One of our tools to help clients build clarity around their initiatives is deceptively simple. We get them into a room to talk. Of course, we’ve all been in business discussions that went nowhere special. We all know the feeling of sitting in hours-long meetings that have no resolution. So what secrets do we have at ThoughtForm to drive positive meeting outcomes? We use a proven process to facilitate meetings, a process we call Vision Catching. Here are some of the tips and tricks we use to facilitate productive Vision Catching sessions to build clarity from the start.
Setting
As simple as it sounds, the right setting is an important way to get people focused in a Vision Catching. We pull people out of their cubes and get them into a bright, open space where they can amble around and chat. We ask people to hang up the conference line and be in the same physical space so they can interact together and truly focus on the task at hand. This discourages the “multi-tasking” that can make online meetings inefficient and ineffective. That’s a start.
Mix
Another element of successful Vision Catching is the mix of people we invite. We seek out people from diverse specialties who together form a critical mass of knowledge. We’re aiming to form a “thinkocracy”: a temporary society where the people who’ve thought the hardest and longest about a challenge can hold sway. And that might not mean just your team!
Plan
During Vision Catching, planning and structure are essential. Though free flowing conversation is great, it doesn’t always get you to the right resolution if it doesn’t have direction. When clients step into the room, we’ve done a lot of hard work already to figure out what the important questions are and in what order we should all tackle them. We lay out the rules: be present, no speeches, one person at a time.
Documentation
Finally, during Vision Catching sessions, we make the entire conversation visible. That way, no one can miss anything or forget their takeaways after the fact. Every thought that pops out is instantly recorded by our skilled team and put up on the wall for all to see. We can fluidly edit, rearrange, and highlight key themes together as a group. This approach also helps build consensus—if only notes on the wall count, you better be sure it’s an agreed upon thought.
There’s more to Vision Catching than these four elements, but I wanted to give you a quick glimpse of what goes on. With Vision Catching, I like to imagine that we’re stamping your visa to enter a special land for a few hours — a place where everyone is heard, where we’re speaking the same language, and where we share a strong confidence in where we’re going together.
Norm Goldberg is a design strategist and principal owner at ThoughtForm. He helps clients reap the value of information and knowledge by making it accessible and understandable for the people who need it.