Fast Actionplanning

John V Willshire on May 7, 2008

Lorraine up in the Manchester office asked yesterday if there were any principles for doing a ‘fast Actionplanning session’… one that doesn’t take an hour and a half or so, but still delivers a plethora of interesting ideas…

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If you want to run a fast Actionplanning session, I’d suggest the following guidelines…

i) Set a really easy-to-get objective, which doesn’t need any over-analysing of the audience, background or whatever, and write it on a board at the end of the room…

“Use media to help sell more smoothies as a mid-morning snack “

ii) ONLY use randomisation… it takes virtually no time to explain, so it’s as fast as divergent thinking gets

“Using the word TRAP, come up with an idea for using media to help sell… etc “

iii) Break people into twos/threes, and give them some Actionplanning Sheets to capture the ideas. 

They will use their random words to build up an idea between them, then commit it straight to the Actionplanning Sheet…

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Doing an Actionplanning session this way, each group should be able to create an idea on a sheet every 3-4 minutes over a twenty minute period… it’s amazing how fast the creative juices can flow when you get going, but people will run out of energy.

So, realistically, with a group of eight people, split into twos, you should be able to generate at least 20 ideas… go on, give it a go 🙂

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