Once you’ve finished with Lightning Talks, it’s time for everyone to share their HMW sticky notes. During this sharing session, you’ll begin to do affinity mapping, which means grouping team members’ notes by common themes or categories.

Remind the team that they’re looking for opportunities, not solutions. In this stage, you want to keep the thinking broad so the team can explore as many angles as possible.

Directions:

Time: 3 min per person
Activity: Group

1. Each team member takes a turn reading all their HMW sticky notes/opportunities they’ve come up with.
2. As they verbally describe their individual HMW notes, they place the corresponding sticky on the board.
3. Give each person around 3 minutes to finish so they’re encouraged to be short and sweet.
4. Team members can write down more HMW notes if they get inspired by what others are sharing.
5. Wait until the third person has finished presenting before you start grouping the HMW notes into categories. (Tip: Don’t wait until everyone has finished sharing to do this. You’ll have a big, unwieldy task on your hands.)
6. Don’t worry if it takes a bit for solid categories to form. It’s fine to adjust them as the HMW sharing session continues. And, if the first set of categories you make aren’t useful, you can always start over.