Where I work, every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon everyone in the office closes their computer for 30 minutes of coordinated "no computer time". People are free to go for a walk, grab coffee or chat with someone about what they are working on.
Most often, however, it ends up being small groups of people around a few chalkboards talking through new ideas. Some of our best ideas have spawned from these 30-minute sessions, and quite often the ideas start flowing and an hour later we realize "no computer time" has long since been over.
I like this idea a lot. Reminds me of some of the team projects I did in school. It also seems a lot more productive than all of those pointless corporate meetings...
I agree with the thesis of Will's post. I'd just like to point out that 1) meetings are still Evil (capital E) and 2) "free-flowing, organic discourse," as Will puts it, is perfect for anti-meeting culture. It's not nearly as interruptive as a meeting.
brains process language differently when you're actually saying things, rather than just thinking to yourself. You actually think differently out loud - email debates are no substitute for lunchtime chatting, and team coffee breaks.
Eating lunch together can foster connections and spark conversations like this.
Also, it's funny the number of times just speaking a problem out loud changes your perspective on things. I've worked on short-deadline projects where we asked team members to set a one-hour time limit on problems. If you're stuck on something for more than an hour, explain the problem to your neighbor and ask for help. There were several times when I turned toward my neighbor and realized the solution before I said a word. I suspect that the act of organizing the problem in order to explain it made it easier to solve.
I agree completely. Lunch conversations are a wonderful time to break into informal conversations that result in ideas/fixes etc. I have worked at 2 places where (informally) the team chose to have lunch together and I have seen that the discussion invariable boils down to work ideas with better results than 'meetings'. I suspect a large reason as to why this works is eventually everyone lets their guard down and results in better/relaxed thinking.
As always, the goal is to balance conversation with actual coding time. I hate being interrupted when I'm in the actual process of writing code - but in between sprints to a goal I'm happy to sit down and chat for 5 minutes about a feature or modification.
The problems begin to arise when that balance is broken - too much "own world" programming can lead to quirks that only a single person understands; while too much discussion can lead to never getting actual work done.
Most often, however, it ends up being small groups of people around a few chalkboards talking through new ideas. Some of our best ideas have spawned from these 30-minute sessions, and quite often the ideas start flowing and an hour later we realize "no computer time" has long since been over.