Maybe we don’t need a big meeting about X.
Maybe it’s better to have lots of small meetings. 2 or 3 people meeting for 5-10 minutes. It’s the Steve Jobs approach.
Today it was Dave and Jamie, then Dave, Matt and Martin. Friday it was Matt and Larry.
Tomorrow it might be Martin and Joe. You get the picture.
It gives space for ideas to ferment. It gives more people a real say. It avoids groupthink. It avoids bottlenecks. And besides, big meetings are boring. Would you prefer more meetings or less?
To put it more formally: It might accelerate the evolution of successful memes.
Meetings = groupthink (unless you use 6 hats) = extinction.
We don’t need a grand plan. We need small experiments. Preferably 1 day. Max 2 weeks. We need feedback. Lather, rinse, repeat.
It might expose a critical flaw! No big deal. You didn’t invest much in it.
You might learn something. It might drive more traffic. It might give momentum for… another small experiment! Within a couple of weeks you might have a couple of wins and a couple of losses. You can build on the successes.
Everyone should do it. Anyone can start a blog. Or do AB testing. Or design a logo. Or learn HTML or javascript. (All cool sites have javascript api so you can mashup their data). Or learn about usability. Or run an online survey. Everyone should spend 2 hours every 2 weeks trying something.
(A caveat: meetings can be OK for some things, but not innovation).