So many people we work with find themselves with relentlessschedules of back-to-back meetings, leaving them asking when it is they’resupposed to do their ‘real work’. Sound familiar? If so, you’re not alone. TheChartered Management Institute (CMI) reports that 50% of the 1200 managerssurveyed want to become more productive, and 45% want to reduce time wasted byunnecessary meetings and emails.
A few years ago a client who was concerned thatmeetings were not adding value asked us to set up a survey to gauge thequantity and effectiveness of meetings. Creating the survey was easy, butgetting responses wasn’t: it turned out the vast majority of managers weresimply running from meeting to meeting, day in day out with scant time foranything else.
Over time it seems that for many people, a cultureof attending meetings has spread almost by stealth, quietly but steadilyeroding the time available to do their main value adding work. The trouble oftenseems to be that everyone feels like they have too many meetings to attend, yetcalling a meeting is the default whenever something needs to be decided ordone. And these meetings often result in follow up meetings. Everyone becomesguilty of co-creating the culture that everyone dislikes.
So you might be interested in the work of AlPittampalli, and his excellent book “Read this Before Our Next Meeting: TheModern Meeting Standard”. Focussing specifically on organisations that have towrestle with change, deal with complex challenges and coordinate coherent motion,he outlines 8 principles for what he calls the ‘Modern Meeting’.
To understand each of theprinciples in full – and the thinking that went into coming up with them - we’dhighly recommend reading the book. And to whet your appetite, here’s a littlebit about a few of them:
Meetings don’t make decisions. Leaders do.
Many groupsseems to assume that the meeting will make the decision that needs to be made.Big mistake. Meetings can’t make decisions, only leaders can. This doesn’t meanleaders need to be dictatorial though: for a high consequence decision they’llask for input from others and choose a decision making process whichgenerates the commitment needed for action. But if there’s a deadlock inopinions, it’s the leader that needs to take the hard decision. You may haveheard Patrick Lencioni’s maxim (famous for the 5 Dysfunctions of A Team):
“If people don’t weigh in they won’t buy in.”
Let them havetheir say and advocate their opinion. Once you’ve listened, if there’s still noagreement, make the decision.
So when you have a decision tomake, consider:
· Is this a high, low or noconsequence decision?
· No consequence? Make thedecision as quickly as possible. Don’t consult others. You have our permissionto act on our behalf.
· Low or high consequence? You’llprobably want to consult with others, and the higher the consequence, the moreconsultation will likely be needed. Butconsult WITHOUT calling a meeting! Have a 1:1 conversation, or send anemail. Less convenient for you, but it’s your decision to make, so don’t gowasting others’ time calling a meeting at this stage.
Then make a preliminarydecision. Now you’re ready to hold a meeting. What Pittampalli is sayinghere is that when we need to decide a course of action where the consequencesof the decision are not high, the default still seems to be to click a but- tonand take an hour out of several other people’s time to help you make yourdecision. This causes far too much disruption, and frequently, over-planning.
As the meeting organiser, cometo the meeting with at least your preliminary decision made. It may be that thedecision is controversial, in which case the alternatives can be debated in themeeting. But don’t come to a meeting not knowing in which direction you want togo, prepared to back up your thoughts.
The focus in the meeting is towards speed, conflictand coordination. We recall working with a client who we later found out hadneeded to quickly improve health and safety at work after some seriousincidents. The board meetings which had followed resulted in reams of paperthat had to be circulated, commented on (by far too many people), adjustmentsmade and so on. Before they knew it they had a 200 page document in its 4thiteration that no one had had time to read. It was only at that point that theytook a step back and questioned how they were going about making the urgentimprovements they wanted. They’d lost 3 weeks and created a window ofopportunity for more accidents. Not ideal. The Modern Meeting wouldn’t allowthis. The Modern Meeting’s focus would be make at least a preliminary decision,meet to discuss it and then coordinate what you’re going to do, with whatresource, by when. Not rocket science, but it often seems rare to find inpractice.
Rejects the unprepared.
Every meeting should require work from both theorganiser and the participants. Naturally there’s an agenda, but with a slightdifference. Pittampalli advocates agendas which:
· describes the problem, thealternatives and the (preliminary) decision
· outline the type of feedbackrequested during the meeting
· end with a statement of whatthe meeting will achieve if successful
Note: AOB (any other business) does not exist. Ifit’s not something key to the main agenda, it doesn’t belong in the meeting.
There should be pre-meeting work for participants,and if you don’t have time to do it, you don’t have time to attend the meeting.In fact, if you come to a Modern Meeting unprepared, you won’t be invited again(see principle 6). Simple as that. People being unprepared will not betolerated: if you’re unprepared, you’re dead weight. Senior executives are, Ifear to say, often top offenders here, expecting to be briefed during themeeting. The Modern Meeting won’t allow that: the decision is king, not theexecutive(s).
There should be pre-meeting work for participants,and if you don’t have time to do it, you don’t have time to attend the meeting.In fact, if you come to a Modern Meeting unprepared, you won’t be invited again. Simple as that. People being unprepared will not betolerated: if you’re unprepared, you’re dead weight. Senior executives are, Ifear to say, often top offenders here, expecting to be briefed during themeeting. The Modern Meeting won’t allow that: the decision is king, not theexecutive(s).
Produces committed action plans.
Meeting minutes are notneeded: we just need to know the decision and action plan. And if you attendone of my meetings and there’s no action plan, you have every right not toattend my next meeting.
Naturally the focus after themeeting is on following up on the agreed actions.
Some of this is quite controversial – which welike! Sometimes it takes a controversial stance to break a deadlock, a silent,creeping ‘death by meetings’ culture that everyone seems stuck in. You may findit wouldn’t all work in your organisation, but some of it might. Perhaps with atweak here and a tweak there there could be something that would work for you.
One other thing: at Netflix,meetings always end with two questions:
1. What decisions did we make inthis meeting?
2. How are we going to communicatethe decisions (with ‘to whom’ being implicit in the question)?
This can be a very usefulstrategy, and one that’s very easy to implement.
You can find Al Pittampalli’sbook on Amazon in hard copy or Kindle versions here. iI’s a quick read and very easyto digest, so comes highly recommended. And if you’d like help on makingmeetings in your organisation more
· productive
· streamlined
· enjoyable
· useful
and less
· frequent
· long
· unproductive
do get in touch for furtherideas. We have a wealth of experience working with a wide range of clients inthis domain and are always happy to help with ideas. You can get in touch viaour contact page.