don't stop now

Tips for a successful action plan

The question I get the most often when facilitating is: Do we have to do the warm up?

It’s a fair question. We only have 60 minutes for a meeting and 5 of those minutes might be used for an activity that seems silly. A warm up is a priming activity that prepares people before they do an activity or complete a task. More formally put: priming is a technique in which the introduction of one stimulus influences how people respond to a subsequent stimulus.

I’ve done enough warm ups to know that they are the most important ingredient in your agenda. It’s like leaving out the baking powder when making a cake (it just falls flat).

Part of that reason is simply that as we get older, we participate less in divergent thinking. We enter kindergarten and from there are rewarded when we have the right answer, and when we get into the workforce, we’re rewarded for the best idea. But divergent thinking doesn’t celebrate who’s the most right, or who’s got the best idea; it values quantity and child-like thinking. It throws constraints to the wind and it lets the wild ideas overpower our convergent tendencies. And sometimes in brainstorming, I need everyone to start in the divergent camp first. So we need to practice it and reintroduce our brain to that sort of thinking. 

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Ask the right questions

Create a framework you can use over again.

• Time

• Purpose

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Be consistent

In order to create a good, effective warm up, consider the following:

• Time

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Don't give up

In order to create a good, effective warm up, consider the following:

• Time

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