8 1 mode of thinking: world coffee-a way to create collective wisdom

Darwin believed that due to natural selection, human beings can become the masters of all things. Humans are not as tall and powerful as elephants, and they don't want the tiger's jaws. Why can humans stand out from the competition with other species? Why can people be selected by nature?

Sociologists and biologists agree that human beings can win in species competition largely because of the evolution of new cerebral cortex, language and teamwork ability. According to the famous Dunbar data "150 law", human beings can form a social network of 150 people and beat all the competitors in the world. This 150 people must communicate through language if they want to achieve cooperation. This smooth information flow can ensure that investigators, containment personnel and commanders can quickly obtain information during the hunting process and respond accordingly, so as to capture prey stronger than humans.

The competition in modern society is no longer the competition of any other species, but the competition between human beings and their own kind. From physical competition to capital competition, and now to intellectual competition, personal heroism can no longer help you gain a competitive advantage. Only teamwork, in-depth communication with interdisciplinary people and thinking collision can stimulate more creativity and imagination, and then help enterprises, organizations and individuals gain competitive advantages.

Thomas Edison, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs and so on. They can come up with important new ideas because they put themselves in a dynamic and open communication network. These important insights are formed by interacting with many different people, which is beyond their personal intelligence level. The diversity of people will lead to the diversity of ideas. When different ideas collide and communicate together, they may produce good ideas that transcend individuals. This diversified in-depth dialogue is an important factor for enterprises to maintain their competitiveness. He will enable enterprises to stimulate more people's creativity and imagination, thus creatively solving problems.

Peter Shengji mentioned in the book The Fifth Discipline that organizations should carry out collective practice from five aspects: self-transcendence, * * * common vision, mental model, team learning and systematic thinking, and collective practice is to tap collective wisdom.

How to make everyone's thinking collide with sparks? How to tap the collective wisdom? How to conduct in-depth talks?

The most effective way is to talk about world coffee in depth.

World Coffee is a conference form that creates a relaxed and pleasant atmosphere, stipulates cross-pollination cross-border communication mechanism, accommodates multiple backgrounds, sets up multiple rounds of conversion, focuses on problems, stimulates wisdom, promotes mind and promotes innovation.

In the 1990 s, Junita of CL management consulting company in the United States? Brown and her collaborator David? Isaacs created this new form of meeting. They often organize executives from the United States and other countries to hold innovation forums. About 20 people sat around a table covered with paper and talked about some complicated problems. This kind of sitting around the table talking like a friend drinking coffee, listening carefully and thinking deeply about each other's speeches, fully sharing and expanding their own thinking.

After that, we moved to another coffee table, where we met new friends and exchanged different ideas in an equal and relaxed environment. If you express your opinions and communicate freely, the sparks of inspiration will collide and innovative thinking will appear. This is the origin of world coffee. World Coffee is a way of deep dialogue and a process of collective wisdom.

In the process of designing research chips, in order to solve problems creatively, Intel hired a group of sociologists and anthropologists to participate in the research and development of new products, and invented wireless Internet access technology from the perspective of human needs rather than technology.

The most important thing for enterprise development is talent. How to stimulate the potential of talents, stimulate their creativity and give full play to the role of the highest intellectual capital is a problem that every enterprise must think about. In the future, low-end manual labor and simple technical jobs will be replaced by intelligent robots. Individuals and enterprises must constantly innovate to adapt to the new era. Innovation needs the openness, diversity and collision of thinking, in order to produce the spark of wisdom. The in-depth discussion of world coffee can help enterprises to innovate.

1, world coffee is a magic weapon for innovation and creation.

Peter Shengji, the author of the Fifth Discipline, said: "The World Coffee Talk is by far the most reliable way for all of us to enter the collective creation."

World Coffee encourages whimsy, advocates whimsy without any conditions, gives full play to each individual's imagination and creativity, constantly optimizes, perfects and improves with the collective wisdom of the team, and finally obtains various product innovations, management innovations and even subversive innovations.

2. World coffee is a sharp weapon to solve problems.

Peter Drucker said, "The coffee talk in the world provides a tool that can transform analysis into profound changes and a structure that closely connects talents."

Everyone has his own blind spot of knowledge, everyone is touching the image of the blind, and everyone sees the world from his own dimension. When a complex problem arises, one's thinking always has its limitations. Under the guidance of the host, World Coffee is to connect different brains, look at the problem from multiple dimensions, stir up wisdom for the problem, check and fill the gaps, explore the possibility of solving the problem, and thus sort out the methods and strategies to solve the problem.

3. World Coffee is a tool for team understanding.

If everyone's ideas in the company are not shared and communicated, it will hinder the normal flow of information in the company, and an information island will form within the company, which will definitely affect the company's operation in the end. Under the guidance of the host, World Coffee can actively express its views and opinions, and discuss the similarities with different views. At the same time, the whole process is based on the goals and achievements of the team, which effectively promotes the participants to seek common ground while reserving differences and reach team understanding.

