Month 11
INNOVATION
Discovering innovation power triggers and how teams can better innovate together.
PRE-WORK
Here is messaging to send to your participants prior to this meeting. Feel free to modify to fit your personality:
Thank you all for your participation in last month’s MIBE Meeting. During our next meeting we will be focusing on Innovation. Thank you for taking time to take the IQE Assessment. Please bring your report to our meeting as we will be discussing our unique innovation power triggers and how we all can play a bigger role in innovation at our company. Thank you all, I’m looking forward to another great meeting!
AGENDA
Intro from facilitator (2-5 min)
The Why: Use this opportunity to communicate with your team as one group. It’s powerful for them to hear the same message together and a great opportunity to recognize participants in front of their peers.
The How: Choose the things that are most relevant for your company to go over.
Suggestions:
• Welcome – Reinforce your mission/vision/values – Why do you exist as a company?
• Announcements
• Celebrations
Centering Exercise (5 min)
The Why: This exercise helps everyone to be present and focus their attention on the meeting. The quick-fire questions keep participants on their toes and force them to think about what they’re feeling right now.
The How: Go around the room and have everyone complete the sentence one at a time. As the facilitator, you should go first. You can reverse the order of who responds after each question if you want to mix it up. Remind participants that this is meant to be fairly quick and their first thought is often their best thought, so don’t overthink it and go with what pops into their head right away.
Examples:
• I’m ready for _________
• A food I’m really craving is _________
• I really enjoy talking about _________
• Recently I was inspired by _________
Video from MIBE® (10 min)
The Why: Anthony will provide an intro to the topic and give more information about the overall program. Each month, educational and inspirational information will be shared through this method. The video should make your job as the facilitator easier so you are not responsible for having to “teach” the lesson.
The How: Use the video below. It will be helpful for you to view it prior to the meeting. You will just need to be prepared to show it on a screen to your team. We recommend testing ahead of time to help avoid streaming/buffering/internet issues!
Discussion (45-60 min)
The Why: This is the opportunity for the group to share, collaborate and build trust. Ultimately the goal of these meetings is to move the people in your organization forward as leaders and improve your overall culture.
The How: As the facilitator it is very important that you seek participation from everyone at the meeting and that you create space for people to be open, honest and vulnerable. We will provide you with the content each month, it’s your job to facilitate the discussion around that content.
1) Review the ground rules for these meetings (1 min)
You don’t necessarily need to go over the post it notes, just review the rules and hang the poster in the room as a reminder to all participants. If there is something that needs to be added or modified, you can also do that at this time.
2) IQE Power Trigger Discovery (10-15 min)
Print and pass out the Nine IQE Triggers document. Have all of your teams personalized IQE Power Trigger Cards on the table. Pull up each one and have the rest of the team guess who it applies to. This is a fun way to discover everyone’s unique innovation power triggers. You can also go around the room and have everyone share their two IQE Power Triggers, along with where they see those two come into play in their work world.
View & Download Nine IQE Triggers
3) Skittles Exercise (10-15 min)
In advance of this meeting, it will be helpful for you to take some time to read about all of the IQE triggers and familiarize yourself with some of the characteristics of each. It will also be helpful for you to review each of your team member’s power triggers. Divide the team into groups of 3 or 4 people. Have them sit together at a table (or at the end of a large table). Give all groups the same amount of skittles. Instruct the groups when you say go, to work together to create a house with the skittles. Your job as the facilitator will be to look for cues on the various power triggers. Here are some things to look for and where they might align:
The person that starts playing with the skittles right away - Experiential or Risk Taker
Bringing outside props to the table - Risk Taker
Asking questions to the facilitator or their teammates - Inquisitive
The person that keeps making changes once most of the work has been done - Tweaker
Huddling the team together, or making sure everyone gives input - Collaborative
Talking about what the house could potentially look like - Imaginative
Using the phrase “my gut says”, or “trust me” - Instinctual
Talking about what the group may have to do next - Futuristic
Responds well when you change things up, transition to phase two - Fluid
Once the exercise is complete, run it a second time mixing up the groups and instructing them to turn the existing houses into rocket ships.
Then, bring everyone together and ask where they saw their unique innovation power triggers come into play during the exercise. Also, be sure to ask how the mix of power triggers in each group impacted the experience. It will help for you to share your own observations if your team is struggling to come up with examples.
View & Download IQE Trigger Value/Friction Guide
4) Innovation Discussion (30-45 min)
Show the heat map as well as the Innovation Process sheet. Have each person write their name on where they fall on the innovation process. Use these questions to guide the discussion. You may want to capture some of the comments on a poster sheet of paper or white board:
• What areas are we lacking when it comes to the IQE triggers?
• What issues may come up based on our mix of power triggers in the group as a whole?
• What are some examples of what you would consider innovation within our company?
• Are there things that are innovative within our company that we don’t give credit for
because they don’t fit the typical definition of “innovative?”
• How can we create a more innovative environment?
At the end of the discussion, have everyone fill out the IQE Personal Cheat Sheet and then either have them make a copy, or scan it and send it to you or their direct report to continue the discussion and help hold them accountable. It may also be helpful for you to see what everyone learned and wrote down.
View & Download Innovation Process
View & Download IQE Personal Cheat Sheet
Recap Video from MIBE® (2 min)
The Why: Anthony will close the meeting and summarize the content with an inspirational message. This is also our opportunity to share our post-meeting action items for participants.
The How: You will need to queue up the second video below. Again, it will be helpful for you to view it prior to the meeting and we recommend testing to help avoid streaming/buffering/internet issues!
