Time flies by. Tasks are getting more and more complicated. New technologies, changing social structures and new management tools are emerging.

All of these things have an impact on personal and business life.

The biggest problem: lack of time. In the daily working routines we suffer to create time slots that help us to think in a creative manner. Meetings, discussions with colleagues, emails and many other tasks are challenging our tight timetable.

No time to catch a deep breath, sit back and switch into a creative mode?

For sure there will be no time available until you decide to take it!

The other day I listened to a podcast talking about the idea to use the „barcamp“-format at work.

A barcamp is kind of an open workshop in which the rules and the discussed content is managed by the participants itself.

Based on this idea I set up a barcamp on a Friday morning for three hours in my department. In preparation I asked my colleagues beforehand to each bring an important topic currently on their mind. No matter its kind.

This was already the start for creativity.

On Friday morning – Barcamp day – we had ten very interesting topics. During the first 30 minutes we presented our ideas to each other. A short introduction, no longer than three minutes each.
In order to pick a priority – which would be guiding our day’s schedule – we decided that each of us will have three votes.

Thereafter, the open discussion started. I was amazed by the creativity and the great results achieved, which we are now testing in pilots.

From my point of view the barcamp is a working format to get into a creative mode at work. For sure there will be more in my department…

For those of you who are interested in the topics chosen at our first barcamp, I like to share the top three:

• Zero email
• 5-hour-working-day in combination with new work
• Optimizing the structure of document storages within the department