On February 24th, we held our first Morning Coffee & EU Comms session in our office based on the Lean Coffee format. We invited a small group of EU professionals for a conversation on EU hot topics over a cup of freshly brewed coffee. 

The idea for the event came from the need to nurture the EU communications community and improve and learn from each other in a casual setting. 

Our meeting drew inspiration from the Lean Coffee format, where the topics discussed come straight from the group and the conversation involves everyone around the table. While still a structured meeting, this format allows for participants to build the agenda together, vote on topics, and discuss what they’re truly interested in.

SO, WHAT IS LEAN COFFEE?

It is a structured but agenda-less meeting. Recently, meetings have become especially tedious and tiring in our remote setup. Have you ever considered how much time you waste in meetings? If you’re not leading it, are you fully vested into the meeting? Most likely you’re half-listening to your colleagues while doing something else wishing that this meeting was an email.

The Lean Coffee format aims to solve this problem by having participants build the agenda together. It brings a productive and directed conversation because participants are engaged and vested into the meeting topics.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

You can select a theme or not, it’s up to the group but in our session we selected EU communications. Everyone then writes topics on post-it notes that you’d like the group to discuss.

Then, the group sets up a Kanban board (a table with four columns  – To Discuss, Discussing, Discussed, and Actions). All proposed topics are laid out in the “Discuss” section and then everyone votes. Each participant gets three-dot votes, which can be all put on one topic or spread out across different topics. 

Once everyone votes, the most popular topics are put in the “Discussing” section and you’ve now built the agenda for the meeting. The facilitator sets the timer for five minutes and the group can begin discussing the first item on the agenda. Once the five minutes run out, the group can vote if they want to continue the discussion or prefer to move to the next topic.

When the group finishes discussing the topic it gets moved to “Discussed” and the whole process is repeated with the next topics.

At the end of the session, the facilitator elicits key takeaways and action items from the group especially if the meeting is used for work purposes.

Following the success and enthusiasm for this first session, we’re happy to announce that we will have Morning Coffee & EU Comms every two months. Send us an email at info@savionray.com if you’d like to join and try out the Lean Coffee format.