Musings on The Right Ambiance… For Love and Meetings, Part 2

A few weeks ago I posted 5 Top Tips for designing creative meeting spaces, here are 5 more. And, if you want to learn how I’ve put this into practice in qualitative research, please follow the link at the end to my new article, in QRCA VIEWS.

6 Touchy “toys” bring color, delight, help relieve stress and can inspire

Some people just think better when they are doodling or fiddling with things. When I’m conducting an Innovation Session, I bring along a toy chest of items: pipe cleaners, Play Doh, Nerf like materials, squishy balls, funny glasses, and kaleidoscopes. These are items that I may use in specific creative exercises or just invite people to play with as they choose. I’ll sometimes use them in a research setting and have had great results with populations that are generally not thought of as being particularly creative or communicative. The toys help people relax, and when they are relaxed they let down their guard and are more forthright and candid respondents.

7. Aroma can enhance productivity! Just the way a real estate agent will suggest that a home seller bake bread or cookies to make a home more attractive, you can consciously use aroma for certain effect in a meeting. An orange pricked with cloves might add just a little boost to flagging energy, a diffuser with soothing essential oils like lavender can relax. A vase full of flavors can also bring color and pleasant aroma.

8. Of course you need good food for thought! It’s rather amazing how much food and liquid refreshment can be consumed by an ideating team. Variety is ideal. I make every effort to have “good brain food” that isn’t heavily laden with sugar and fat.

9. Get off campus! Physically moving away from company premises can do so much to improve results and help participants view challenges and opportunities differently. If you have to work at your offices, set clear ground-rules to ensure that typical distractions do not invade your meeting. Collect phones and pagers (or at least have them set to vibrate). In exchange for this distraction-free zone, give participants breaks throughout the day to deal with those emergency office issues.

10. Great space doesn’t have to be expensive. One reason why team meetings are run at home base is to save money. If you can get away, consider alternative venues to high priced conference centers. One type I particularly like working in is a Bed & Breakfast. The article linked below highlights focus groups conducted in such an environment. Other “non traditional” venues include a children’s or science museum, gallery, botanical gardens, ski lodge, golf club house. If a participant is a member you can usually save a lot of money. Recently a few companies have started offering loft spaces and private homes for meetings. They can include catering and audiovisual equipment. I worked recently in a NY loft space and while it wasn’t inexpensive, it more than paid for the quality of the team’s output.

Want more?         

http://www.mydigitalpublication.com/publication/?i=101595&p=30

 Laurie Tema-Lyn, Practical Imagination Enterprises, 908-237-2246, laurie@practical-imagination.com

 

Musings on The Right Ambiance…for Love and Meetings

If you’re celebrating Valentine’s Day you just might be thinking that special meal with your sweetheart will not be at the local diner, but a setting where the food is good, the lights are low, the music soothing, the ambiance encouraging to look into each other’s eyes and have intimate conversation.

In similar fashion, creating the right ambiance for a meeting when the goal is the exchange of information and ideas, is critically important. I’ve written and spoken about this at length over the years –it seems to be a topic of frequent interest among my colleagues and clients– so I will highlight 5 Top Tips for designing creative meeting spaces here, and offer another 5 in my next post.

1. The power of the circle: set the room up for eye contact and democracy. A circle (like a campfire) or a U-Shape arrangement of chairs immediately signals a more intimate setting for people to be candid with each other.
2. A room with a view…natural light supports us physically and helps prevent fatigue. And a glimpse of the outdoor world often helps to expand thinking and be more open-minded. A few years ago I ran an innovation session at an historical village with large windows on three sides of our room. We had a beautiful vista of snow-covered fields…and then a big surprise as two baby goats came right up to the windows. An unexpected source of inspiration for our project on new confectionary products!
3. Comfortable chairs, and a variety of seating helps prevent “fanny fatigue” and keeps people more relaxed and engaged. If your meeting is longer than an hour, ask people to get up and move to another chair or couch in the room—it prevents getting stuck physically and mentally.
4. Weave in some Music—whether you like Hip Hop or Opera, a little music interspersed through a workday can do a lot for a teams’ creativity and productivity. I like to use the music purposefully to add excitement or energy to an activity, or to help relax and put participants in a more reflective mood.
5. Adding color and visual stimuli—whether it’s a wall full of pictures that can “inspire a thousand ideas” the ways words alone may not—or setting up colorful paper, crayons, markers and Post Its on the meeting table offers an invitation to doodle and express ideas in different modes.

Hope this offers you a little food for thought!

And have a lovely Valentine’s Day!

 

Laurie Tema-Lyn, Practical Imagination Enterprises, 908-237-2246, laurie@practical-imagination.com

Musings: A Toast to 2012

Dear Readers;

As this year comes to a close I’m sharing with you all an absolutely delightful piece I received the other day from trend mistress Robyn Waters, with whom I’ve had the pleasure of collaboration.

Tip: This works best with glass in hand, standing up, speaking up, and grooving to the rhythm!

