Harvesting the Best Ideas

People want to be successful. They want their workplace, their non-profit organization, their neighborhood association, their congregation and their family to be successful. Wanting success is the nature of people. As well, people like to give input to do their part to achieve that success.

The best ideas of the workforce in most organizations are never heard in the organization itself. The organization loses out. People often go home from their day at work and tell their ideas to their families over the supper table, often beginning with ‘if my boss would only listen to me, we could get twice as much done…’ At other times, the ideas are shared in the cafeteria or in the parking lot.

It is easy to understand the importance of creating opportunities for people to share their best ideas where the ideas can actually make a difference.

Yes, that suggestion box you put up some time ago is a good step, yet the suggestion box misses out on the best ideas. The best ideas come when people have the opportunity to discuss their ideas with one another and generating solutions from the conversation.

Conversations that lead to generating solutions means having meetings.  But not just any meetings.  Effective, engaging meetings that matter.

Meeting Facilitation Designed to Harvest the Best Ideas

You will need to lead and facilitate your meeting in a way that provides

1. Maximum participation, particularly from a cross-section of the organization participating with one another
2. Maximum freedom, particularly of the topics chosen for discussion and in what is said
3. Maximum choice, particularly in who one chooses to converse with, and for how long

Leading and facilitating meetings to provide maximum participation, freedom, and choice for conversations that feel important to people get to the best ideas.

In fact, such meetings can be positioned to work as catalysts to develop a solution focused organization. In other words, instead of being problem focused, wasting energy complaining about problems, the culture becomes one in which people put their energy to discussing solutions. The more frequently people come together to focus on solutions, the more naturally solution focused the organization as a whole becomes.

Another bonus of participatory meetings is that ownership of successful implementation of the ideas germinates during the meeting, thus fast tracking the implementation if decisions are made to accept the ideas.

Your benefits of choosing to lead meetings in a participatory way with maximum choice and freedom:

• Get the best ideas, taking advantage of people’s desire for success
• Get ideas that move the organization from good to great
• The meetings become a catalyst from a problem focused organization to a solution focused organization
• Ownership to successful implementation fast tracks implementation

You have a lot to gain.