and on and on. It’s no wonder that little is accomplished and that
meetings have a bad reputation.
Another rarity among investment professionals is planning for
meetings. A rule of thumb for any meeting is an hour of planning
for every hour of meeting time. Sound outrageous? Well, if you
consider the expense of gathering 10 people in a room for 2 hours,
it doesn’t seem unreasonable to have the meeting host take an hour
to plan for it. After all, you wouldn’t invite 10 people over for
dinner and then greet them at the door with, “Hey, glad you could
make it, let’s look through the fridge and see what we’ve got.”
This isn’t really a professional facilitator’s rant, either; a lot of it
is just common sense.
Okay, we now know that we need tools. What are some useful
tools? We’ve discussed a number of them so far in this book. The
filters, for example, are a good tool (see Chapter 10). Using Myers-
Briggs preferences, you can design a process whereby meeting
members agree to work with one filter at a time, thereby avoiding
a mental traffic jam. The first filter, sensing, could be used to dis-
cuss the facts. No new ideas or evaluations, just the map of reality... what “is.” Then participants could agree to brainstorm and
play with new ideas; this is the realm of intuition. You might even
consider a separate meeting with the people who like brainstorm-
ing and are naturally inclined toward it. Finally, you could evalu-
ate and refine ideas and test them in a practical sense. Thinking
types are excellent in this role.
Surrounding this whole process is the question of how much
time should be spent playing with ideas and how much in moving
on with the task at hand. Perceivers like to try on new ideas and
are comfortable with experimenting. Judgers prefer to close and
get on with the implementation. A facilitator can help balance
these energies in the project. Both energies have their place and
are useful.
What about brainstorming itself? Are there more effective ways
to come up with fresh ideas?
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