A Toast to 2012

To standing out

To fitting in

To going out

To staying in

To working out

To getting thin

To speaking out

To going within

To looking out

To jumping in

To toughing it out

To giving in

To figuring it out

To going on a whim

To doing without

To playing to win

To letting it all out

To taking it all in

To not selling out

To believing in

To living out loud

To beginning again.

 

To Friends,

Wishing you an Outrageously Inspiring New Year!!

Laurie

 

Thanks Robyn!

Musings: Letting Go to Receive the New

It’s that time of the year to reflect on what has transpired. The “good, the bad, the ugly,” so to speak. No seriously, it’s all good if we take the hard stuff as learning from which to move forward and re-create.

I’ve started my end of year reflections; am enormously grateful for my life, love, family and opportunity to continue to grow creatively and expand my work. I’m amazed at the joy and energy I experienced in wiritng my book, Stir It Up! Recipes for Robust Insights & Red Hot Ideas, and the very positive responses I have received from readers. I hope the book has a long life and provides value for many.

And I’m noticing habits, attitudes and things that clutter and get in the way of moving forward. The literal clutter like an office full of stuff waiting to be filed because of the busy-ness of this amazing year. And the mind clutter.

I’m vowing to spruce it up; one step, one day at a time!

Musings: Baring It All

I went on a “gallery crawl” in Old City Philadelphia recently and encountered a provocative sculpture in the Wexler Gallery by Dirk Straschke entitled Standing Woman with PVC Burqua. It’s a finely crafted piece that offers a realistic presence of a proudly standing nude woman, covered in a burqua. But instead of it covering her up, the burqua is clear. Her nude body is revealed, but her eyes partly obscured.

The sculpture is a rich creative paradox. And while I don’t know the artist’s intentions I found the sculpture to be a fascinating representation of an important aspect of my work as a market researcher. Our role is to help reveal some “inner truths” or insights with which our clients can craft meaningful communications or products.

This was exemplified in a recent health care study in which my colleagues and I engaged with women in their homes, in small, intimate focus group settings and on-line about a sensitive health care issue and their strategies for dealing with it. The topic for most women is embarrassing, and for some so stigmatized that they wouldn’t even talk about it with their closest girl friends. Yet these women, in the midst of strangers, opened up to us about their daily struggles with clarity and even humor. Each encounter that my colleagues and I experienced was memorable and powerful. It was cathartic for some women who had never openly shared their “secret,” and a learning experience for both interviewer and research participant. We created an opportunity for them to “bare it all” with our gentle probing, non-judgmental witnessing and attentive listening. The client “won” as well for they are now armed with new insights to guide ways in which they can be more helpful to other women with this condition.

Creating a forum for people to reveal inner thoughts, feelings and aspirations often leads them to be more empowered. I feel privileged as a market researcher.

Your opinions?

Laurie Tema-Lyn

Practical Imagination Enterprises

908-237-2246

laurie@practical-imagination.com

Musings on a “Soft Launch” for Stir It Up!

Last Sunday was a glorious day here and I held an open house, book signing to celebrate the recent publication of my new book, Stir It Up! Recipes for Robust Insights & Red Hot Ideas (Paramount Market Publishing.) It’s a “cookbook” of sorts, filled with exercises for market researchers, meeting facilitators, consultants and anyone looking for ways to stir up energy, insights and creative ideas.

The book “poured out of me” at astonishing speed; it was an absolute delight to write.  I’m thrilled to be able to share what I’ve learned, developed and used in a long and varied career.  And it was so gratifying to bring different parts of my life together to help me celebrate the book.

The gathering included family, friends and neighbors as well as people from my professional world– the QRCA, my singing chums from VOICES Chorale, my exercise mates from Healthquest.

As I wondered in and out of the ribbons of conversation, I realized how this disparate group of folks were connecting in such wonderful ways; sharing their stories, knowledge and perspectives.  And it seems a few new friends were made in the gathering.

Stir It Up!  Recipes for Robust Insights & Red Hot Ideas is available at http://www.paramountbooks.com/stir-it

And on amazon.com

Laurie Tema-Lyn

laurie@practical-imagination.com

www.practical-imagination.com

Musings: Test Tube Burgers– How will they ever market that?

I can’t seem to get this story out of my head. Recently NPR’s Terry Gross spoke with science writer Michael Specter about something that’s been going on in labs around the world. Some of those brilliant tissue scientists responsible for growing artificial organs (like bladders) have directed similar efforts toward creating “meat” in the lab. Using stem cell technology they have been able to grow animal muscle in the Petri dish. Pretty amazing stuff! And there’s plenty of reasons why this is potentially a likely good idea to pursue.

• Some climatologists see diminishing water supplies and droughts in many parts of the world beginning to threaten food supplies.
• Globally, livestock are responsible for 20% of the greenhouse gases according to the United Nation’s Food & Agriculture organization.
• Animal welfare activists are increasingly concerned about animals force-fed grain laced with antibiotics and living in cruelly cramped quarters as they fatten up before being taken to the slaughterhouse.
• Additionally, the growth of a middle class in the world’s poorer countries leads to a greater effective desire for diets richer in protein.

