Show and Tell Success

“Show and Tell” is a great format for making work visible in your organisation. It’s a simple idea: on a regular basis, teams host an open meeting for anyone to come and see work in progress. It can radically increase visibility, and make it easier for stakeholders to stay connected to work avoiding endless ‘update meetings’.

We love Show and Tell sessions at IDEO, and this week we’re helping a client team to plan and implement them to create visibility and awareness.

In the planning the client asked for advice on how to keep things fresh, and it made me think about how to set great conditions for a Show and Tell.

In short, freshness is a great idea — but first let’s establish consistency…

Consistency when establishing a new ritual

IDEO works with teams and organisations to the make the future, that always involves changing a teams rhythms and rituals. Creating new things, requires new approaches to work. So while you might know IDEO as a product, service and system design company – we spend as much time focussing on creating great teams (both IDEO teams and client teams).

And so, great team need great rituals.

Enter the Show and Tell. There are many formats for meetings that can help a team achieve better outcomes, the Show and Tell is all about visibility, learning and building excitement beyond the team. But when establishing a new ritual consistency is key.

Out client was right to think about ‘freshness’ but I also encourage them to think about consistency first.

Rituals build habits, and so it requires repetition.

Consistency is Key. Repeat, repeat repeat. So when introducing new rituals and habits, make sure you’re committed to running it at least four times before you start making changes. If things don’t work the first time, you wont know if it was your session, the attendees, or some other invisible force that lead to failure. So repeat, repeat, repeat.

If it still isn’t working after four tries — then you can be certain that change is the best option.

You say “Freshness”, I say Engagement

To be fair to the client team we are working with, I think freshness points to a desire to make the Show and Tell as engaging as possible. Freshness is one route to engagement, but there are three others i’d start with:

1. Quality Storytelling: To make any 'Show and Tell' truly memorable, focus on storytelling techniques that resonate. For instance, encouraging presenters to start with a personal anecdote related to the project can help set the scene and engage the audience right from the start. This personal touch often makes the content more relatable and absorbing. If you are not a confident storyteller, go and seek inspiration on how to get better.
2. Facilitation That Fosters Interaction: Active facilitation can transform a standard presentation into an engaging experience. The facilitator can bring out better stories and insights by asking questions (not just managing the agenda). If you are the facilitator in a Show and Tell, your job is to set the tone of great questions. You should plan for this, but sticking to good practice for asking open ended questions will get you a long way.
3. Creating a Safe Space for Bold Ideas: To encourage more 'risky' or innovative content, the environment must first be safe. One way to do this is by theming sessions around sharing bold or out-of-the-box ideas without fear of judgment. For example, a session could be dedicated to 'wild ideas', where the wilder, the better. Setting this tone early on can pave the way for more open and fearless sharing. When people play it safe the content is much less engaging. But if you want people to be brave you need to design a safe space. How are you making the space safer ? What factors might reduce safety that you can remove?

These strategies are designed to enrich the 'Show and Tell' experience by making it more dynamic and inclusive, while still honouring the essential need for consistency.

What advice would you give to this team to make Show and Tells more engaging?