4. World Coffee is a platform for students to learn together.

A threesome must have a teacher. World Coffee advocates the concept that "everyone is a learner". Participants express their ideas under the guidance of the host, listen to others' ideas, precipitate collective wisdom, and actively learn from people around them. Participants and hosts share, learn from each other, learn from the advantages of others, reflect on their own shortcomings, and grow hand in hand in the process of learning together.

5. World Coffee is a space for emotional communication.

Zhou Houjian, chairman of Hisense Group, said: "Subordinates are people who help you with your work, and they deserve your respect and gratitude. Some enterprises embody the relationship between superiors and subordinates incisively and vividly, which is a typical feudal remnant. World coffee can promote people's equal dialogue and reflect modern civilization. "

In a relaxed and pleasant atmosphere, under the guidance of the host, the participants of World Coffee gradually opened themselves up, unloaded their habitual defenses and had a heart-to-heart conversation with their learning partners. Everyone is talking as a learning partner, thus eliminating the situation that they may have an advantage because of their high status, and at the same time avoiding the situation that they are afraid to state their views because of their low status. Let everyone talk on an equal footing, strengthen the emotional communication of participants in a subtle way, and further enhance the cohesion and centripetal force of the team.

1, site layout:

⑴ Site preparation: Open a free site with a table for 4-5 people to create a free and leisure atmosphere; A table, two chairs, at least one whiteboard frame and a number of whiteboard papers are prepared separately for the host in front of the venue;

(2) Meeting equipment: prepare 3-5 large white boards, 10 A4 paper, 5 dozen post-it notes and 1 black, blue and red watercolor pens for each table. Projector, microphone, wall newspaper (introduction of world coffee talk, theme of this talk, etc. );

⑶ Refreshments preparation: In a corner of the venue, refreshments such as chocolate, biscuits, mints, coffee, cola, tea and water are prepared, and participants can take them freely.

2. Personnel requirements:

Generally speaking, more than 12 people will attend, and the number is too small to collect more different ideas and determine the professionalism and diversity of the participants. Pay attention to those participants who will come up with unique ideas. Interdisciplinary talents can bring diversified thinking, which can breed rich insights and discoveries.

3. Time requirement: at least 90 minutes. There is too little time to effectively integrate ideas.

4, operation process:

Step 1: Focus on the theme.

World coffee is more suitable for discussing meaningful things and can be used to explore the meaning of the theme. For example: how to improve the innovation of enterprises? How to develop the potential of talents? How to enhance the brand influence of the company? Wait for questions. It is not suitable for one-way information transmission and publishing some conclusions drawn in advance.

Step 2: Form a group:

Generally, it is a group of 4-6 people. The host introduces the meeting form of World Coffee, discusses the theme and changes the rules.

Step 3: Thematic discussion (first round of talks)

The head of the table briefly introduces himself and shares the theme (time limit is 5 minutes).

Everyone thinks for 3 minutes (think independently and write down the thinking content on the post-it note);

Everyone shares 2 minutes;

Collective discussion for 5 minutes (questioning, reflection and in-depth discussion);

Table length summary for 2 minutes;

The person in charge of the desk can organize everyone's core ideas on big white paper with mind maps. Team members can also write their core ideas on post-it notes and stick them on big white paper.

Step 4: Freedom of movement (second round of talks):

Except for the head of the team, others change tables for discussion (the group members don't appear at the same table).

The head of the table warmly receives the team members, or according to the process of the first meeting, the head of the table introduces the contents of the last meeting for 5 minutes, and each person speaks for 2 minutes. The head of the delegation organized the discussion, and finally made a summary and recorded his own views.

According to the actual situation of the problems and personnel, the third or more rounds of talks can be held.

Step 5: Browse:

The length of the table did not move, and the participants returned to their tables. The table leader introduces the research results of this table, and the table member supplements it, connecting the past with the future and accumulating research wisdom.

Step 6: Contact ideas:

In view of the discussion results, after in-depth thinking, we will use the mind map to sort out the solution.

Step 7: Share the results:

Collective sharing of research results and systematic review. The heads of each table came on stage to share the group results for about 10 minutes, explain the reasons and take questions from everyone. The host controls the time and rhythm to ensure that everyone can share the results smoothly.

1, specifying the purpose of the meeting.

The purpose of bringing people together is clear, and the world coffee can be named according to the purpose. For example, leadership cafes, knowledge cafes, innovation cafes, and discovery cafes.

Step 2 create a friendly space

Environment has a great influence on people, and good space can catalyze the value of cooperative talks. Mike Skorazi, a researcher in the Media Laboratory of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, pointed out in his book Thinking * * * that the venue layout of most conferences actually undermined the cooperative efforts, mainly serving the boring one-way report, which lost the creativity of the cooperative team. "In many ways, it is easier to get results by changing the meeting environment than trying to persuade people to change their behavior," said Skolachi.

The host of World Coffee should realize the importance of creating a warm and enthusiastic environment, and create an environment that makes people feel comfortable, safe and encourages people to fully show themselves. Create a welcome and friendly atmosphere from the aspects of venue layout and poster decoration. If necessary, we can play a little game before we start, so that everyone can relax and enter a happy state.

