Category: Meeting Hacks

Meeting Hacks Music

Meeting Hack: Using Music as a Tool

Life is a song, a dance, every day a new orchestration, full of new harmonies and rhythms and beats and melodies. Music makes life’s fluctuations less painful, and the mundane routines more manageable. Wouldn’t you agree? So what about music in the workplace? Or, dare I say, integrated into a workshop or meeting??

Music as a Tool

Numerous studies have been conducted about the effect of music on mood and health, and it’s safe to say the effects are mostly good, if not great. At Starfish Taylor, we totally agree.  When it comes to music in the workplace, however, it becomes a question of how music affects one’s productivity. If used without careful consideration and placement, there’s no doubt it can become a distraction and nuisance. But we’re here to show you how music, if integrated appropriately and methodically, is an asset and one of the simplest ways to boost (and not bust) your next workshop or meeting. We believe it’s a tiny detail that can make an immeasurable difference.

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Free-Prize-Inside-Icebreaker

Free Prize Inside Icebreaker: Focused Performance Improvement

At the start of any LEAN or training-style workshop, it’s very important to open up the floor to participants and ask them some key questions before launching into the “learning” phase. As a facilitator, doing this allows you to gauge the knowledge levels of participants and ascertain where emphasis should be placed during the course. Read More

Rock Paper Scissors Icebreaker Starfish Taylor

Rock Paper Scissors Icebreaker: Energizing the Masses

Despite the somewhat blurred history of what many see as a juvenile hand game, Rock Paper Scissors has been used for millennia all across the globe. When all other means of reason and rationale fail, Rock Paper Scissors has often proved to be the deus ex machina of bar none decision-making. The truth is, while many think of Rock Paper Scissors as a game of randomness and sheer luck there actually exists quite an index of sophisticated strategy. Unlike a flip of the coin, which relies almost entirely on chance. Read More

Yellow Pages Icebreaker Starfish Taylor

Yellow Pages Icebreaker: Mergers & Acquisitions

Today we are living in the crux of the “Information Age”, where the Internet is our go-to resource for limitless knowledge. While the Internet is indeed an unparalleled tool, having a printed volume of systematized information is not obsolete. There is a simple satisfaction of having all the key information of a business laid out in a single-format page. Back in 1886, the advent of Yellow Pages made this possible. So what does this have to do with a workshop around the merging or combination of two companies or groups? Read More

Into the Matrix Icebreaker - Starfish Taylor

Into the Matrix Icebreaker

Just like the first weeks in a new project team, where everyone is adapting to a new environment, without their core group of friends, a 3-day meeting or workshop full of unfamiliar faces may host its own level of awkward confrontations. Imagine a large room full of strangers, gathered together to cogently interact with one another and reach solutions over three day’s time…how good do you expect the results to be? And how will their level of cohesion influence the solutions they produce? Read More

Three Things in Common Icebreaker: Team Building

Team Building Icebreaker: Finding Three Things in Common

Ever hear of the six degrees of separation, the notion that any two living things are six or fewer links apart? If not, then maybe you’re more familiar with the “small world” phenomenon…a moment you’ve likely experienced at some point that establishes a link between you and someone else, that wasn’t necessarily expected. Whatever the case, both ideas illuminate humanity’s connectedness and our common ground. No matter how bold or vast your differences may be with another person, all humans share some common denominators that go beyond gender, race, nationality, and socioeconomic status. Team building is all about this! Read More

Top Three Icebreaker

Top Three Icebreaker: Guessing the Priorities

Are you a project manager who’s in the midst of solving a complex problem? Building a list of ideas and/or solutions might seem like an easy win, but the tricky part is in narrowing down and highlighting a small set of priorities to focus on. Let’s say, a Top 3.

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a Great Workshop

6 Keys to a Great Workshop

Are you launching a new product or at the start of an Agile Transformation? Perhaps you are in the middle of a Digital Transformation or at the end of an acquisition deal that brings the challenges of merging organizations together? Or maybe you’re simply planning a project that will run for several months or years. Read More

Family Vacation Icebreaker Starfish Taylor

Family Vacation Icebreaker: Compromising Customer Needs, Creating the Ideal

If you come from a big family, it’s likely you’ve experienced the toils of planning a vacation that suits everyone’s needs and/or desires…naturally, planning a trip [of any size] depends on numerous elements. The first question one must ponder in planning a family vacation, however, is this: will it just be immediate family or is extended family coming along, too? The season, the age range, the personalities, and the budget, of course, all follow in suit as key elements in planning an apt – and hopefully ideal –vacation. Keyword: ideal. Yes, let’s all agree: this is what everyone wants at the end of the day. So, in this “Family Vacation”icebreaker, we want you to imagine summer is approaching and the time has come to plan your ideal family vacation. The caveat: this year your family getaway won’t just be amongst your immediate kin, but also certain members of your extended family. Read More

Secret Service Icebreaker

Secret Service Icebreaker: Cracking Your Code Name Alter Ego

While plenty of alternative “names” exist for presidents and other prominent figures in politics, in the US, these high-profile men and women are actually required to have a code name, used in lieu of their birth name by the Secret Service. For example, Barack Obama and Michelle Obama were Renegade and Renaissance, while their daughters, Malia and Sasha, held the names Radiance and Rosebud. In this “Secret Service” icebreaker groups are challenged with the constraint of choosing code names beginning with the same letter, in parallel tradition as US presidents and their counterparts.

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