Divide And Decide

Sometimes we would like to open our meetings to anyone who would like to come, have a large group (users, employees, customers...) define their interests, their aspirations. If only we had the meeting space and the know-how to run a creative meeting with a large group.

Suppose you have a meeting of 20. Typically they sit around a table. Due to pressure of time, when people have the floor, they say what is on their mind, often failing to build on statements of their colleagues. They talk past each other.

Instead of one table, we can divide them into five tables of four. After a topic is introduced, each table can explore it. This gives everyone the possibility to explore ideas, listen and build upon others. After a while two from each table can move to two other tables and continue there. Results can be reported and a plenum dialogue can bring the meeting to a conclusion and/or posters presented.

Groups are amazed at the commonality in their discussion. And in an hour twenty at the big table get 60 minutes of conversation. Five teams of four will pack 5 hours.

This sounds good in some respects, but one the one hand, it is claimed that groups are amazed at the commonality in their discussion and on the other, that the result will be 5 hours of discussion instead of 1 hour... Aren't these two ideas at odds with one another? The more commonality of discussion, the less productive the split up was... but more to the point, what's the process for synthesizing the conclusions and approaches worked out?

as Described in Charles M. Savage, The 5th generation management. Butterworth-Heinemann 96 (revised ed)

Participated in lots of meeting and workshops where this was used successfully, got bored on lot of large meetings. --- MartineDevos

Another case of SevenPlusOrMinusTwo