Public Alpha
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Before we redesign anything, let's name why our meeting habits matter for focus, speed, and trust.
Notes: Open with the promise of practical relief, not a lecture about meeting hygiene. Make it clear that the group is examining patterns in the system, not blaming people.
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Workshop manual
Help a cross-functional product team reduce meeting overload, expose counterproductive collaboration habits, and leave with small actions each person can start immediately.
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Prep focus: Prepare a visible harvest board and keep transitions crisp; the string already contains enough depth.
Move from shared frustration about meeting overload to concrete, personal actions that improve collaboration this week.
Set up one visible board with columns for meeting pain points, destructive patterns, things to stop, and 15% actions. For hybrid groups, keep breakout instructions short and put every invitation in chat.
Invitation: Before we redesign anything, let's name why our meeting habits matter for focus, speed, and trust.
Facilitator notesOpen with the promise of practical relief, not a lecture about meeting hygiene. Make it clear that the group is examining patterns in the system, not blaming people.
Move from shared context into quick paired rounds so people hear that the frustration is shared across roles.
Invitation: In pairs, share one meeting pattern that currently drains energy and one small sign that collaboration can work better.
Three fast pairing rounds -> one drain and one hopeful signal per round -> brief harvest
Facilitator cue: Run three short rounds with new partners. Ask people to keep examples concrete and avoid solving too early.
Facilitator notesHarvest only a few phrases after the rounds. The goal is connection and shared signal, not a full diagnosis yet.
Prompt: What big challenge do you bring, and what do you hope to get from and contribute to this group?
Cue: Use a question that links personal purpose to the gathering.
Prompt: Share your response with a partner.
Cue: Keep the round energetic and timeboxed.
Cue: Run two more rounds with new partners so connections multiply quickly.
Cue: Ask for a few patterns, questions, or opportunities people heard across conversations.
Carry the strongest meeting examples into a broader pattern harvest where everyone contributes at the same time.
Invitation: What meeting habits help us make progress, and what habits make our work slower or less clear?
Solo reflection -> Pairs -> Foursomes -> Whole-group harvest
Facilitator cue: Ask for behaviors, not opinions. Cluster similar signals visibly as they appear.
Facilitator notesKeep the harvest balanced: helpful habits on one side, slowing habits on the other. This prepares the room for TRIZ without making it feel negative.
Prompt: Think about one moment when collaboration felt easy and energizing. What made that possible?
Cue: Give people quiet time first. Invite a concrete moment rather than a general opinion.
Prompt: Share your moment with one partner. What conditions helped that moment happen?
Cue: Keep the exchange brisk and balanced. Encourage both partners to speak and listen in equal measure.
Prompt: In your group of four, what patterns or conditions show up across several examples?
Cue: Push gently from stories toward patterns. Ask groups to cluster similar conditions together.
Prompt: What one or two conditions feel most worth carrying into the rest of this workshop?
Cue: Harvest only the strongest themes. Resist turning this into a long report-out.
Cue: Capture visible themes, key phrases, and tensions so the next structure can build directly on them.
Invite the group to look at the slowing habits playfully by exaggerating them on purpose.
Invitation: If we wanted to make our meetings waste as much time and attention as possible, what would we do?
Invent failure -> find current traces -> choose what to stop or interrupt
Facilitator cue: Keep the first round playful. In the second round, slow down and ask what already happens in small ways today.
Facilitator notesUse humor to create distance, then protect the conversion step. The valuable output is a short list of patterns the team will stop feeding.
Prompt: If we wanted to make collaboration and communication in this team fail completely, what would we do?
Cue: Externalize the patterns. Make it playful but not cynical, and clearly remove blame from individuals.
Prompt: List all the behaviors, habits, and moves that would guarantee failure.
Cue: Push for specificity. Name actual meeting behaviors, response patterns, and omissions.
Prompt: Which of these destructive patterns do we already see in small or subtle ways today?
Cue: Slow the room down here. This is where defensiveness can rise if the framing is too sharp.
Prompt: What are the first patterns we want to stop, interrupt, or replace?
Cue: Convert critique into choice. Keep the conversation specific and behavior-based.
Cue: Capture the stop-doing list and the strongest replacements so the next structure can turn them into commitments.
Turn the stop-doing list into personal room for action: what can each person change without waiting for permission?
Invitation: What is one 15% action you can take this week to make our meetings clearer, shorter, or more useful?
Solo action drafting -> small-group sharpening -> public optional commitment
Facilitator cue: Reject actions that require someone else's approval. Ask people to shrink the action until it is truly theirs to start.
Facilitator notesGood examples: decline one unclear meeting, add a decision line to an invite, ask for the owner before leaving a discussion, or end with next action plus date.
Prompt: What is your 15 percent, the action you can take now without more authority or resources?
Cue: Point people toward action inside their current discretion.
Prompt: List concrete actions you can start immediately.
Cue: Keep the list grounded in what each person controls today.
Prompt: Share your actions and ask your group for one way to make them bolder or easier to start.
Cue: Invite practical help without turning this into permission seeking.
Prompt: What action will you start first?
Cue: Close with visible commitments and a short check-in plan.
Close by making the first moves visible and naming how the team will notice whether the experiment helped.
Invitation: What will we each try first, and what signal will tell us that our meeting habits are getting healthier?
Facilitator cue: Invite one concise checkout sentence per person. Capture only the commitments people choose to make visible.
Facilitator notesEnd with appreciation for specificity. Do not reopen the whole discussion; protect the sense of forward motion.
