The Problem: Boring, predictable meetings
Your team meetings are the same old, same old. The routine has become somewhat boring, predictable and dull. This is impacting on the content and discussion and something needs to be shaken-up. You sense that a kind of lethargy has overtaken your team dynamic and wish to freshen things up.
The Solution:
Pick an off-site venue for your next team meeting. Communicate this to your team by providing simple co-ordinates and some cryptic clues rather than a glut of information. Create a bit of mystique and intrigue as to where the meeting will be held and the purpose. Your team need to use their initiative to get to the venue where you will be waiting for them.
See how they cope with this basic shift. Some might be irritated, others energized. Some might see it as a waste of time whilst others welcome the opportunity to connect in a different space and manner. It will reveal a lot about your team’s mentality and willingness to engage with disruption.
Use this as a platform to discuss the need to understand and embrace disruption in a ‘VUCA’ world (VUCA is an acronym for volatile, uncertain, complex & ambiguous). You can talk about the importance of change and the need to embrace new ways of learning (which is a fundamental part of what it takes to develop adaptive intelligence).
Action Points:
- Choose your venue thoughtfully given the need to not only have the meeting once there but to also possibly underscore or emphasise a certain point.
- Get creative in how you tee-up the meeting with your team
- Be intentional around how you use the change of venue to make your point and facilitate discussion around how people felt and what could be learnt through the exercise
- Be prepared for the possibility that not everyone will welcome the disruption. Individual reactions to the exercise should prove insightful.
- You could have ‘variations’ to the exercise / lessons. For example, should you wish to emphasise the need to understand China you could pick a venue that would help do this – a Chinese restaurant, or a place in your city’s ‘Chinatown’. You could then ask the owner (assuming they were Chinese) to spend some time with your team to share something of their story – or explain a particular aspect of Chinese culture that would be
instructional for your team. - Be there before your team so that as they arrive you are there to welcome them.
- Don’t have your team all travel together to the venue. It might be better that they get there individually or in pairs.
Chat to our team if you wish to have further conversations to prepare your team and organisation for the future. For your teams to better understand and embrace disruption in a ‘VUCA’ world.