Using VIPP methods in an in-office meeting to plan a training session, saves time and involves everyone in the issues.

Many daily business meetings are not well chaired and take a good deal of our time. Deliberations meander in various directions as new ideas emerge in no particular order. People become frustrated and want to get back to their desks to do “real work”.

A team in Healthy Russia 2020, a USAID-supported project being implemented by the Center for Communication Programs of Johns Hopkins University, Moscow, was charged with sending a consultant to help with a 5-day communication training programme in Azerbaijan. They had little time to complete the design for the workshop. First of all, buzz groups of two people formulated objective statements for the workshop on VIPP strips, one statement per group. This only took five minutes and the group ended up with different objectives which could be easily revised and refined through discussion. There was little overlap in the ideas, surprisingly.

Then, instead of talking in general terms about the workshop content needed to achieve the objectives, one member acted as a facilitator and asked the others what were the three or four priority components of such a course. Each person wrote their response on same colour cards. The cards were then collected and pinned on a pin board under the labels Day 1 to Day 5 from morning to evening, according to the discussion and decision of the group. Within 45 minutes the basic outline of the course came into shape. The group then discussed each day in detail, moving sessions from one day to another, adding missing components, taking away unnecessary sessions which could not be achieved within the timeframe, and adding timings, tea/coffee breaks and lunches, and evening programmes .

At the end of the session, the group took a digital photo of their output and one member was given the task of writing it up in computer format to send to Azerbaijan and Baltimore. Hence, a very arduous task which is normally done by one person and then sent to others for comment and revision and then more comment, was handled in one session with ownership in the output by all present.