{"id":803,"date":"2025-12-26T15:37:28","date_gmt":"2025-12-26T15:37:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bettermeetings.online\/?p=803"},"modified":"2025-12-26T15:37:29","modified_gmt":"2025-12-26T15:37:29","slug":"what-to-do-with-great-ideas-that-dont-fit-park-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bettermeetings.online\/?p=803","title":{"rendered":"What to do with great ideas that don&#8217;t fit? Park them!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Tip<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Create a visible \u201cparking lot\u201d space during your meeting in a shared document, whiteboard, or chat section to store off-topic but valuable ideas. When something important comes up that doesn\u2019t fit the moment, park it. Review the list at the end to decide next steps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Description<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Meetings often drift because interesting ideas or tangents arise at the wrong moment and once the group follows them, it\u2019s hard to steer back. The \u201cparking lot\u201d technique solves this by acknowledging the idea without letting it derail the agenda. According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sessionlab.com\/methods\/parking-lot\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">SessionLab\u2019s facilitation guide<\/a>, it helps teams stay focused while preserving contributions for later review.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A parking lot is simply a holding space for questions, concerns or ideas that matter but aren&#8217;t relevant right now. It is accessible to all participants so everyone can add to it. This avoids interruptions and boosts psychological safety because people feel heard. Their input isn\u2019t ignored, just deferred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For online meetings, the parking lot can be a simple section on a shared document, a column on a digital whiteboard, or a running list in chat. At the end, revisit each item to consciously close the loop. When the parking lot is consistently reviewed, it becomes a powerful tool for focus, trust, and follow-through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Use a \u201cparking lot\u201d to capture off-topic ideas so your meeting stays focused while valuable thoughts aren\u2019t lost and people feel heard instead of ignored.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":151,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-facilitation"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bettermeetings.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bettermeetings.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bettermeetings.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bettermeetings.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bettermeetings.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=803"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/bettermeetings.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1013,"href":"https:\/\/bettermeetings.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803\/revisions\/1013"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bettermeetings.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bettermeetings.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bettermeetings.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bettermeetings.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}