctioned in May for $179.4 million by an unknown buyer - as the most expensive painting in the world.
7. Guiding Focus at the Round Table
Imagine you are sitting at a round table in a meeting. On the table stands an oversized marble sculpture of Michelangelo's David. (Admittedly, you need a very tall meeting room, as the sculpture is over 5 meters high). One by one, everyone describes what they see.
What do you think?
Does everyone describe the same thing?
Of course, not everyone describes the same thing. One talks about the expression on the face, another about the slingshot, and a third about other remarkable details. Each meeting participant has a different perspective on the sculpture, yet it is always the same.
The same applies to all topics you discuss in the meeting. Be aware that each person views your common topic from a different
perspective. Everyone has something else in
focus. If you manage to bring together all
viewsof your team - the result will be multidimensional and tangible.
Appreciate the different perspectives your team members bring. You lose a lot of insight if everyone only looks at David from the front.
8. Meeting in the Museum
We love habits. They help us efficiently handle recurring processes. However, when it comes to creativity, habit is deadly. Even the best creativity technique wears off if used repeatedly. Therefore: Change the method. Change the moderator. Change the location of the meeting.
How about having each participant take turns moderating the meeting? The duration is fixed, and the rule that everyone must contribute is also set. However, the moderator chooses the location as a source of inspiration.
What does your meeting gain when it takes place in the city garden, on the TV tower, or in a museum?
Definitely short statements (as everyone is standing), no boring presentations (as there is no projector), and focus (due to fresh air on the way). Also, anticipation (where will the meeting take place today?), punctuality (otherwise, everyone is already on their way), and inspiration (the context influences the content).
9. An Example for Your Successful and Creative Museum Meeting?
Title of your museum meeting: "How do we direct our customers' focus on us and our product?"
The following guiding questions could support you:
- How is my gaze guided through the largest painting in the museum room?
- What immediately catches my eye? What do I discover only upon closer inspection?
