A Conversation is Democratic

The next time you are planning a meeting, try the following tips:

• Invite new people to join in.  It's important to tap the creativity and diversity of people in your company.
• Replace the agenda with questions.  Leave behind those notes and PowerPoint slides.  Come ready to discuss questions that don't have easy, right/wrong, yes/no answers, and that ask for positive rather than negative or critical responses.
• Play around with the room.  Instead of seating everyone around a conference table, ask people to work in clusters.  Or try setting up a bazaar.  Put representative objects, maps or graphics on various tables or on the wall and ask people to walk around and react to each of them.
• Capture the conversation on a white board.  As people come up with ideas, link them using spider diagramming or clustering. (Note - - see Gabriele Rico's Writing the Natural Way.)