Teleworking should not prevent you from stimulating collective intelligence within your teams. On the contrary! The distance forces you to redouble your imagination to strengthen the links between your employees and encourage them to find ideas to be even more innovative. Here are 5 collective intelligence formats taken from our White Paper: 24 collective intelligence practices and particularly relevant in these times of confinement.

The ROTI

ROTI is one of the collective intelligence formats for collecting feedback. More specifically, it is a method for evaluating a past event, usually a meeting or workshop. Very useful in times of crisis and distance to continue organising useful meetings and events, even at a distance! Normally, at the end of the event, the participants evaluate its usefulness, usually by a show of hands. To do this, they do a quick "five-finger vote":

  • 5 fingers: the event was very useful, its value far exceeds the time spent
  • 4 fingers: the event was useful, its value exceeds the time spent
  • 3 fingers: the event was useful, the participant did not waste time
  • 2 fingers: the event was useful, but not worth the time spent attending
  • 1 finger: the event was useless, the participant did not gain or learn anything

You should then average the scores given. This average is announced to the participants out loud. Finally, you can ask the participants "what would it have taken for you to raise an extra finger? ». This will give you ideas for improving your meetings/workshops.

How to digitise ROTI

  • Create your own meetings, workshops and momentum.
  • Plan an interactive session at the end of your workshop, meeting or event. Your employees can evaluate it anonymously by giving it 1 to 5 stars.
  • Right after the vote, the interactivity session continues with an open question: how can we improve to get an extra star? You will then collect all the ideas.

The Brown Bag Lunch

The Brown Bag Lunch is an addition to the collective intelligence formats for informal skill building. It is an informal moment where employees learn from each other during a lunch break. Normally, a group of employees meet every month for lunch together, usually in a meeting room. One of them shares one of his or her areas of expertise with the others.

It is an opportunity for others to awaken their curiosity, to learn new things, to open up to new skills. They can also ask all their questions. At the next Brown Bag Lunch, another expert will speak on a new topic. Because everyone has something to share! The good news is that the Brown Bag Lunch can be digitalised.

READ ALSO : Collective intelligence is phygital: physical AND digital]

How to digitise the Brown Bag Lunch

  • Create an event on Beeshake for each Brown Bag Lunch. Each event will only be visible to the employees who are invited to it.
  • Thanks to the dedicated discussion thread, participants will be able to start exchanging ideas before the big day. They will also be able to continue to discuss or ask questions long after the BBL.
  • Beeshake also allows you to film your BBL and broadcast the video live, directly on your event page. The presenter of the day will be able to speak on video, and remote employees will be able to exchange and ask questions on the event page.

The good practice competition

The best practice competition is one of the fun collective intelligence formats. Because putting collective intelligence into motion requires motivating your employees. Regularly offer a good practice competition lasting a few days to encourage your employees to share.
How does the good practice competition work? To participate, each employee must publish a photo, a video or a few lines to share a good practice that he or she has put in place and that could help or inspire colleagues. The winner is the one whose good practice is considered the best by the majority of his/her peers. In other words, the winning good practice can simply be the one that gets the most likes.
As far as prizes are concerned, opt for ideas that strengthen the collective intelligence or develop the skills of the winners (e.g. training).

How to digitise the good practice competition

  • Advertise your contest on Beeshake and send a newsletter to promote it, directly from the platform.
  • Explain that to participate, your employees simply post their photos, videos, or text directly to the news feed. The most liked publication at a given date and time is the winner.
  • Ask the authors of best practices to create MOOCs or articles to explain their idea in detail.

The call for conversations

Start discussions on a topic with "Sharing best practice: how would you go about ...." and you will be surprised how many people quickly engage in the discussion.
Often a remote employee does not know where to turn when they have questions. With a conversation call, an employee can ask a question, seek advice or get ideas from the peer community in a formalized way. The conversation call is one of the simple collective intelligence formats. It consists of 3 steps:

  • The employee asks his or her question to the whole community.
  • Community members respond.
  • The questioner selects the answers he or she finds most relevant. The questioner shares the solution(s) he/she has selected and reports on it.

How to digitise the call for conversations

  • Encourage your staff to make conversation calls on Beeshake if they need to share with their peers. Explain that a question should be "tweet-simple".
  • Start the hashtag #AppelàConversations, so that you can find all the calls already made with one click.
  • Explain that a question can be addressed to all staff in the organisation, or to a specific community.
  • Encourage your staff to like the most relevant answers so that they are easier to spot.

The Codev

Among the collective intelligence formats, the Codev' consists of using real-life experiences to improve. It involves forming a group of 5 to 8 people who will learn from each other over several sessions. Because it is not because we are going through a crisis that your employees should stop learning from each other, quite the contrary!

Several roles are to be defined:

  • The "client" who exposes an irritant. It changes with each session.
  • The "consultants" bring their experience to bear in resolving irritants.
  • The facilitator, who guides the group in its reflection.

The sessions are conducted as follows:

  • The client presents his problem in a clear and concise manner.
  • The consultants ask all their questions in order to understand the problem as precisely as possible. Any grey areas must be clarified.
  • The client announces a consulting contract, which is approved by the consultants. This is followed by a collegial consultation: the consultants present their visions, their experiences in the field and their ideas. This stage should inspire the client.
  • The client summarises what he has learned from the consultation and creates an action plan.
  • The last step is a debriefing: everyone evaluates what they have learned during the consultation.

How to digitise the Codev'?

  • Set up several Codev' groups in your organisation.
  • In Beeshake, create a community for each group. These digital communities will replace for a while the physical Codev' sessions. Members will be able to ask questions and share answers, intelligence and experiences.
  • Encourage communities to create their own events
    for each Codev' session. One event = one issue of a given "client".
  • Explain to the groups that they can also form a project team if they wish to submit a joint innovation project as a result of this experience.

Find other collective intelligence and animation formats adapted to confinement