“Yes and…” doesn't work and how to actually run a collaborative meeting
If you read enough leadership articles or take enough leadership classes, you will inevitably come across the advice of “yes and…”:
In your next meeting, replace the word "but" with the phrase "yes and…". Your teammates will feel empowered, ideas will start flying, and your company will promote you to CEO by the end of the year.”
I first came across this advice many years ago during a college class; I remember thinking, “This is it. This is the tip that’s going to transform me from a quiet, sulky engineer into a bubbly, popular salesperson!”
Alas, it’s been a decade and I’m still a sulky engineer. Not only that, but no matter where I looked, I couldn’t find a single person who actually uses the phrase “yes and…” in a serious work meeting.
What gives?
What's wrong with "Yes and..."?
For high functioning teams, the goal of a meeting is to narrow in on a simple and clear solution in as short of a time as possible. The simpler a solution, the more likely everyone in the room can understand and get on board. The faster everyone gets on board, the earlier everyone can leave the room and g̶e̶t̶ ̶b̶a̶c̶k̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶k̶ move onto lunch.
A meeting gets “ruined” if someone tosses in ideas that complicates, slows down, or confuses people. Unfortunately, “yes and…” accomplishes all three.
Alice: We’ve a clogged toilet. What should we do?
Bob: We can call a plumber.
Cathy: Yes, and we can try a plunger!
Alice: Huh? Are you saying we should call a plumber, get a plunger, or both?
Here, Cathy wanted to make the meeting more collaborative by courageously utilizing a textbook “Yes and…” Unfortunately, that one phrase complicated the situation with 2 more options and added ambivalence to the discussion: Alice couldn't even tell which option Cathy wanted.
Looking at the origins of "Yes and..." gives clues to its ineffectiveness. The phrase is popular in improv, where all participants strive towards the same goal: generate more lines / ideas and make a story. In improv, it’s okay to throw in ideas that complicate and confuse. Part of the comedy is in resolving the ridiculous and incoherent ideas.
The average work meeting, however, is not about generating ideas. It's about narrowing in on ideas and evaluating ideas. The sooner agrees on the merit of an idea, the sooner next actions are established and the sooner the meeting is adjourned.
This is the exact opposite of Improv. How can we resolve this contradiction?
Directing the discussion towards idea generation
As CTO & co-founder at Shuffle, I have daily product design syncs with co-founder
and product designer on a daily basis. After jamming together a 100+ times in the last year, we noticed some positive recurring patterns. Specifically, we often find ourselves redirecting the discussion from "idea evaluation" to "idea generation."Alice: We’ve a clogged toilet. What should we do?
Bob: We can get a plumber.
Cathy: Yah, but the plumber probably won’t come for another week. Why don’t we just use a plunger?
Alice: I see we have a number of solutions here. Before we dive into critiquing, can we spend some time laying out all the ideas first? We can discuss the pros and cons after.
Bob: sure. Maybe we can try Saran wrap. I saw a YouTube video about this.
Cathy: oh yah. I know which one you’re talking about. There's also hot water? That could work.
Bob: I’ve also seen some plumbers use this snake-like tool…
By shifting the discussion away from “idea evaluation” to “idea generation”, Alice opened the floor to more ideas — even if they might have complicated the discussion and taken more time. She made it okay to bring on new ideas even if they are malformed or ambivalent. In other words, Alice asked the team to play “improv” instead of “meeting.” In this game of “improv”, the phrase “Yes and…” isn’t even necessary: it’s implied.
Besides the obvious benefits of more ideas and more likelihood for idea cross-pollination, focusing the team on idea generation can help with idea evaluation as well. Some teams — perhaps because of social hierarchy or differences in personalities — have a hard time debating ideas. By explicitly separating “idea generation” from “idea evaluation,” participants can depend on the “game rules” to avoid coming across as disrespectful, negative, or pointed.
Of course, there's more than one way to redirect a conversation; we don’t have a simple “Yes and…” phrase that fits all scenarios. Here's a few more ideas:
Are we already critiquing ideas? I thought we were still laying out potential solutions.
I think your push back makes sense, but before we jump into that discussion, let’s make sure we understand all the possibilities.
I think it’s too early for us to be evaluating solutions right now. How about we focus on generating a few more ideas and mocking them up? We can have a separate discussion about what works and what doesn’t when it's more clear what we're actually debating.
Timing is key
The idea of separating "idea generation" and "idea evaluation" is not new: creativity frameworks have been documenting it for years. The challenge is in applying it effectively.
It is impractical to explicitly go through an "idea generation" phrase for every discussion on the team. Doing so would drain your team and waste their time.
Instead, try to spot the right moments and push for a switch when necessary. Here are some tell tale signs of when it makes sense to focus on "idea generation" instead of "idea evaluation":
- the problem is open ended
- there might be many ways to solve the problem
- there's a lot of tension between the ideas being discussed
- the ideas require more refinement and data (e.g wireframes, mocks, user studies), but participants are already trying to eliminate ideas; in this case, idea evaluation should be delayed until further data is gathered
Reflection
Last week marked the 1 year anniversary for our product designer
at Shuffle! It got me thinking a lot about all the jam sessions we've had and that prompted to me to share the learnings here.Hopefully this article gave you some ideas on how to run better meetings. In my future posts, I’ll share more on how we work and how it differs from my previous experience in the industry. Stay tuned!
