Brown bag meeting
Overview (short introduction to the method):
A brown bag meeting, or a brown bag seminar, is an informal meeting that occurs around lunchtime. The term “brown bag” refers to the packed lunch meals that are either brought along by the attendees or provided by the host.
Objectives:
Brown bag meetings serve as a forum for everything from training and information sharing to open discussion.
Group size:
varies
Time:
varies
Materials:
varies
Skills and Competences :
Expected outcomes :
Brown bag meetings promote dialogue and information sharing among participants. The sessions can be structured or unstructured and are often used to transfer knowledge, solve problems, brainstorm, and build trust among attendees. Brown bag meetings promote teamwork, reinforce company values, vision and mission, and encourage ongoing learning.
Instructions:
Brown Bag meeting usually take place during lunch breaks which tend to be very precious for most of the people, hence it needs to be clear to everybody that these meetings can indeed have an added value.
Therefore, the following tips might help you maximize such a meeting’s potential:
* Limit content as a brown bag meeting works best when there is a limited amount of content. The meeting is very short and participants need to be able to follow you right away. Therefore, start with what they know and build on that, as well as foresee enough time for questions and comments.
* Focus on content, be prepared to listen and invite questions, not just talk at the participants.
* Keep the meeting informal so that people can feel comfortable asking questions, commenting and, eating lunch.
* Recognize that many people are shy about talking in front of others, so let the participants know that they can contact you if something comes to mind later.
* The meeting brings benefit if it is supported by organizational culture. If the organization is not familiar with these kinds of initiatives, people may not want to put in effort to show up or they do, only because they feel obliged but don’t want to participate in the meeting.
Resources
Brown Bag meeting on Investopedia
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/brown-bag-meeting.asp
Let’s talk about Organizational Culture #11! This week’s topic: Brown Bag Meetings http://blog.openclassrooms.com/en/2016/04/19/lets-talk-about-organizational-culture-11-this-weeks-topic-brown-bag-meetings/
Barbara Kramer-Zarins, MBA. 5 Easy Steps to A Better Brown Bag Meeting.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-easy-steps-better-brown-bag-meeting-barbara-kramer-zarins-mba