2017-05-02 How to Conduct Effective Tele-conference for Brainstorming Discussion?

Hi Team

As I announced during team meeting last week, I’ll be leading the effort to start Shopee Shanghai office from May. Since Jun, I will start to stay in Shanghai for 3/4 of my time. The rest of 1/4 likely will be spent in various countries where I need to physical present for logistics related projects. In another word, you’ll have a remote manager for at least 6 months.

By this week, I have completed all 4 topics on effective communications with your remote manager. Some of you have started to put them into actions.

Week 4: How to conduct effective tele-conference for brainstorming discussion?

The short answer is there is no effective way to do a brainstorming session over the phone if you expect to sit and spark ideas on the spot. There are usually two phases in a brainstorming session: diverge and converge. During diverge phase: we expand our thinkings and generate choices. Then we make a decision on choices during converge stage. That’s why we need a whiteboard to lay down, compare and strikeout choices. Unfortunately, tele-conference, even with digital whiteboard function, is not geared towards this usage, especially when we discuss system logic and process flow. Thus, we need to take a different approach.

In this article, the author listed 4 steps which emphasize more on the prep work than the discussion stage. I encourage you to read it and practice them.

1. Lay out the problem you want to solve.
2. Identify the objectives of a possible solution.
3. Try to generate solutions individually.
4. Once you have gotten clear on your problems, your objectives and your personal solutions to the problems, work as a group.

Regards
Jianghong