3. Explore practical problems

The purpose of World Coffee is to find and discuss valuable issues in the dialogue. The real questions, which we haven't answered yet, lead us to innovate and call for ideas and opinions that don't exist yet. It is as important as finding the current countermeasures. Einstein said, "It is more important to ask questions than to solve them." These questions lead us to learn new things. Many Nobel Prize winners believe that the moment of their great discovery is the moment when the right question finally comes out naturally-even if it takes them a long time to find the final answer. Einstein's theory of relativity, for example, originated from a question he had been puzzled about when he was a teenager: "What would the universe look like if I took away a beam of light?"

When asked how to explain his success, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Arnold penzias replied, "I asked a question that hit the nail on the head."

The problems we choose, or the problems discovered by the participants in the World Coffee Talk, are very important for the success of the talk.

The real problem is that all kinds of ideas are welcome and can stimulate innovative thinking and practical actions; To construct a strategic question that can arouse our inner wisdom, the question is simple and clear, the question can be fascinating, the question can release energy, the question can focus on the focus of exploration, and the question can open up various possibilities for the new future. Questions stimulate the exploration and discovery of ideas, rather than guiding opinions and judging the pros and cons.

Questions to be considered and frequently asked in the world coffee dialogue;

What problems are we looking for? If it is discussed comprehensively, can it provide the possibility of a breakthrough?

Is this question related to real life or actual work?

Is this the real problem? A question that I or we don't know the answer to?

What do I need to do about this problem?

What assumptions or beliefs are implied in the construction of this question?

This question may generate hope, imagination, participation, new thinking and creative action, or may draw people's attention to past troubles and obstacles?

Does this preliminary question leave room for new or different questions?

4. Encourage active participation.

One of the reasons why only four or five people sit at each table is to give everyone a chance to speak. People who are unwilling to take the initiative to speak in large groups often put forward some unexpected opinions in the more private environment of world coffee. In this open space, everyone is willing and brave to contribute their own ideas. Listen carefully, appreciate and observe other people's ideas. Let's let go of criticism, learn to reflect and create possibilities.

World Coffee advocates an open communication culture. Sociologist Philip Sorey believes that there are two cultures in the world: separation culture and communication culture. Cultural isolation will draw a line between people's thoughts. Make a clear distinction between "us" and "them". As far as communication culture is concerned, it is characterized by connecting people, viewpoints and world views. In this culture, people pay attention to discovering similarities and collective wisdom beyond political, social, economic and organizational categories.

Step 5 connect different viewpoints

World Coffee is characterized by walking back and forth between tables, communicating with different people, contributing your ideas, and connecting the essence of the problems you find with the ideas of people in a wider range. New models and different perspectives are constantly forming, and the combination of human insight and creativity reveals methods that people have never imagined before.

Ma Xin, a former senior president of Intel, pointed out that well-conceived questions play an "inducement" role in conversation. Participants walk around "inducement" and listen to each other's views, thus evolving into a new mode with coherent meaning.

At the beginning of the meeting, the question was put in the middle of the table and everyone began to discuss. When people moved back and forth for several links, everyone explained the problem from different angles. Participants not only express their opinions, but more importantly, listen to each other's words, and then regroup through connections to find new ideas or blind spots that have never been discovered. The more times you talk about it, the easier it is to connect your opinions. As you can imagine, a three-dimensional network has been formed around the original problem, which has both depth and width. It is a higher level of thinking integration. This is a * * * phenomenon.

6. Listen to insights

World Coffee advocates a culture of listening, not just defending one's own opinions. Listening can make you see what you can't see. You can put yourself in others' shoes and let you see the world from another dimension. At the same time, in the process of listening, we should constantly reflect on our own views and constantly improve them iteratively.

7. Share collective wisdom

After several sessions of World Coffee, all the groups finally got together and held a plenary meeting. This kind of conversation is an opportunity for everyone to reflect together. Leave you a few minutes of silence to reflect: what did you learn in the meeting, what was the significance, and what was the result of the discussion. Let everyone present briefly share their opinions, themes or core issues that are really meaningful to them. Encourage everyone to pay attention to what they found in the conversation and what they shared with each other.

abstract

In Sociobiology, Edward Wilson pointed out that teamwork can transcend individuals and produce superb wisdom, such as ants and bees, as well as human beings. World coffee is an explanation of human behavior based on the theory of biological evolution. This paper expounds how people use language, a unique evolutionary tool of human beings, to stimulate and condense the wisdom of groups, thus creating countless civilizations that amaze the world. In this complex era, individual heroism has long been a thing of the past, and the strength of the team can present value. How to stimulate the potential of the team, World Coffee is a very efficient tool, which allows each of us to abandon prejudice, get along on an equal footing, communicate frankly and build our future together. I believe that any organization, from small start-up companies to national society, will be able to solve complex problems and integrate collective wisdom as long as it deeply understands the concept and ideas of world coffee, grasps its principles and implements its processes.

References:

World coffee

Machinery industry press