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What
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Is Lean Coffee?
- Founded by Jim Benson & Jeremy Lightsmith in 2009 in Seattle
- Rudimentary kanban system for facilitation of powerful democratic discussion
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Minimal rules
- Everyone is encouraged to add any topic to the backlog
- Brief introduction of people in attendance (~5 minutes)
- Brief clarification of backlog items by submitters (~2 sentences)
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Group votes with dots of hashmarks on topics of interest to them as individuals.
- 2 votes per person
- Vote limit is vital to distilling passion
- Pull most popular topic into doing column and begin discussion.
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Discussion is time-boxed
- Usually 8 minute initial time-box subsequent time-boxen are half (4 mins)
- When time-keeper notes elapse of a time-box there is a silent "roman vote"
- Silent does not mean "everyone stop talking" it means we all throw up a thumb.
- Thumb up = "4 more minutes please"
- Thumb horizontal = "meh" (ambivalence)
- Thumb down = "I'm ready to move on"
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No commitment to end on time
- We'll take note of the planned finish time and decide if we want to continue
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"Take away" <new rule as of 05-30-12>
- Go around table and share something you take away from today's discussion.
- Not Mandatory, anyone can "pass"
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So What?
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How is this "lean"?
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"Pull" system
- Group gets to choose the topic "just in time"
- Focus is on value delivery to the customer (us)
- Eliminates waste typical of trad. meetings
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Quality is built in
- Conversation is always amazing so amazing people are attracted.
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Psychological benefits
- Putting your idea on a sticky gets it out of your head
- You become fully engaged instead of waiting for your turn
- Quality of conversation is usually amazing
- Organic opportunities to share life/business challenges are rare
- Environment facilitates learning unlike any other I've ever seen.
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Not just for "lean" not just for "coffee"
- Overhead extremely low e.g. stickies & pens/sharpies/crayon whatever
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You can do it anywhere
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At work, before, during, after.
- At home with family to discuss anything (vacation? chores? how is school/work? what can we do better? )
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Now What?
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You can use this format to facilitate nearly any kind of meeting.
- Planning
- Retrospectives
- Extremely powerful as "Kaizen" organizational transformational tool. (see Modus Cooperandi)
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Facilitation patterns for lean coffee
- Human facilitation ususally trumps rules
- Cynefin model driven stories about anecdotal results of experimentation with the process.
- Everyone should be encouraged to facilitate
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Nobody should ever be forced to facilitate
- Group will usually gravitate towards a facilitator and self-org around right culture of meeting
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DO IT NOW!
- Don't wait, find a coffee shop with a table and invite people, not only will they come, but it'll be great.
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Don't do this in a vacuum, please share your experiences with the growing worldwide Lean Coffee community.
- Google Group
- Facebook Page
- Twitter hashtag
- Blog
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