A Formula For Creative Meetings

We’ve all been in meetings and brainstorms that have seemed to be a complete waste of time. However, most of us just accept it as a fact of life and move on. Jon Leach however, has decided to investigate what it is that makes a meeting productive. Or not. Borrowing heavily from business author Doug Hall, Jon makes this argument:

The formula for the creative output of any meeting (whether workshop, brainstorm, board meeting, tetchy conversation with spouse etc.) is as follows:

C = (DxS)/F

Where :

C = quality of creative output (note “quality”, not “quantity”)

D = diversity of people in the meeting

S = amount of stimulation experienced by people in the meeting

F = fear level of people in the meeting

Makes sense so far.

Jon then applies values from 1-3 for each of D, S and F. So if you have a meeting which is pretty average in terms of Diversity, Stimulation and Fear you get
C = 2 X 2 / 2 = 2

Which Jon points out is better than the worst possible outcome of C = 1 X 1 / 3 = 0.33

But considerably worse than it could have been C = 3 X 3 /1 = 9

“So the formula suggests that a well-run creative meeting is not just 50% more productive than an average meeting but 350% or 4.5 times more productive.”

That’s quite scary.