How to get rid of long brainstorming meetings with this facilitation method

An in depth guide on using the lightning decision jam

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We’re all too familiar with meetings that drags on for hours with no outcome, only to continue on Slack. Being in one is draining. It sucks the soul out of you and takes away precious work time. They can be dreadful I know, but it doesn’t have to be this way.

Here’s how you can remove them from your life (potentially forever).

I recently experimented with adapting the Lightning Decision Jam, LDJ for short, to run meetings, specifically “brainstorming meetings”. The LDJ is a step-by-step process to define and solve problems in a short amount of time.

I’ve used this method to help teams in various settings — creating content strategy, planning an offline event, and the latest addition, creating a makeshift shoe for a make belief space problem. You get the point, the process works.

This is going to be an in depth explanation of how I do it. If you want an overview, I’ve included a summary and a screenshot of my recent workshop schedule right at the end of this article.

In my adapted version of LDJ, there are 3 main phases in the process:
Get Behind, Draw, and Vote (very creative, I know).

The 3 phases of the process:

1. Get Behind (~25 minutes)

Your goal here is helping the participants get behind why they’re brought in to solve the problem at hand. I use “get behind” because they do not have to be excited, so as long as they understand why it’s important for them to be involved.

There are a few steps to help you do this. Start by setting the stage by sharing the context and goals. Remind them how they can contribute.

A make belief space problem to set the stage

In some cases, the problem is not an everyday challenge for them and hence, hard to understand the context enough to solve it. A workaround is by creating an activity to get into their emotions.

In a recent project, the events team wanted to set up booths at malls to promote kid-oriented events but none of them have organised an event before — especially not one that catered for kids. To help the team get into the relevant frame of mind, I needed to get the team feel what it’s like to plan for a kid.

So I get them to think of a kid — a niece or a nephew, or their younger self. And this kid just graduated from kindergarten which is a huge milestone to celebrate. I get them to draw how they would plan this grand celebration and later on, reflect on how they felt as they were planning this for the kid. By the end of this short activity, the team is now thinking about making about the joy and excitement they can bring to the kid and this is what they can bring to the next phase of the LDJ.

Note: although the emotion in this example is joy, you can elicit other types of emotions relevant to the challenge, through the same activity.

2. Draw (~25 minutes)

The ideation phase! Here, participants come up with ideas alone, but in a group setting. It’s similar to the process used in the original LDJ and in Design Sprints.

For this part, you would need Post-Its (stick to 1 colour, 2 max), fine markers, and Mahjong paper (a large sheet of paper).

Here’s why you need each of these:

1. Post-Its with 1 type of colour because it enables anonymity of ideas — no one knows which ideas belong to who, less chance for bias
2. Fine markers — for participants to draw on post-its. Drawings with pen or whiteboard marker is hard to read and see.
3. Mahjong paper — a place to stick all the post-its so that everyone can see. You can use walls or other alternatives.

Before starting, brief participants about the rules of this ideation.

1. It’s silent brainstorming, that means no discussion, you come up with ideas on your own.
2. Focus on quantity — drawing something is better than trying to come up with a perfect idea.
3. One idea per Post-It.
4. Make your idea clear enough that it does not need verbal explanation. Feel free to draw and elaborate.
5. When thinking about solutions, think about the current problem; what am I trying to solve?

It’s a good idea to restate what the problem and the goals as a quick recap before starting. And off they go! This is where the facilitators would have 15–20 minutes of pure silence. Once time is up, collect everyone’s post-its and paste them on the mahjong paper.

There are not many steps in this phase but here are some facilitation tips.

1. Make sure you prepare enough stationery. When tools are in abundance, participants have one less thing to worry about and can channel their focus to the actual work.
2. Similar to a writer’s block, there’s also something I call Post-it block. It’s when someone is stuck on their first post-it often because they want their output to be good. Sometimes I just give them a nudge, encouraging them to draw or write something (unrelated) just to get their post-it ball rolling.
3. It’s okay for participants to google and get inspiration from other things. In fact, I tell participants to bring their phones and laptops for this purpose (They’ll put them away during other phases of course).

The winning idea for the make belief space shoe problem

3. Vote (~25 minutes)

The last phase is voting. Once all the ideas are on the mahjong paper, people would huddle around, reading each post-it. It’s important to maintain anonymity by enforcing the silent environment. When no one is explaining their ideas, people can judge the ideas that best match the challenge, rather than leaning into bias (like paying more attention to the boss’ ideas).

Give time for people to look around and comprehend each idea. Once everyone is ready, explain how the voting process works.

Voting Rules

1. Each person has X number of votes.
2. You can put multiple votes on one post-it. (ie, you can give one idea 3 votes, another idea 1 vote).
3. You can vote your own ideas.
4. You vote based on the idea that you think really solves the current problem. I often say “if an idea makes you go this is it y’all, this is the one, we need to do this, that’s how you decide which one to vote“ — not perfect but they get the point.

Make sure everyone has decided where each of their votes are going to. This minimises the groupthink effect where people vote ideas based on what other people have voted on instead of the ideas that really fit the problem.

At the count of 3, everyone places their votes and if you’re lucky, you would have ONE clear winning idea that everyone can get behind. Get the person who came up with the idea to explain thoroughly what she/he envisions her/his idea to be and delegate the necessary work to make that happen.

Pasting all the ideas on one sheet of paper for everyone to see. Also, I should have used 1 colour only Post-Its.

In most cases however, there’ll be 2 or 3 ideas that share majority vote.

Here’s where you come in to get the whole team to agree on one idea. It’s important that as you facilitate the discussion, the team needs to feel like they’ve contributed to that one idea so that after this LDJ session, they can advocate for it. There are several ways to do this; here’s one approach:

1. Remind again what the goal and challenge is.
2. Talk about what are the pros and cons for each idea
3. If we were to combine these ideas, how would it look it? Does it still address the challenge?
4. Propose a combination of ideas that doesn’t make sense

The discussion following this will be messy but it’s a good kind of messy. The team starts evaluating how parts of each idea fit the challenge and how feasible it is to execute. Once you get a sense that everyone agrees on the big picture, make this final idea tangible. Task someone to pen the idea and another to draw it.

By the end of this, you should have a solution with the best of both worlds that everyone can get behind. Wrap the session up by quickly delegating the next steps to the team. If you’ve made it this far, congratulate yourself and the team!

Concept of Time boxing

I’ve talked about the 3 phases of LDJ but I left out an important concept that is used throughout the session — time boxing. Time boxing means assigning each activity a time limit. The idea here is that by limiting the time we have for each activity, we focus on the most important parts. This is true for discussing the pros and cons, coming up with ideas, explaining the objectives, etc. Explaining this concept early on gets everyone onboard on obeying the time limit and you would have a more effective session.

TLDR:

Get Behind → Draw → Vote

Get behind: Team understands the context, why they’re involved and are in the frame of mind to tackle the challenge.

Draw: Coming up with ideas.

Vote: Agreeing on one singular idea as a team and delegating the next steps.

A schedule that I used for a previous LDJ — you can tell I’m obsessed with time limits

The true value of LDJ.

In the beginning I talked about how LDJ is a step-by-step process to define and solve problems. While that remains true, the real value of using LDJ as a tool is to align teams and help them make decisions fast. Through the activities, team members feel like they are part of the decision making process. They come out of the session completely aligned on what they are going to do, removing any unnecessary back and forth over slack. They can now focus on doing actual work. (yay!)

The next time a “brainstorming meeting” pops up, do consider giving LDJ a try. Volunteer to facilitate the session. At the very least, you’d learn a new skill as a designer.