Managing insight velocity: The design of problem solving meetings

Insight velocity measures the speed with which participants in a meeting increase their understanding of a problem and its possible solutions. The problem solving meeting is an information processing system subject to the influence of rational and social forces. Traditional meeting skills and information technology, in the form of group technology, provide meeting designers with a means of amplifying and dampening these social forces to improve the effectiveness of meetings. For each phase of a meeting, a three stage information processing model (generate, evaluate, and relate) is described. Meeting design consists of two activities: (1) dividing a meeting into a sequence of information processing steps, and (2) deciding which forces to amplify or dampen in each phase. Meeting design is based on repeated application of this three stage model to maintain insight velocity. These principles of meeting design are illustrated with vignettes drawn from selected meetings addressing complex problems.