real brainstorming in real time

one of the things that i became quite proud of in regard to our group's performance over the course of the term was our ability to brainstorm (well, that's generous...really just sharing ideas) virtually. 2 reasons i was so excited that we'd accomplished this: (1) i was impressed by the ability of a couple of other groups to arrange for pre-class meeting times (apparently some of the EW jobs are more flexible than others, or perhaps the people are), and (2) we were starting from a pretty low standard early on where the creative process was just not gelling.

so i thought our google whiteboard was really cool, and people would post to it when they were online and had ideas, and i'd go through and organize the information once in a while or post questions (some rhetorical, some real) to help me/us think through our responses, and so on. and i really thought we were getting somewhere as a group.

and perhaps we were. but then we had the meeting at the museum. and then it all really came together.

for most of my career before starting at Haas, i worked at a small consulting firm, and tended to work across offices with partners and those who'd report to me on projects. rarely did i actually take part in an engagement in which all team members were in the same office. so i became used to the cross-office, virtual deal, and even observed that my project management skills grew more quickly than other peers' skills did as a result. but at the museum on monday, i glimpsed the power of that which i got to be part of occasionally in my last job - a time when the group was physically together, everyone's energy level was up, ideas were flowing, people were respectful but keeping each other honest, no idea was stupid (except for the stupid ones), and we built off one another's input to create workable ideas.

sure, you can say that the wine played a role in that. but i think that would be the cocktail-party line. the real deal is that we had a legitimate block of time together. we had no other commitments, no commutes to make, no home to go quickly back to, no meeting at work to get out of. we were totally in the moment and were enjoying each other's company to boot. we were really excited about this idea of how to operationalize an idea that we'd formerly considered a bad one - how to implement a napping-at-work program - and talking about how it related to the happiness research and how it would fill a vacuum for our "target customer" (the young professional). then pamela suggested that we go to a kindergarten, because hey, aren't they the happiest people out there (think J-curve) and don't they sleep as much as they need to as long as they're healthy (think Daniel Gilbert drivers of happiness) and isn't it true that we learned everything we need to know in kindergarten anyway?

so now jennifer is helping us make that happen at her kids' school, and 2 classmates are talking to their kids' teachers to give us some other opportunities in the east bay as well. can't wait to see what kinds of learnings we can draw out of the observational experiences in the schools - the idea is that we want to see how teachers manage the process of moving kids from being super active to calming down to move into naptime - since that approximates the cognitive process that we'd need napping employees to go through with our napping program. we still have to think through EXACTLY what we inted to get out of the visit(s), but as excited as we were about the prospect of visiting, if nothing else we'll derive a great deal of positive energy and come away with a refreshed view of what happiness really looks like!