{"id":1739,"date":"2013-02-14T17:10:10","date_gmt":"2013-02-14T17:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chaordicsolutions.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1739"},"modified":"2013-02-14T17:10:10","modified_gmt":"2013-02-14T17:10:10","slug":"meetings-can-increase-and-amplify-team-creativivity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chaordicsolutions.co.uk\/blog\/from-our-business-transformation-consultants\/meetings-can-increase-and-amplify-team-creativivity\/","title":{"rendered":"Meetings can increase and amplify team creativivity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.chaordicsolutions.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/businesstransformationmini.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-37\" alt=\"businesstransformationmini\" src=\"http:\/\/www.chaordicsolutions.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/businesstransformationmini.jpg\" width=\"97\" height=\"64\" \/><\/a>Meetings can increase and amplify team creativivity: value of connecting to share work, setbacks and insights.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><strong>Extract from The Creativity Post &#8211; David Burkus:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>No one is a fan of meetings anymore.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Most people seem to abhor the idea of sitting around a conference table checking off items from an agenda while their \u201creal work\u201d waits impatiently for their return. A quick glance at the world of business books echoes these ideas, with statement such as \u201cmeetings are toxic\u201d (Rework, Jason Fried &amp; David Heinemeier Hannson) and whole books titled Death by Meeting (Patrick Lencioni). It seems the overwhelming majority of opinion sides with these statements and movements are underway to reduce or eliminate meetings.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>I\u2019d like to defend meetings.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>While I can not return the hours wasted in meetings or present a foolproof method for ensuring every meeting is productive every time, I would like to mount an argument and present evidence for the following statement:<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Meetings make us more creative.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The evidence for this claim is found in research from the field of molecular biology, or rather research on the field of researching molecular biology. Psychologist Kevin Dunbar studied the workings of four prominent microbiology laboratories for insights into the creative work of experimentation. The findings from these field studies defied the conventional image of the lone scientist staring into a microscope to reveal a great discovery. Instead, Dunbar found that the most creative insights and greatest discoveries actually occurred during regularly scheduled lab meetings, where individual researchers revealed their latest findings and shared their most difficult setbacks. The creative discoveries produced by these labs occurred only after these individuals conspired together to find a solution or draw connections between previously unconnected insights.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>These findings imply that getting individuals to connect and share their work, setbacks and insights can amplify the creativity produced by the team. Whether your researching the actions of individual cells, or leading a cross-functional team for a new program launch, you stand to benefit from the creative power of our old friend: meetings.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>For further proof, consider two software companies: Atlassian and Google. Atlassian, a software development company based in Australia, regularly what they called \u201cFedEx Days,\u201d where developers drop their normally assigned tasks and work on whatever they want. At the end of the 24 hours, Atlassian holds a meeting. Not a bland, sit around a large table meeting, but a social event with food and drinks where the developers share the end result of their 24 hours. The company reports that these events are responsible for numerous new products, software fixes and process improvements.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>While Atlassian throws elaborate party-like meetings, Google takes a simpler approach: free food. Google is often praised for its free meals program, which gives employees a variety of gourmet meals on demand in various locations throughout their Mountain View, California campus. This free food is not just to increase employee happiness \u2013 it increases creativity as well. Douglas Merrill, the former Chief Information Officer at Google once revealed that another reason behind the free food is that it encourages Googlers to sit down, interact with others outside their department and share what they are working on, what problems they\u2019ve encountered and what counsel they can give to others in the Googleplex. The benefits of these connections are difficult to track, but it is not unreasonable to assume they are similar to those experiences at Dunbar\u2019s microbiology labs.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Creative work sometimes appears a lonely endeavor, but this is largely a stereotype. Regardless of the format, be it a regular staff meeting, an after hours party or a gourmet lunch, there really is something to the way connection opportunities can magnify the creative output of teams<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>More &#8230;<\/strong> <a title=\"http:\/\/www.creativitypost.com\/business\/why_meetings_make_us_more_creative\" href=\"http:\/\/www.creativitypost.com\/business\/why_meetings_make_us_more_creative\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.creativitypost.com\/business\/why_meetings_make_us_more_creative<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Meetings can increase and amplify team creativivity: value of connecting to share work, setbacks and insights. &nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[25],"tags":[40,43,41,42,94,95,99,35,11,10,12,98],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chaordicsolutions.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chaordicsolutions.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chaordicsolutions.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaordicsolutions.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaordicsolutions.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1739"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaordicsolutions.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1747,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaordicsolutions.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739\/revisions\/1747"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaordicsolutions.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chaordicsolutions.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaordicsolutions.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaordicsolutions.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}