Small breakout groups are a common meeting facilitation tool. They generate lots of ideas in a short amount of time, maximize group participation and interaction, and change up the pace of a meeting to keep everyone awake. They can be as small as two people or as large as a whole roomful. The groups may be pre-arranged and generated by some random process or self-selected. They can meet at their own tables, in different corners of the room or different rooms or spaces. You can give each breakout the same questions or assign different subjects to different groups.
For me, the challenge comes after the breakouts are over. How do I capture all the great ideas and solutions they generated, and how do I share them with the rest of the group most effectively?
Here are a few ways I’ve found to get the most out of meeting breakout results:Individual Report Outs
This is the method you see used most often. One person in each breakout is designated as a scribe. When the group reconvenes as a whole the scribes take turns reporting out a summary of their breakout group's discussion. This works best when the number of breakouts is few and/or each group covered a different topic. If a lot of breakouts were discussing the same topic, however, the report-outs get repetitive and boring, and the process eats up too much of the group’s time.
The Art Gallery
(I borrowed the name from Jeffrey Cufaude, CEO of Idea Architects). Ask each scribe to write their group’s ideas on sheets of paper. Then, tape the pieces of paper to the wall, and let everyone take a few minutes to stroll around the room and check out each other’s work like they were visiting an art gallery. Combine this with a method for voting with “dots” and you’ll gather even more feedback. The fact that you’re getting everyone on their feet and moving around makes this an ideal method for right after lunch.
Card Shuffle
Give the scribes markers and plenty of 5-by-8-inch index cards and ask them to write one idea per card. Spread the cards out on a table and ask everyone to get up and group cards with like ideas together. Then, tape each bunch of similar ideas to a sheet of flipchart paper and give the paper a title that summarizes the cards.
Ambassadors
If you have a lot of groups working on the same questions, and you don’t have much time, ask each group to designate an “ambassador” that will take their ideas and share them with another group. That way, everyone benefits from the ideas of two groups. If time allows, you can repeat several times.
Hi-Tech
I’ll admit I haven’t tried this myself, but if you have Internet and an LCD projector in the room, there’s no reason why breakouts couldn’t use texting, Twitter, or a service like Poll Everywhere to send their ideas to other groups in real time. The advantage would be instant cross fertilization of ideas.
What methods for sharing breakout group results have you found work best?
