Leadership: Meetings – A necessary Evil?
Meetings – we all have to live with the idea of attending meetings during our careers. It starts at a very early stage in our careers, when we attend staff meetings, production meetings, etc. The further we progress through the ranks, the higher our position, the more meetings we have to attend. But why are there so many meetings, and more importantly, are they actually always necessary? Are they always productive?
According to anthropologist Helen Schwartzman, meetings in the organization have a “sense-making” purpose. The meetings make the organization visible to its members, as well as making the members aware of their purposes and actions, and their relationships to other members.
In companies we have many different types of meetings. Each has its own purpose:
- Board meetings
- Management meetings
- Staff meetings
- Team meetings
- Etc
The question is: Is it possible that meetings can be counter productive? If many authors are to be believed, they can indeed be counterproductive and a waste of time. Philip Crosby, in his book “Quality without Tears”, states that meetings can be very demotivational if not handled correctly. And they are not often deliberately handled incorrectly. It is mostly organizational and meeting culture that causes the problems and the manager is not even aware of what is actually happening. There are certain aspects of meeting behaviour that often applies to most meetings:
There are a constant number of speakers in any meeting, which does not change with the size of the meeting. A few people dominate the meeting. One is trying to find out what is going on, and the others work either for or against it. Crosby quotes an older executive who stated: “Staff meetings are the same everywhere. The boss talks about what he wants to talk about for as long as he wants to talk about it, and then the meeting is over”. It does not sound very productive.
This is hardly motivating when one has to attend a meeting where your predetermined role is that of a faithful listener.
The problem lies in the fact that the higher up in the organization a person is, the less information that person possess about specific subjects. Senior executives have to cover a broad area of activities. It is not possible for them to know them all intimately. This fact does not stop senior managers from having an opinion or desires about everything. They (sometimes unconsciously) lead conversations towards what they want. Those who really know what needs to be done sit squirming in their seats. If someone does point this out to the senior, the reply often is that everybody has the opportunity to speak. In fact, they are all invited to speak and take part in the conversation.
In reality, the 80/20 principle applies in meetings as well. 80% of the talking is done by 20% of the attendees. And it is predestined who the 20% are. The 80% may sometimes intrude and their comments will be welcomed (that is a really good point John!), but after about the 3rd try they realize that they are actually wasting their time. They get the message that 20% is 20%. No wonder so many people simply hates going to meetings, and regard them as a total waste of time.
Looking at what Crosby says about meetings in general makes us realize that meetings may not only be counter productive (the senior members always get their way), but also very demotivating for the others. The junior members dare not step out of line. I once made a snide remark (I was still very young!) directed at the senior manager (who also facilitated the meeting), and the next thing I was required to attend a course on how meetings work and how one should behave in a meeting! By the way, it was a 3 day course!
So, according to Crosby, the meeting is often just a mechanism for the senior members to tell others what is going to happen. Obviously, he does not condone meetings like that, and meetings should be done in such a way that it will actually benefit the organization, giving everybody a chance to give positive inputs and be part of actual, positive discussions.
How do we then improve our meetings to make them more productive? Patrick Lencioni, a well known leadership consultant and motivational speaker, once said that there is nothing more annoying than a meeting that goes on and on – except one that goes on and on and achieves nothing. He feels that organizations need to move from painful, ineffective meetings to energetic, productive meetings by changing the context, purpose and timing of meetings.
The reason Lencioni said this is that the typical approach to a meeting is to have a regular scheduled time in which members of the meeting cover a wide range of topics – from strategy to policy to scheduling to personnel, and everything in between. We discuss all these topics because they are all important, and that is the problem. Which is the most important? They all are! Because of this fact, the answer lies in shorter, focused meetings, each with it own purpose. People attending the meeting can then focus on what is important in that meeting, and the right people are invited to the meeting – the ones with the right information.
Lencioni advocates that we have 4 types of meetings in our organizations:
The daily check-in: Team members get together, standing up, for about 5 minutes every morning to report on their activities for the day. The purpose is to help team members avoid confusion about how priorities are translated into action on a regular basis. This applies to any department in the organization (think about Green Area meetings, etc). Often no minutes are kept for these meetings – don’t let an auditor tell you that if you cannot show the minutes, it did not happen!
The weekly tactical meeting: This meeting lasts between 45 and 90 minutes. It focuses exclusively on tactical issues of immediate concern. Elements include a “Lightning Round” where everyone indicates 2 or 3 priorities of the week, progress review which includes routine reporting of critical information or metrics, and a “Real Time” agenda, about 15 minutes into the meeting, based on what everyone is actually working on. The purpose is resolution of issues and reinforcement of clarity.
The monthly strategic meeting: In this meeting members wrestle with, analyze, debate, and decide on critical issues (careful that there are not too many of these issues!). The purpose of the meeting is for team members to dive into a given topic or two without the distraction of deadlines and tactical concerns. The effect of COVID 19 on the organization would have first been discussed in such a meeting (although in this case an emergency meeting may have been called, because the issue directly affects strategy).
The quarterly off-site review: Effective off-site reviews provide senior leaders with the opportunity to step away from the daily, weekly and monthly issues in order to review the organization in a long-term manner. Elements of the meeting include a comprehensive strategy review, team review, personnel review, and trend review.
The above was taken from Patrick Lencioni’s book “Death by Meeting”
Obviously organizations can change the frequencies, etc, to what suits them best. But what is important is how conversations in these meetings take place.
Consider the following two scenarios:
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Scenario 1 Sales Manager: John our sales are down for the 3rd month in a row. It has been down by an average of 4% per month. CEO: Nick that is not good news. I want you to look into what is causing this downward trend. Maybe you should look at the performance of your sales personnel. Look in particular at Sandra, the new sales rep that you have appointed 4 months ago when Paul retired. |
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Scenario 2 Sales Manager: John or sales is down for the 3rd month in a row. It has dropped by 5% in February, 3.3% in March and 4.3% in April. I have investigated the problem and our retail outlets said that they are receiving our product later than the product from competing suppliers. Their customers then buy what is available on the shelf, even if it is not the exact product that they wanted. The feedback was always that our product in general sold more units than competing products. I had a meeting with operations and the transportation manager. Production has product available for delivery, but the transport manager says that he has a shortage of delivery vehicles due to technical problems. He has arranged to rent 2 extra trucks from rental company to try to make up for the time that we loose because we do not have enough vehicles for delivery. CEO: That sounds good Nick. Will you keep me posted on the progress and the outcome? |
These 2 meetings sound very different from each other. In the 1st example the CEO was making a decision based on his assumptions. In the 2nd meeting the sales manager took the initiative, because he had access to the right information and made a decision with his colleagues. (This makes us think of Capt. David Marquet’s Intent Based Leadership, where the principle to move the authority to where the information is, is applied). The CEO acted on his own perceptions and assumptions in the 1st scenario, which was incorrect. It would have caused a huge delay and potentially damage to egos, demotivation, etc, may also have resulted.
Think about how you and your organization can make your meetings more productive and motivating. Don’t let meetings become counter productive time wasters. I remember very well what made me feel very negative whenever I was required to attend a meeting!
Please feel free to leave comments or to e-mail me at koosgouws10@gmail.com for more information or assistance. Also visit our website at www.sheqmanagementsystem.co.za.
Regards
Koos
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