I had my students do a word cloud as an icebreaker for the first day of my graduate class this semester. Afterwards, they brainstormed how word clouds could be used in organizations. They developed a great list:
- Have employees share what they see as their personality traits
- Method to share anonymous suggestions
- Method to share suggestions for improvement
- Employee evaluations
- Set goals of employees or departments
- Brainstorming activity
- Determine strengths and weaknesses (SWOT analysis?)
- Indirect method to give a direct message
- Show appreciation
- Inspirational signs
- Mission statement
- Agenda for weekly meetings
- Describe new product
- Sales presentation
- Retirement (give to employee leaving)
- Bring group together/build cohesion
- Ice breaker with new team members
- Look at big picture of a project
- Establish relationships/bonding of employees/teams
- Recognize accomplishment/celebrations
- Identify staff conflict issues
- Prioritization
- To do list
- Staff training
- More in-depth/informal look at what’s important to employees
NOTE: Free software for doing Word clouds can be found at: http://www.wordle.net/
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