Lean Coffee
Lean Coffee is a structured, but agenda-less meeting. Participants gather, build an agenda, and begin talking. Conversations are directed and productive because the agenda for the meeting was democratically generated.
It was created by Jim Benson and Jeremy Lightsmith and you can find the instructions for how to run one here.
All change methods say communication is key…well now isn’t that obvious! Unfortunately, many change programs end up with a Broadcasting Initiative, not a Communication Initiative.
Use Lean Coffee instead of creating a SharePoint site or email newsletter. They don’t work. No, they don’t. Ok fine, I’ll prove it to you. Start using Bit.ly tracking to see who’s clicking on links in your newsletter and then install some useful analytics that will show you that only your change team and change sponsors are looking at it.
Lean Coffee helps provoke open and honest dialogue which helps people attach meaning to the change.
Stories and Examples
Making Time for Change
We’re almost a month into the New Year which means 80% of people have abandoned their resolutions. In this Inc.com article, the two main reasons include being unreasonable about your resolution, and the word resolution itself. I didn’t have a New Year’s resolution...
Integrating Cultures with Lean Coffee
What happens when your organization is acquired and you have overlapping roles? Brock Argue tells us a story about they approached this problem, experiments they ran and what happened.
Hacking a Conservative Organization with Lean Coffee
This post originally appeared on Biz Culture Hackers on November 18, 2012. Culture: Highly conservative public sector organization, average employee age of 47, strong status quo and intentional as well as un-intention hiding of information throughout the organization....