Give your web team regular opportunity to have a good old natter

When I was in the UK Foreign Office web team, Stephen Hale (now Head of Digital Diplomacy) introduced an informal weekly workshop for the team to get together and mull over all things web.

The regular slot was an open invite and members of the team were encouraged to take turns leading the session with a topic of their choice.

Topics ranged from QR codes to RDFa and the sessions were used to think through how these techs could be best used by the Foreign Office.

The idea was not to come out of the sessions with a bunch of actions, but to get the team collectively discussing, contemplating and enthusing about the possibilities ahead of us.

The usual format was an informal 5-10 mins show-and-tell of the technology or tool to set up a few discussion points and then it was turned over to the rest of the team to thrash it out.

I really enjoyed those sessions and think the concept would work well in other web teams:

1. it stimulates a web team to keep looking forwards, to get excited about the possible opportunities
2. it gets the team working together to develop new ideas and can breakdown the usual hierarchies – great for morale
3. it gives individuals the opportunity to share their ideas, knowledge and learning with the rest of the team
4. and perhaps most importantly… it’s a great way for junior and less confident members of a team to showcase themselves and their ideas. It would be easy to add this to someone’s job development plan (or equivalent)

By making this a regular fixture you know there will be a fresh flow of ideas circulating in your team and less chance of good ideas slipping by unnoticed.

I know this isn’t the most efficient way of developing ideas and you lose the combined productivity of your whole team for 45 mins every week or so. That may be hard to justify, especially during busy periods.

But you will come up with great stuff and most importantly, you will do it as a team.

Try it with your team

Stick a recurring invite in everyone’s calendar for a 45 mins session (should be enough). It can be hard to find a good time in the week, but best to have it when people will fancy a break from their desks – friday afternoons perhaps.

Volunteer to lead the first session and pick a topic that will catch their attention – something less conventional to make it clear that anything goes. Personally I don’t think there should be any expectation that a session topic should be adopted and delivered – this should not be the time to talk about something that is already on the cards.

Book a comfortable room, not the one you use for all your regular team meetings.  Even better, go outside if the weather is being kind. This is bean bag time!

And off you go. Hopefully you will have a good turn out and a lively discussion.

I would recommend getting at least one action from the first session: agree who will lead the second one. You don’t want to lose the momentum, or end up leading it every week.

And a final thought: once you get up and running, why not invite others from outside your web team (internal and external), maybe even to lead a session.

Getting ‘outsiders’ along is an excellent way of showcasing the ideas, creativity, enthusiasm and value of your team. This is something web teams often need to improve at.

As always, let me know how you get on.

Liam