How the Physcial Space of Your Meeting
Influences Thinking & Behaviour

How to - Move It for FASTer meetings

The norm in business meetings is to remain seated for the duration. Like the old class room day's, its a case of "Stay in your chair!'.

However, a lack of movement, or freedom to move, can stifle the energy, creativity and engagement of participants. To get better results with a fast paced meeting, Move It!

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All people work better when they CAN move around, and experience a variety of space and place. The opportunity to stretch out, lay on the floor, lean against a wall or shift to a new spot, (while still listening and contributing actively) can work wonders for a group's productivity.

Of course, nothing's stopping the delegates in your meetings from doing this. But in a tightly organised, theatre style or U shaped environment, the structure and layout of the room create pretty defined boundaries as to what people feel comfortable doing.

How To ..

So how do you loosen up the physical space to harness more energy and input from the audience? Here's a few ideas..

Fix tables, but don't fix chairs

Use configurations that are light on with tables, and use movable chairs to create different space. This enables more flexibility to shift things around.
How many times have you seen a U shaped room ever get dismantled. It just doesn't seem to happen! Once a U, always a U.
Try starting with a U of chairs only, and you'll end up with a lot more variation through the workshop or meeting. Alternatives to having no tables are cabaret style, where tables are in islands. Or, try tables at the side of the room, with chairs in the middle. With this set up, when tables are needed for group discussion or workshopping, they can easily be dragged in from the sides.

Sit and stand, or Stand and sit

Try the reverse to normal scenarios. Instead of people sitting during session and standing at coffee, try asking people in a business session to move to a space where there is no chairs, and have them discuss a topic or question for 15 or 20 minutes. Standing can be a great energiser and when used in balance with sitting, can provide an excellent variation to people's experience of a long meeting. When done at your in-house meetings, it will also encourage quicker meetings!

Bean bags and carpet

Some venues are designing creative think tank rooms, complete with colourful furniture, more varied sitting arrangements, and plenty of carpet and bean bags for people to lounge on. You might choose a venue based on this kind of criteria as well as other more 5 star requirements.

Give permission

Encourage your facilitators or speakers to make it OK for people to move around and get comfy. If you have set up the room so it is possible, all it need take is an invitation, perhaps triggered initially by a stand up session, or other break out format. Without this invitation, the tone is never set that it's OK to move.

Use foyers, corridors and lift wells

Look around most buildings and conference venues, and you'll find that meeting rooms are only one of many spaces you can use.
Great ideas have been hatched in corridors and lift wells! And conversely, U-shape's and meeting rooms are no guarantee of break through innovation?

So don't be afraid to use unconventional space for a break out, or small group discussion. Break out of the confines of traditional meeting rooms, and you will encourage your group to break out of traditional ways of thinking or solving problems.

Allowing people to Move It through the creative use of space, variety and movement releases innovation and energy that otherwise remains locked inside your participants. This leads to more passionately involved people and productive meeting outcomes.

by David Pointon FAST Meeting Co