Our mee­ting cul­tu­re is a good examp­le of this

We have a gre­at advan­ta­ge over other com­pa­nies: We did­n’t have to first crea­te a cul­tu­re in which ever­yo­ne dares to say what they think. Why is that?

1. Becau­se we are small enough. The­re are not so many of us (yet), mea­ning that each respon­si­bi­li­ty for SAPE­RED.
2. Regard­less of whe­ther you are a part­ner or an employee. We work tog­e­ther on and not only in our com­pa­ny. It’s not a coin­ci­dence, it’s an important part of our DNA.
3. We love to hear our­sel­ves speak. Some more, some less.

A gre­at pre­re­qui­si­te – which we qui­te did­n’t get the hang of at first.
Our mee­tings were some­ti­mes chao­tic, most­ly amu­sing and rare­ly pro­duc­ti­ve. So, we worked on our­sel­ves. We have set up simp­le rules that we con­sist­ent­ly inte­gra­te into our day-to-day work. Some­ti­mes it hurts, but later, when my col­league decli­nes an appoint­ment for the third time becau­se the pur­po­se, goal or agen­da is mis­sing, I am less infla­tio­na­ry with my invi­ta­ti­ons. No more bull­shit mee­tings.

Need more examp­les?
We are now dis­cus­sing our capa­ci­ties with the help of a pul­se board. We only deal with pro­jects that pre­sent chal­len­ges, bot­t­len­ecks, and risks. For fur­ther dis­cus­sions, we hold fol­low-up appoint­ments with a redu­ced group of par­ti­ci­pants. No more bla­bbe­ring.

So, we have adap­ted our mee­ting cul­tu­re to impro­ve com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on in the team. While doing this, we noti­ced that we were mis­sing some­thing…

The Jeo­par­dy wall as an inspi­ra­ti­on for team mee­tings

Like any other com­pa­ny with fle­xi­ble office hours, we lack spon­ta­ne­ous inter­ac­tions with one ano­t­her. The­re are sim­ply topics for which the­re is appar­ent­ly no space working from home or in the digi­tal mee­ting room. So, we drew inspi­ra­ti­on from Jeo­par­dy to crea­te exact­ly this space.

We now have our own Jeo­par­dy board whe­re we can place dif­fe­rent topics in four cate­go­ries. For examp­le, if I secu­re the 3-minu­te slot in the ​“tea­ching lear­ning” cate­go­ry, no other col­league can have it. I can then share my ide­as with my col­leagues during the next team mee­ting… and get points for it!
Of cour­se, we gami­fied the who­le thing. Why should­n’t we app­ly con­cepts that we use suc­cess­ful­ly in our pro­jects intern­al­ly? We get points assi­gned depen­ding on the length of our talk (300 points for three minu­tes, 400 points for four minu­tes, etc.). Addi­tio­nal­ly, our col­leagues vote on how rele­vant the last few minu­tes were for their ever­y­day work. This not only gives the spea­kers direct feed­back, but also extra points.

We can check the score at any time. Whoever is at the top at the end of a cycle wins a pri­ze. Howe­ver, we still haven’t deci­ded what this pri­ze will be. Any ide­as? Let us know in an email!

We are cur­r­ent­ly run­ning the first test round. We will assess the tool as soon as we have heard the first twel­ve ide­as. We are of cour­se awa­re that the tool might not be the ulti­ma­te ans­wer. If that is the case, we will label our expe­ri­ment as an ​“edu­ca­ted fail­u­re”. Don’t fret, we’ll defi­ni­te­ly keep you pos­ted with our pro­gress!