How to convince your colleagues to do a Lightning Decision Jam

This blog post is part of our Lightning Decision Jam series. A Lightning Decision Jam is a 1-hour workshop for tackling big problems and coming up with actionable solutions, fast!

When it comes to making decisions about your website or marketing strategy, one of the biggest hurdles can be persuading the key decision makers within the company to get on board with the change. Regardless of whether the change will be beneficial to the company sometimes ensuring the continuity and messaging on the site is seen as more important and no matter how hard you try to communicate the benefits it falls on deaf ears. And that is hard enough in ‘normal’ times, in a pandemic when the country is in lockdown and half the team are on furlough making these decisions and communicating your argument can become even more difficult. This is why we have created a new process to help all members of the team to sit down and identify the key issues and find actionable, achievable solutions with everyone on board. I bring to you… the Lightning Decision Jam (LDJ)! 

The LDJ solves all sorts of problems. It removes so many of the traditional barriers that arise with a face to face meeting (ah remember those days!?). Or in more recent times, the video meeting that could have been covered in an email! Alternatively, (sometimes the most frustrating outcome) when you’ve had a really productive meeting that holds so much promise only for the enthusiasm to disappear and no action points to come to fruition. The list of what holds us back in a traditional meeting is endless. We have tried to mitigate these issues to ensure that your time as a team and what you action after meetings is seamless and beneficial to everyone involved. Plus it removes the need for you to persuade your boss what needs to be done – with LDJ they will have got on board right at the start! 

When times are stressful and a meeting could be the difference between coming up with an innovative solution that will generate an income while not being able to operate as usual, it is so important to maximise the efficiency of your meetings and drive real results. The LDJ provides everyone with an equal opportunity to voice their perspectives and their solutions anonymously so that regardless of your position within the company your voice can be heard in a time efficient manner. Not only this but it gets everyone on board with the same solution, removing the time old frustration of coming up with an idea that the board won’t go along with. From here you will have actionable tasks to achieve your goal and to track the progress making everyone feel valued and motivated to achieve progress. Plus it is a process you can use time and time again for any number of issues in good times and in unstable ones!

We understand that introducing new ideas and methods – especially during a pandemic – can be tricky, so here’s a quick guide on how to convince your colleagues to do a LDJ:

1. Status Quo: Think about why people – and your team members specifically – hate meetings. Talk to your colleagues to find out why they dread meetings.
2. Sympathy: Address their concerns and show that you understand and share their frustrations
3. Improvement: Show how a Lightning Decision Jam session addresses most – if not all – of these pain points
4. Relate: Pick a specific challenge your team or business is facing at the moment and maybe has been working on for a while without any successful solutions
5. Small investment: Remind your team that in the worst case scenario they will have spent one hour on finding a solution. But the chances are much higher that you will finally solve the issue!

We’re also happy to have a chat with you and your team to clarify any questions about the Lightning Decision Jams.