If you run workshops, you know those moments when a participant lights up. Sometimes the lightbulb is related to what the group is discussing, sometimes not. The off-topic ones are lateral thinking at work. And we should not throw them away.
A very large sheet of paper
One day, we started using those off-topic ideas to our advantage. We took one of those big flipchart sheets, put a stack of post-its next to it, and asked participants to stick there every stray idea that crossed their mind. We called it the “Better Ipsum Parking Lot, and later “The …. Parking Lot” (add company/law firm name).
The name is literal: a parking lot is where you leave something valuable on purpose, knowing exactly where to find it when it is time to move again. The rule is simple: when an idea arrives that does not belong to the session, nobody apologises for it and nobody chases it. It goes on a post-it and gets parked. The workshop moves on. The idea stays. Parking an idea, we tell the room, is a promise to come back to it.
Today the parking lot is a Better Ipsum standard, and the final reflection of every workshop we run. Before people leave the room, we read the board together, and ask participants to prioritize the items. It is how we tell the group that everything the day produced counts, including the parts that were not on the agenda.
The personal parking lot
In the last year, encouraged by the positive feedback on the parking lot, we went one step further. Next to the workshop parking lot we added a personal one, where each participant notes down, in whatever form suits them, the lateral ideas that come during the day. A notebook page, a note on the phone: whatever works. The board belongs to the group; the personal parking lot belongs to whoever is holding the pen.
At the beginning we asked everyone to share what they had written. Then we realised that some of these ideas may be personal, so now we let people decide whether to share them or not.
The nice thing about workshops is that they activate the brain. They activate the right hemisphere, and so they train creativity. You sit there thinking: “I have to do this” “I have to do this too.” “It would be great to have this” “We should implement this” On an ordinary day those thoughts appear and disappear between one call and the next. In our workshops, they get parked.
The question we always get
Many times people ask us what the value of our workshops is. The honest answer: not necessarily the hours we deliver. We prefer a different measure: the ideas that come out of the room.
In Episode 39 we asked whether the real value of AI might be finding problems rather than solving them. A workshop does something similar with people. Put a group in a room, take them away from their inbox for a day, and their brains start producing thoughts nobody scheduled. Some of those thoughts are worth more than the agenda that produced them.
The parking lot is there so that none of them gets lost.
What happens to the off-topic ideas in your meetings? At Better Ipsum, we design workshops for law firms and legal teams where lateral thinking has a place to park. Contact us for a consultation if you want to know more