Cutting waste: dump PowerPoint and invest in a camera
So you’ve run a workshop and generated ideas. There’s a list of points on the flipchart and diagrams on the whiteboard. What now? Write it all up in Word or commit the drawings to PowerPoint?
Stop! Ask yourself why you are doing this? Is it just to record the ideas, to socialise back to the group involved in the workshop? Creating PowerPoint slides is not always an inconsiderable effort. It takes time. That effort is waste.
Think of the purpose of what you are doing. Then take photographs of the flipcharts and whiteboard diagrams, paste them into PowerPoint, and think of how much time and effort you have just saved.
I’d say that it’s not just about cutting waste. By converting the flip charts and diagrams into Word or PowerPoint, you lose all the memory triggers that photographs provide of the original experience.
Of course, at some point you will have people who were not there and didn’t have the same shared experience and you may need to prepare something different for them.