In this Issue

	How to Facilitate Breakfast Meetings without Starving or Getting Indigestion
	Wow - That's a Great Idea
	Five H's Class Opener By Rich Meiss and Doug McCallum
	February 2009 ThoughtCatcher Special Offer

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February 2009

Welcome to the February 2009 edition of the Thought Catcher, the first for this year.  In this edition Andrew Inglis looks at Breakfast meetings and effective ways to structure them. 

Many  business entities in 2009 are still reeling from the constant negative press now and in the past year about the financial future of Australia an overseas economies.  A phrase that we are hearing more and more from clients is "we need our staff to think out of the box  so we can stay afloat and grow.  What staff have been doing is fine but we need a new approach"  ----- hmmm, easier said than done. Ed Bernancki has some simple techniques that help make this phrase a reality.

How to Facilitate Breakfast Meetings without Starving or Getting Indigestion

Breakfast meetings are popularly thought of as ways to get people productive in otherwise wasted times of the day. Sadly they often are "sofa-bed meetings".

Like most sofa-beds, which tend to be lousy sofas and even worse beds, breakfast meetings are often not very productive and pretty unsatisfying as breakfast.

The aspiration is often to make the process informal and interactive by having the breakfast but it too often falls back into the same old pattern of one persons monologue with a well-intentioned audience struggling to listen over the clatter of knives and forks.

The reasons for this include
 

Wow - That's a Great Idea

Managers and executives often ask for programs to make their staff “think outside the box”. What these organisations really need is to see is that to foster organisational innovation, you must start with individual skills for managing ideas.

When organisations look for innovative thinking programs, the typical symptoms, as they see it are:

• Lack of teamwork within a department or business.
• Important decisions seem to be made at the last minute.
• New ideas are rare or non-existent.
• People are reactive – virtually unable or unwilling to take initiative.

These symptoms relate to both the government sector and the corporate sector. Read full article

Five H's Class Opener By Rich Meiss and Doug McCallum

Purpose
To help students get acquainted with each other and to connect the activity to class content

Audience
Adults or students in grades 6-12.

Group Size
Any size group subdivided into teams of 4-6

Time
5-7 minutes

Space
No additional space required as activity is done at tables

Materials
Name tent or piece of paper and pen.  The process

February 2009 ThoughtCatcher Special Offer

Whiteboard Textas/Markers
Expo Dry Erase Markers by Sanford. These chisel tipped with eight dynamic colours just like the Mr. Sketch scented textas. However as they are for whiteboards they are not fruit scented.  They last longer than conventional white board markers and the chisel nib allows for fine or thick writing and the flat side makes filling in areas quick, simple and effective.  Special offer until 15 March to Thought Catcher Subscribers at only $16.95. Save $10.00. Postage $3.50.  All prices are GST inclusive.