“Note And Vote”: How Google Ventures Avoids Groupthink In
Meetings
MEETINGS
WANT TO SUCK. WREST CONTROL OF THEM WITH THIS SEVEN-STEP STRATEGY.
You
know when a meeting turns into a complete waste of time? Maybe you’re
trying to come up with ideas, or make a decision. Before anyone
realizes it, the meeting starts to suck.
Meetings
want to suck. Two of their favorite suckiness tactics are group
brainstorming and group negotiation. Give them half a chance, and
they’ll waste your time, sap your energy,
and leave you with poor ideas and a watered-down decision. But
meetings don't have to be that way.
On
the Google
Ventures design
team, we dislike sucky meetings as much as anyone. We use a process
hack that short-circuits the worst parts of groupthink while getting
the most out of different perspectives. For lack of a better name, we
call it the “note-and-vote.”
The
next time you need to make a decision or come up with a new idea in a
group, call timeout and give the note-and-vote a try.
HOW IT WORKS
1.
Note
Distribute
paper and pens to each person. Set a timer for five minutes to 10
minutes. Everyone writes down as many ideas as they can.
Individually. Quietly. This list won’t be shared with the group, so
nobody has to worry about writing down dumb ideas.
2.
Self-edit
Set
the timer for two minutes. Each person reviews his or her own list
and picks one or two favorites. Individually. Quietly.
3.
Share and capture
One
at a time, each person shares his or her top idea(s). No sales pitch.
Just say what you wrote and move on. As you go, one person writes
everybody’s ideas on the whiteboard.
4.
Vote
Set
the timer for five minutes. Each person chooses a favorite from the
ideas on the whiteboard. Individually. Quietly. You must commit your
vote to paper.
5.
Share and capture
One
at a time, each person says their vote. A short sales pitch may be
permissible, but no changing your vote! Say what you wrote. Write the
votes on the whiteboard. Dots work well.
6.
Decide
Who
is the decider? She should make the final call--not the group. She
can choose to respect the votes or not. This is less awkward than it
sounds: instead of dancing around people’s opinions and feelings,
you’ve made the mechanics plain. Everyone’s voice was heard.
7.
Rejoice. That only took 15 minutes!
The
note-and-vote isn’t perfect (remember, I said “pretty good
decisions”). But it is fast. And it’s quite likely better than
what you’d get with two hours of the old way.
You
might want to adapt the specifics to suit the problem and your team.
Sometimes multiple votes per person are helpful. Sometimes sales
pitches give crucial insight. We often jump right to voting when
there's a finite list of options. So long as you do most of the
thinking individually, you’ll see a big efficiency boost.
WHY IT WORKS
Quiet
time to think
Meetings
rarely offer individuals time to focus and think. Group
brainstorms--where everyone shouts out ideas and builds off one
another--can be fun, but in my experience, the strongest ideas always
come from individuals.
Parallel
is better than serial
Normal
meetings are serial. In other words, one person is talking at a time,
and someone is always talking. That means there’s one thread of
thought for the length of the meeting. Parallel work increases your
bandwidth. More solutions are considered and evaluated.
Voting
commitment
Writing
down your vote ensures that you won’t be swayed when someone else
you respect votes for something else. This is a social hack--we
naturally want to make other people feel good and form consensus in
meetings. Conflict is useful.
We’ve
used the note-and-vote for everything from naming companies to
choosing product features, and from setting a meeting agenda to
picking a restaurant for lunch.
WRITTEN
BY Jake
Knapp
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3034772/innovation-by-design/note-and-vote-how-google-ventures-avoids-groupthink-in-meetings?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fast-company-daily-newsletter&position=2&partner=newsletter
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