If these dire predictors are correct, perhaps it makes good sense to leverage expertise against growing food in the lab in instead of taking up precious water and land resources.

Mr. Specter expects to see test tube burgers available in the market within the next few years–at first very costly, and then priced for the masses–echoing our experience of the cost decreases of other technological innovations.

As a marketer and market researcher this all gets me wondering…how will companies market the stuff? How will they turn the obvious “yuk factor” into something with a palate pleasing expectation? Oh sure, food scientists do some miraculous taste and textural things with soy these days…but will a public ever embrace a burger made in a vat? Or a “Petri Patty?” And what about other types of in vitro meat like chicken and pork?

I can just imagine the intriguing conversations we might have in the focus room as we explore the most appealing language and ways to advertise the first test-tube burger.

But then again, perhaps consumers 5 to 10 years from now won’t find this so strange at all–but rather just another of the accustomed chain of advances.

Are test tube burgers that much more difficult to embrace than frozen prepared meals once were…or fast food? Or microwave cooking? With many people already so removed from a notion of an original food source like a real, live animal, or a home grown fresh tomato, perhaps that first test tube burger will seem like “natural” after all!

Laurie Tema-Lyn, laurie@practical-imagination.com

Practical Imagination Enterprises

908-237-2246

Musings

In Praise of Pruning

I’m a creative person; I excel at spinning out lots and lots of ideas and possibilities. (You may have even noticed that I get a bit wordy in my blogs!) So perhaps you can imagine my chagrin when the website and branding consultants I’m working with strongly urged me to identify “just the top 3 things” I want to focus on and communicate in my updated website.

My current site has about 40 pages of material if you print it out…and that doesn’t even count all the articles, newsletters, white papers and presentations posted there.  But I know these folks are right!  It’s time to prune.  And it’s the time to do that elsewhere.

As a gardener I know that Spring is the best time to get the shears out and clip all the extraneous matter away so those lovely, colorful blooms can reveal themselves. Back inside, I see it’s also time to do something similar in my office, as the last year’s worth of consulting projects and papers are stacked all around.  I’m lucky, my office is spacious, but even still, the paper piles are beginning to mar the view of the stately tall trees outside my window.

So here come the mighty shears, the big, black garbage bags, and the mental willpower to get rid of the old, in order to make way for the new.

Wish me luck and fortitude and I’ll encourage you with the same!

Laurie Tema-Lyn

Practical Imagination Enterprises

laurie@practical-imagination.com

www.practical-imagination.com

Musings on being a “Meeting Fairie”

I was tickled to read yesterday’s e-newsletter from Seth Godin titled…”Making meetings more expensive…might actually make them cost less.”

Seth encourages that organizations hire a “meeting fairie” in order to ensure that meetings are short, efficient and effective.

Yeah! That’s been my argument for the past 25 years as I’ve worked with hundreds (maybe thousands?) of clients to help them accomplish more than they would have on their own while enjoying the process of creative collaboration.

Seth’s list has all the nuts and bolts of running great meetings covered—like making sure that there is a clear purpose, managing the flow of information and following up to ensure implementation, but he doesn’t talk specifically about the art and science of harnessing a team’s best thinking to get creative and actionable results. That’s what we do, drawing upon a wealth of experience and a wellspring of tools and techniques –many of which I’m writing about in an upcoming book.

We creative catalyst/facilitators love what we do! Now, perhaps I should consider a name change to “Fairie”?

Thanks for the boost Seth!

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/01/making-meetings-more-expensive.html?

Laurie Tema-Lyn
Practical Imagination Enterprises
908-237-2246
laurie@practical-imagination.com

Musing: Getting full on imagination

My ears perked up as I heard a piece on NPR’s Morning Edition today about a study just published in the Journal of Science about how thinking about food influences how much we eat.

An Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon brought in volunteers to sit in cubicles in front of computer screens. One group was shown images of M&Ms, one at a time and was asked to imagine placing each candy in a bowl. The other group was shown the same images of M&Ms, one at a time and asked to envision eating them. Then they brought in real bowls filled with M&Ms and invited the volunteers to eat what they wanted. The candy movers ate nearly twice as much as those who imagined eating them all along! The volunteers who spent their mental energy imagining that they were eating exhibited a higher level of dopamine in their brains as if they had really consumed the candies. Can this be a new dieting strategy? What a fascinating idea!

While it may not be conclusive, the study does get me thinking about other activities in which we might engage our imagination and feel satisfied enough so that we limit real action. I’ll let you readers come up with your own scenarios.

In this age when we are easily immersed in virtual worlds—armchair traveling, or experiencing intense relationships with friends we only know online, or exploring fantasy lands through IMAX and special effects, are our personal worlds of imagination increasingly more satisfying than our experiences in “reality?”

Interesting to ponder the significance….

Laurie Tema-Lyn
Practical Imagination Enterprises
www.practical-imagination.com