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Remote Lightning Decision Jam using only Google Presentation and Skype

How I run an LDJ workshop without the use of any other software. Fast, immediately available, free and super-productive!

I’m also sharing the exact template I use, so you can run your remote LDJ immediately after reading this article!

Go to File > Make a copy to use it for your next workshop

When working remotely and talking with clients and prospects, you’ll undoubtedly need the sharpest communication skills. You must go straight to the point and avoid useless, endless and unstructured discussions that may cause the participants to feel they are wasting their time.

You can run a remote LDJ if the meeting requires you to make decisions; discuss challenges, or to quickly identify the cheapest and easiest methods to implement experiments you can run to fix a problem.

LDJ is also one of the most effective sales tools you can use to sell Design Sprint! You can run a remote LDJ to sell a Design Sprint (or a series of DS) to a prospect that:

1) May not know what Design Sprint is.
2) Is sceptical about using this methodology.
3) Has a very broad project that doesn’t quite fit into one (or two) Sprints and needs to prioritize and plan a series of Sprints in the right sequence.

The software you’ll need:

1) A browser (preferably Google Chrome).
2) A video collaboration tool such as Skype, Google Hangout or Appear.in.
3) A simple, plain text editor to take notes (Notepad, Sublime Text or Zenpen).

Ideal group size:

I’ve personally witnessed fully-functioning LDJ workshops in the real world with up to one hundred people present, but when you’re working remotely, you must consider that some technical difficulties can of course occur. This could include issues pertaining to bandwidth in some locales, and any issues relating to time zones.

I strongly suggest choosing three to seven people; the ones who can make the biggest impact directly into the decision-making process that revolves around the problem you’re aiming to solve.

Total time needed:

This exercise would usually take approximately one hour for a team of three people, or two hours for a team of seven people. The times I suggest here are only a guideline that will help you to understand how much time you’ll need to free in everyone’s agenda.

Choose a moderator:

If you’re reading this article there is already a strong chance that you will be the moderator. You must make sure to provide everyone:

1) The instruction to get into the conference (credentials, etc).
2) The invitation to the meeting.

Before you begin:

You must request that the participants:

1) Close all their software except: Chrome, the software for the call, and the text editor.
2) Stop any of their software that uses bandwidth like: Spotify, Google Drive Sync etc.
3) Sit in a quiet room with one person per computer.

Before starting the session:

It’s advisable to write the topic title on the first slide instead of making a beautiful cover. This is more practical, and will allow you to find the document faster when you’re searching in your files
You must get the “shareable link” and change the permission setting to “Anyone with the link can edit” instead of the default “can view”. This will allow the team to access and edit the file anonymously to avoid “Groupthink”.

Introduce the Session:

Commence the call and after welcoming everyone, share the link to the presentation and ask your team to access it within an Incognito window. You can explain to them with confidence that they are now in a safe environment wherein they can express freely without being judged.

It may seem strange but giving your team the gift of privacy will allow you to better tackle your problems. Now, is everyone on the same slide? You can count the little animal icons that start appearing near your avatar… Good!

“Why are we here?” Frame the session with a broad topic and initially explain why it’s important to find a solution to improve the current situation.

Capture all the problems:

If everyone understands the goal of the session and there are no technical problems, you’re ready to begin the first exercise.

Instead of writing directly onto the presentation, ask your team to open their text editor and start a new, blank document. Set the timer to seven minutes and ask everyone to write as many challenges, annoyances, mistakes or concerns they have with the topic that they can come up with.

Remind your participants that everything is anonymous, to avoid any personal criticisms rising among them.
When the time ends, you can all:

1) Drag and press Alt to copy the Post-it placeholder.
2) Copy and paste one sentence at a time.
3) Repeat for all the sentences you’ve written.

Vote and Prioritize the problems:

As the Moderator, you should make sure that everyone creates all the Post-its they need. Then, copy and paste everything from Slide 2 to Slide 3 and tidy up the space to make everything more readable.

Set the timer to four minutes and tell them that they will only have two dots; ask them to vote by copying and pasting their dots onto the Post-it.

When the timer ends, you as a Moderator should group every Post-it with the relative dots (right click > Group or ⌘+alt+G) so you can manage things seamlessly. Once done, copy to Slide 4 any of the Post-its that received more than one vote (dot), and arrange them in order of priority.

Reframe the problems as challenges:

Copy the rectangular Post-it from the top-right corner and rewrite the most-voted problem using the HMW technique. You can ask for help and gauge the consensus among the team.

If this is your first time, I strongly suggest focussing the LDJ session on finding solutions for the most voted problem. Once you gain more confidence and your team has learnt this technique, and feel more comfortable with doing this remotely, you can loop from Step 4 to Step 8 for every problem.

Find solutions:

As you have done in Step 2, set the timer to seven minutes and ask everyone to write down on their own text editor, as many solutions as possible to help solve the challenge. When the time ends, everyone present can copy and paste their solutions into a Post-it afterwards (drag+ALT the template from the top right corner).

This will allow everyone to work independently and avoid biases from their peers after reading the solutions appearing on the screen.

Vote and Prioritize the solutions:

It’s time to vote again! Copy and paste everything from Slide 6 to the Slide 7 and make sure all the Post-its are readable. Then, give everyone six dots and four minutes to vote as you did previously, in Step 3.

Following this, you will once again group the Post-its together with their relative votes and copy and paste into Slide 8 the solutions that received more than one vote and arrange them in order of priority.

Decide what to execute on:

One solution at a time, you must copy and paste the Post-it from Slide 8 to Slide 9 into the centre of the pre-drawn impact/effort scale. Simply ask everyone: “is the impact higher or lower?” and move the Post-it accordingly. You can repeat this until the task is completed.

Define the experiment:

When looking at your scale with all the solutions firmly in place, you can copy the first Post-it in the sweet-spot indicated by the green area titled: ‘DO IT NOW’. This is the solution with the highest impact and the lowest effort and determined with your team.

In Slide 10, there are three columns. Paste the solution in the first one, then ask the person who wrote said solution to suggest the sequence of tasks that need to be followed to implement the solution. You are aiming to find a clear consensus among the team.

Consider this solution as not the ‘final’ solution, but as an experiment to run in the next fifteen days. Then, in the last column, write the metrics to monitor to validate the experiment.

If the experiment is eventually successful, then congratulations: you solved the problem!
However, should the experiment fail, then you can come back to this presentation, choose the second-most impactful solution you found in Step 7 and define another experiment.

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