4/2/2023 0 Comments Giant sticky notes![]() Since there wasn’t much choice but to get right to it, we did. It had some rapport, and a healthy sense of mutual trust, but had never worked as a single unit before. This was not an established group with well-worn grooves. One was from a university in another state. A couple were my direct reports, but others were not. The size of the group was big enough to generate worthwhile exchanges, but small enough that everybody could stand within a few feet of the sticky notes. The problem was real.īut others were internal. There was a tight, non-negotiable deadline that was out of our control. Some of the elements are at least partially external. The particular case is all well and good, but I’ve been thinking about how to generate more moments like that. It was one of those wonderful cases in which somebody’s suggestion would either trigger a thought in someone else, or solve a dilemma in which someone else had been trapped. As happens in the best conversations, people actually put aside their own suggestions when a better idea came along. Each suggestion built upon, refined, or improved upon something that was already there. Knowing we were under time pressure, and knowing that we had a common interest in getting this done well, we were all constructive. (My handwriting has been described as “distinctive,” so I can’t take credit for that piece.) We were all standing, probably nobody more than four or five feet from the wall. We put two giant sticky notes - maybe two feet high and a foot-and-a-half wide - on the wall, and drew a very basic chart. ![]() But this was the first time the entire group was in the same room at the same time. We had done some preliminary discussions over email, and some subsets of the group had met previously. We had to come up with a relatively detailed plan in a short time. Without revealing too much, I’ll say that several of us from different functional areas are up against a shared - and short - deadline. It involved about a half dozen people and a few giant sticky notes. ![]() This week I had one of the more satisfying creative experiences I’ve had in a while. ![]()
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