Lightning Decision Jam (LDJ)
Uncover and Solve Problems without Unstructured Discussion
It doesn’t matter where you work and what your job role is, if you work with other people together as a team, you will always encounter the same challenges:- Unclear goals and miscommunication that cause busy work and overtime
- Unstructured meetings that leave attendants tired, confused and without clear outcomes
- Frustration builds up because internal challenges to productivity are not addressed
- Sudden changes in priorities lead to a loss of focus and momentum
- Muddled compromise takes the place of clear decision- making, leaving everybody to come up with their own interpretation.
This is why AJ&Smart created Lightning Decision Jam (LDJ). It’s a simple and short, but powerful group exercise that can be run either in-person, in the same room, or remotely with distributed teams.
Rather than having endless, circular discussions about what the one, “perfect” solution could be, we embrace an action- oriented and experimental mindset and aim to make progress fast, even if it’s based on assumptions.
2. We work together, alone Instead of working in an open forum where the loudest, most extroverted person can push their ideas on the group until they get exhausted and give in, we create an environment where every individual can contribute ideas, without any group discussion or debate. All participants work alone, but aligned on a common goal with the rest of the team.
3. Don’t rely on creativityGood ideas can come from anywhere. It doesn’t matter if you consider yourself to be a creative person or not, our process will help you to contribute ideas.
4. Tangible beats abstract
If you describe an idea to your team, everybody will have a completely different interpretation of what you were trying to communicate. This leads to a lot of unnecessary confusion. Instead, when presenting our ideas, we make them as tangible as possible, whether through sketching them out, or showing comparable examples.
In addition to this workshop template, we also offer videos demonstrating how to use LDJs on our YouTube channel at: www.youtube.com/ajsmart.
Overview: www.youtu.be/33hBnZzoFAg
1-Hour Guided Workshop: https://youtu.be/w9MvYDaA1Bk
Remote LDJ: https://youtu.be/0iVQYHHCTf0
