One of the hardest parts of being a facilitator is time-keeping. On one hand, our job is to guide people toward interesting conversations, to help them relax and get to know who’s in the room so they feel comfortable thinking out loud, taking intellectual risks and tapping into their stream of consciousness. That’s really the primary role of a facilitator, to set the stage for participants to have a different kind of conversation, with different people, to exchange opinions, develop new ideas and figure out how to work together.

At the same time, there’s the workshop agenda, a road map with several milestones. There’s a bit of give-and-take about exactly when these milestones get hit, yet in order to stay within a reasonable schedule, sometimes we have to drive things forward a bit. That means quieting the buzz of the room and moving on to the next activity. It might mean parking a group discussion, at least temporarily. It might mean pressing someone who’s reporting back to the group or making a presentation about an idea they have to come to a close. Whatever the case, it means interrupting. Keep reading »

It’s actually that easy, getting to new ideas: You just have to say yes.

In our methodology, we call it deferring judgment, the capacity to set your opinions aside, temporarily, and accept a new or odd idea, or an unformed nugget of a something, and take the time to develop it before dismissing it. This is the cornerstone of divergent thinking. And it happens to be the first rule of improv: Say Yes. Keep reading »

What happens when you put a bunch of biologists at tables with Play-doh.

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They filed into the room cautiously, surveying the plastic on the floors and the tables stocked with rainbow-colored rows of acrylic paint tubes, palettes, brushes, and huge blank canvasses. Several people looked back toward the door, longingly, wondering if there was a way that they could escape before the activity started. But a little group dynamic was working in our favor, making it just as embarrassing to leave as it might be to stay.

The participants, a collection of scientists from diverse disciplines and universities, had come together for a Sandpit (a.k.a Ideas Lab) and expected to hear from a few experts, talk with their informed peers, and look for literature on-line to support or condemn ideas that might emerge. They didn’t expect to be holding paint brushes or palette knives and to be thinking about how to mix colors and which brush to use. Some were curious, excited about the prospect. Others were groaning, if not audibly, at least with their facial expressions. Keep reading »

You walk into the conference room to find a long string of tables, laid out in a U-shaped formation. Or maybe there are rows of narrow tables, at each chair, a place-setting of paper and a hotel pen, a small doily rests under each designated water glass. The fluorescent overhead lights buzz, the dark, dirt-hiding carpet ties the room together in a blandly professional way.

It’s going to be one of those meetings, you think, already dreading the next few hours or days that you’ll be sequestered in this room, suffering death by talking head or Powerpoint – or both. Keep reading »

We see it happen in working groups all the time. A new idea gets suggested – whether it’s playfully put out or seriously proposed – and someone in the group, often a senior person with some status or authority, shoots it down. Fairly typical phrases are used to do this: That’ll never work. We’ve tried it before. We’ll never get that approved. It’s just not possible.

But hasn’t just about every major or radical innovation been about doing the very thing that couldn’t be done before? You’ve heard the examples: how Thomas Edison got it wrong 10,000 times before he got the light bulb right. Or how Richard Branson‘s been wrong as much as he’s been right, but that risk-taking is what makes him such a notorious and successful entrepreneur. Keep reading »

Last summer, I had occasion to spend a day at the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. Initially I was somewhat reluctant about the excursion, but once I got there, all I wanted to do was play. The sheer volume of dolls and toys that are housed in this museum is stunning (every model of Barbie and GI Joe ever made, for instance) and the interactive activities – things you can get in, try, touch, and fiddle with – throughout every exhibit of the museum, are as intriguing for adults as for children (ahem). Keep reading »