1-Minute Explore
Quick ways to explore how your team can better conduct basic functions and work together
Great teams are always exploring. Don’t save exploration just for design and strategy days, make it a part of every day with these short activities.
The secret is often to just ask a question.
Ways to Explore in 60 Seconds
For Upcoming Presentations
The leader says, “Let’s take a minute to explore. For our Monday meeting, what format and data do we want?”
Example responses:
“More full, clear data tables, not just graphical summaries.”
“Include mini stories.”
“We don’t need pretty slides because this is internal.”
“Color coding and icons.”
For Meetings
The leader says, “Let’s take a minute to explore. For our virtual meetings, how can we increase efficiency?”
Example responses:
“I love when we do all-hand meetings and then only part of us stay for the second half. So efficient. We should do that more.”
“When we do ‘start with the ending’ it works really well. I like knowing where we’re headed.”
“I think we need to divide meetings into shorter, more focused ones.”
“When leaders or data analysts do office hours, that’s great.”
For Team Communications
The leader says, “Let’s take a minute to explore our team communications. How can we make them better?”
Example responses:
“I really like thirty second audio and video clips instead of text e-mails.”
“I love when people draw the design quickly on paper and send a picture of it, instead of trying to explain it in text e-mails.”
“Keeping e-mail threads about one thing.”
“We should use shared docs for more complicated conversations.”
“It’s great when a leader says ‘We’ll discuss this in the meeting’ to put a stop to e-mail threads that are getting out of hand.”
“Fun Fridays where we just send silly memes and fun things.”
Do More (General)
The leader says, “Let’s take a minute to explore. What have we been doing recently that we want to do more of?”
Example responses:
“I like it when leaders do open video office hours.”
“Those 15 minute meetings were great.”
“I have been enjoying the walking phone meetings.”
“Sharing moments of joy.”
“Learning new stuff together.”
“Love the 10 minute demos.”
Start (General)
The leader says, “Let’s take a minute to explore. What could we start doing that we aren’t doing right now?”
Example responses:
“We could all learn a little more about making graphs.”
“We could share more bite-sized insights with each other.”
“We could all listen to the same podcast episode once a month.”
“Get corporate to fund better and affordable template software for us, like Canva.”
“Do meetings in virtual spaces, like a video game or Mozilla’s browser options.”
Recently Read
The leader says, “Let’s take a minute to explore. Has anyone watched or read anything interesting related to our work recently?”
Example responses:
“I watched a YouTube video on simple graphing, and color was a big take-away.”
“I saw this video on YouTube that said story communication is mostly ‘cause and character.’”
“There is a great article about how Discord and Marco Polo type things can work in business settings.”
“I read an interesting article about using plug-ins for video meetings.”
