It probably sounds odd – roll up roll up, get your meetings here – but if there’s anywhere in modern working life that needs clarity and purpose, it’s meetings. We loathe them, and we suspect that’s why we’re so good at organising them. If we have to go to a meeting, we make sure that it’s worth going to.
We make them fun. We always include surprises and proper creative work, and we make them come to genuine decisions. Powerpoint is banned except as background illustration. Pinboards, card games, string and sticky labels predominate. People use their hands and feet, all the working materials are designed for useability and we include note-taking and aside-catching materials that we can collect to ensure the representation of subtext and resistance. The documentation is clear and lively, properly field-noted and easy to read. People are often surprised by how much is made clear that was only glimpsed on the day.
We’ve never done this except on one of our own projects, so it’s not really a separate offering, but we can promise that if we take on a big project then the meetings will not be dull and there will always be cake.