My pal, Mike Monteiro, is making good on his idea to try giving his team Meeting Tokens.

Previously mentioned in this post about re-creating scarcity and, in more detail, in my IDEO talk.

Can’t wait to hear how it goes. I love me some scarcity.  read more »

I have a friend who told me he was thinking about giving his project managers a weekly pile of chips that could be redeemed for person-hours in meetings. So, to schedule firewalled, group face-time, the PM would need to cough up the equivalent number of tokens from her pile. Thus, one, long, all-hands meeting might require the whole week’s stack. While, fewer, shorter meetings with smaller groups made the pile go further.

It was just an idea, and I’m pretty sure he never implemented it, but I think it’s a fascinating concept. Why? Because I love the idea of re-introducing scarcity into systems that lack boundaries.  read more »