Monday, 9.30pm
Sheffield, U.K.
The most powerful force ever known on this planet is human cooperation – a force for construction and destruction. – Jonathan Haidt
I’m spending a few posts working through the content of a paper I’m presenting at the EURO conference for Operational Researchers.
I’m making the argument that visible, shared, constructed Rich Notes lead to better meetings.
I’m not going to spend time comparing my approach with others. I saw a recent post by David Heinemeier Hansson where he talks about introducing Ruby on Rails and how it took off because he just showed what you could do with it. In the same vein I’m going to talk about what I do and the pros and cons, and you can do your own A/B comparisons and decide how this performs compared to what you do now or what else you could be doing.
Why a discussion needs to be visible
Meetings where people just talk are a waste of time.
We just aren’t designed to listen by default. Our brains hold a tiny amount of information so we zone out quickly and only focus when we’re surprised or entertained. Most meetings don’t do this.
I can often only stay interested if I take notes. For me, note taking is a way to listen closely. When you can see me taking notes I really have to stay focused. If I’m interrupted or distracted and stop taking notes you can see that happening. When the notes are visible people can see that their points have been noted – that I’m listening to what they’re saying and acknowledging their contributions.
The technology needs to allow for sharing
I make the discussion visible by sharing my screen when I’m taking notes. I take notes by hand using a digital drawing pad and stylus. This approach works best during a web conference call when everyone has joined and can see the screen. It does not work as well when some people join using a phone or if they’re in a room with a big screen and poor audio. It’s best when everyone is on the call, the audio and video works, and the screen can be shared easily – we can then get on and have a good discussion.
The notes have to be constructed in real time
Presentations are hard to follow because the thinking has been done in advance. The presenter is totally familiar with the content but the audience is trying to keep up, reacting to the small portion that we understand.
Building up notes from a blank page, filling in details by hand as people talk is very different. The notes build at a speed that is cognitively accessible – you can think and talk faster than I can write, so the process becomes slow enough to understand and rich enough to capture the complexity of the situation.
Being too prepared does not help. If I come into a meeting with preconceived ideas or frameworks then I talk too much. The point is to understand how the participants see the situation and starting with a blank page and asking them to talk about how they see things is more useful.
We all know people who sit in meetings waiting for others to stop so they can jump in and do their thing. I’ve seen this happen in online meetings as well when everyone can do stuff in a shared space – someone will always move around, dropping in content and waiting for a moment when they can tell others what they’ve done. That’s not listening – it’s just activity rather than understanding or really engaging with someone else’s ideas.
I keep it simple. Start with a blank page. Have a discussion. Take notes.
In my next few posts I will talk about three elements. What are rich notes? How do I use them in practice? And how do they help?
I didn’t create this approach for others. It emerged when others interests of mine worked well together – well enough to form a method that I could use. But does it have value more generally? Well, that depends on what another practitioner brings to it, so I’ll spend some time thinking about that.
Cheers,
Karthik Suresh
Handcrafted insight 