Run meetings with real outcomes: Hack endless discussion with the “note and vote” exercise

Have you been in meeting after meeting where you feel people are talking around in circles and not taking any action? Do “brainstorming” sessions go on and on and the “winning” idea comes down to the loudest person or the HiPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion)? You can avoid this by hacking around the process and using a technique from the Design Sprint called “Note and Vote”.

“Note and Vote” is a super simple exercise that can be done at any time when there is a group that has a problem that needs to be solved. Here are the steps to get your team making decisions, moving forward and taking action quicker.

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Step 1 Most meetings are discussions around a problem or an opportunity. Frame the problem as an opportunity or a “How Might We” statement to get people thinking about solutions. If it's just about making a decision with various different options or ideas then just skip this step.

Step 2

Everybody in the group writes down as many ideas/options for the opportunity clearly on post it notes and without discussion. Time-box this for 5 to 10 minutes. Once the time is up, stick them all up on a wall, again without discussion.

Step 3

Vote! Allocate about 3 to 5 sticky dots for each member of the group and if you don’t have stickers then just use a coloured whiteboard marker. In silence, let them read and vote on the ideas that they feel are the best . Multiple dots can be used on a single idea if an individual chooses to. If there are any very obvious duplicates, stack these up on top of each other.

Step 4

Arrange the top voted ideas in a pyramid form with the most voted ideas at the top and leaving out the 1 dot voted ideas.

Step 5

Now you have a list of great ideas to start testing out! Take the top voted idea and write down tasks to help implement it. The main 3 rules to this are:

1. The tasks need to include the steps to test the idea quickly (eg. a protoype, an A/B test or a guerilla test) so that you can prove the idea out first with a small test group

2. There must be an ultimate owner for the tasks to coordinate or implement work

3. Set a timeframe to come back and discuss the results and next steps — the key is about building momentum so usually a week or two is best (avoid setting a timeframe of 3 months)

Just remember that you’re testing the idea and once proven you can then look further to implement it at a larger scale. If there are two or more ideas of equal value, just go with the first one on the left-hand side to start or ask the decision maker in the room to choose one. You can then move through the list if you haven’t nailed it the first time.

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This is a super simple hack to help the group focus and align and then validate the options by getting data on it. It stops endless hypothetical conversation dead in its tracks and instead helps the team to get things done and move forward using real feedback!

It is also very much in line with the “test and learn” or “build-measure-learn” mindset required for agile and lean startup thinking too. Try it out the next time your team gets stuck!