"Ok. Take out some paper. You have 30 seconds to write down 15 ways in which a cat is like a refrigerator.”Now that's exactly what design guru Dziersk told his class at Northwestern University’s Engineering Design Center one morning.Panic flashed across the faces of his students. But that didn't make Dziersk change his mind. Instead he threatned:
“I’m coming around, and if you don’t get 15, I just might flunk you.”
He let the threat hang in the air long enough for 'blank paper paralysis' to set in. Then he laughed.
“Okay - sort yourselves into teams of three, and we’ll try this again.”This time, the ideas effortlessly started to fly, “They both hate water.” “They can be either black or white.” “They purr.” “They smell.” “They’re hard to get rid of.” That day the class learnt the value of approaching creativity as a team sport.Courtsey: www.ownyourbrand.com
We met up at last, after all the silent hemming and hawing about timings and agenda. Oh, it wasn’t in the new conference room but in the room just vacated by Karthik – that’s big enough to hold a meeting. There was this breakfast meeting on at our previously decided venue. Something to do with the dance and song gathering we’re having this evening.
Never mind. What really matters is that we met.
We didn’t review our work though. We didn’t go through any other work either. But we’ve promised ourselves that we will from the next time on. (If that sounded a little ‘iffy’ it's only the sentence construct…) Next meeting, we review our work. And the meeting after, we review either print, POP, outdoors or television commercials done the world over.
What?
Yes, we’ll review that too – online advertisements done the world over.
The Saturday after.
My! Sometimes when you want to get something going you need to improvise. (Is that the word?) And so we have decided to hold our erstwhile Monday Morning Meetings on every working Saturday.
If nothing else, we have the meetings going again. Hallelujah! ………………… ………. ………….. …………. ………… (Add any other expressions here).
