Description

Make better decisions faster with the Lightning Decision Jam

Lightning Decision Jam is a workshop to solve problems or discuss challenges.

In this dynamic and interactive workshop, participants will learn and practice the art of making lightning-fast decisions. This series of guided exercises will allow participants to identify and prioritize options, evaluate potential outcomes, and make confident decisions.

With its focus on collaboration, creativity, and speed, the Lightning Decision Jam will equip you with the tools and techniques you need to make fast and effective decisions.

Designed to be fun, engaging, and productive, participants will leave with a sense of accomplishment & confidence. They will also learn decision-making techniques they can use going forward.

• Format: In Person
• Who is it for: Business owners or teams looking for ways to uncover and solve problems in a flash. It is primarily used to enable creative problem-solving and clear decision-making.
• Time Needed: Can take up to 1.5 hours
• Outcomes: In one hour uncover problems, create a list of solutions, and take actionable steps toward testing.

What is a Lightning Decision Jam?

The Lightning Decision Jam (LDJ) is a short workshop designed to help teams make decisions quickly and efficiently. It is a structured process that encourages collaboration, generates a variety of ideas, and prioritizes solutions based on their potential impact. The LDJ is particularly useful when teams are facing unstructured problems, have limited time to make decisions, or need to break through decision paralysis.

Why Use Lightning Decision Jam?

The LDJ’s compressed timeframe forces swift decision-making, eliminating prolonged discussions and analysis paralysis. This rapid pace is perfect when deadlines loom or market opportunities demand quick action. By promoting open idea sharing and discussion, the LDJ creates a collaborative environment where everyone’s voice is heard. This fosters a sense of ownership and commitment to the solutions, making it more likely they’ll be successfully implemented.

Beyond generating ideas, the LDJ prioritizes actionable outcomes. The focus on concrete solutions and clear next steps empowers teams to move from discussion to execution, minimizing the risk of ideas getting lost in the shuffle. The structured format of the LDJ also enhances team communication. By facilitating open dialogue and ensuring everyone understands the rationale behind decisions, it helps align priorities and reduces misunderstandings down the line.

When is the Lightning Decision Jam the Right Tool for Your Team?

The Lightning Decision Jam (LDJ), a brainchild of the renowned design agency AJ&Smart based in Berlin, is a versatile workshop exercise that you can use to solve problems or discuss challenges within your team. To truly make this exercise worthwhile, you’ll need to understand the ideal scenarios for its application, ensuring you harness the best of the world’s problem-solving processes that AJ&Smart has brought together.

Tackling Unclear or Complex Problems:

When the problem at hand is fuzzy, multifaceted, or has multiple stakeholders with differing perspectives, the LDJ shines. It provides a structured framework to dissect the issue, gather diverse viewpoints, and converge on a shared understanding. This structured approach prevents unstructured discussions from derailing progress and ensures everyone feels heard.

Racing Against the Clock:

In today’s fast-paced world, important problems often arise quickly, demanding swift action. The LDJ, with its streamlined process, enables teams to make decisions rapidly, even when time is of the essence. It’s a powerful antidote to decision paralysis, ensuring that your team doesn’t get bogged down in endless analysis.

Breaking the Innovation Barrier:

Sometimes, the challenge isn’t just solving a problem but generating fresh, innovative ideas. The LDJ’s collaborative brainstorming and prioritization mechanisms stimulate creative problem-solving and clear decision-making, helping teams break out of their usual patterns and discover novel solutions.

Navigating the Logistics of an LDJ:

While the LDJ is adaptable to various situations, it’s important to know how much effort is required to execute it effectively.

• Team Size: We usually recommend a minimum of 4 and a maximum of 8 participants. With fewer people, you may not get the range of input and opinions needed for robust solutions. With too many people, the logistics of running the exercise become challenging – the whiteboard gets crowded, discussions become hard to keep track of, and decision-making slows down.

• Moderator: The role of the moderator is to make sure discussions don’t break down, ensuring everyone gets a chance to speak, and keeping the exercise moving forward at a good pace.

• Time Commitment: The LDJ is designed to be fast, but the actual time it takes can vary depending on the complexity of the problem and the number of participants. Typically, you can expect it to take up to 1.5 hours. If you’re tackling multiple problems, you’ll need to allocate additional time accordingly.

What are the Steps in a Lightning Decision Jam?

The LDJ starts with clear problem framing, where the role of the moderator is to ensure everyone is on the same page about the challenge at hand. This problem framing is generally handled by rephrasing the issues. The How Might We (hmw) method is an essential Design Sprint methodology that reframes the problem in a positive light and keeps team members focused. This sets the stage for individual idea generation, a silent brainstorming session where quantity trumps quality. Each participant captures their thoughts on sticky notes, fostering a wide range of possibilities.

Next, ideas are shared and clustered on a whiteboard, visually organizing the collective brainpower. This reveals patterns and connections, paving the way for solution prioritization. Through techniques like dot voting, the team democratically selects the most promising ideas and vote on the solutions they think would best solve the hmw. The final stage, action planning, transforms those ideas into concrete, actionable steps, ensuring the LDJ’s momentum translates into real-world impact.

The Lightning Decision Jam is a versatile tool that can be adapted to a variety of situations, from tackling unclear problems to generating innovative ideas under time pressure. By understanding when and how to use the LDJ effectively, you can empower your team to make better decisions faster and unlock their full potential.

Key Takeaways:

• The Lightning Decision Jam is a structured workshop for rapid decision-making and problem-solving.
• It is suitable for unclear problems, limited time, decision paralysis, and the need for innovation.
• Preparation involves defining the problem, gathering materials, inviting participants, and assigning roles.
• The steps include problem framing, idea generation, idea sharing and clustering, solution prioritization, and action planning.
• The moderator plays a crucial role in facilitating the session and ensuring its success.
• Effective idea generation can be stimulated through brainstorming, mind mapping, analogies, and provocations.
• Solutions can be prioritized using dot voting, impact/effort matrix, or pairwise comparison.
• Actionable steps should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
• Tips for success include setting clear expectations, creating a positive atmosphere, embracing diversity, staying focused, and celebrating progress.