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What: Dory

⚡️ Start with the template: type “/dory question table” in any doc to insert what you see below.

Questions

Questions

Idea

Meeting notes

Author

Upvote

Downvote

What about a combo of option 1 and 2?

JO: worth thinking about!

....

How many engineers will be on the project?

...

What is the rough cost for each option?

...

There are no rows in this table

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Why: talk about the most important topics

I believe that we should design our meetings just like we design our apps. With apps, you make thoughtful design choices about the entire experience in order to drive certain behavior. Good meetings also have clear goals that you can design around. And the most thoughtfully designed meetings often feel a bit like games, with rules and incentives that not only lead to better outcomes but add some much needed fun to what can be an otherwise despised portion of the work day. See the

Gamestorming⁠

template for dozens of examples.

The most common “game” we play at Coda is called “Dory”, named after the fish that asks all the questions in Finding Nemo. It’s pretty simple:

Someone presents a topic, a proposal, an AMA.

The group writes down questions, comments, and topics for discussion.

The group votes on the list of topics and we go down the list, discussing what the group felt were most important topics.

Reduce “loudest voice in the room” syndrome

We’ve all been in meetings that are dominated by the loudest or most senior person in the room. Dory voting tables provide a way to gather valuable insights from even the quietest people in the room. Hearing from a diverse set of voices almost always surfaces important points worth addressing.

Aside from getting better feedback, this is one of the easiest things you can do to foster a more inclusive meeting environment.

Cover the most important topics

While you will rarely be able to get to every topic on every person’s mind, it’s nice to know that we discussed the ones that felt the most important to the group and can have a list of of others we can follow up with offline.

Keep the discussion on track

Going through the most upvoted topics first makes it easier to avoid tangential or unrelated discussions. When this happens (as it inevitably does), the dory gives a tool to say, “good point. Looks like there is a topic in the dory for that coming up. Let’s come back to that in a sec.”

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Next:
`Bonus: some practical tips`⁠
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