DEATH BY MEETING
Keep your meetings energized, the ideas flowing and the BlackBerrys out—or risk the deadly consequences.
Leader's Edge Magazine - July / August 2006
Author: Robert J. Lieblein
Fast Focus
- Effective meetings are concise, meaningful and draw passion from participants.
- Drop the preplanned agenda, and focus on problems and solutions.
It’s 9:15 a.m., and the doughnuts are distributed around the conference table. A few chairs rock back rhythmically. Fingers drum on the tabletop. Anticipation hangs in the air: will this strategic planning meeting be energizing or mind-numbing? All eyes swivel to the head of the table, where you sit. Alone.
Yep, it’s lonely at the end, which is another, less flattering, word for the top. Down there at the narrow end of the table, it’s up to you to get your people involved, to stop fiddling with the sprinkles on top of their doughnuts and get engaged.
Surveys have shown that the No. 1 motivator of employees is not what you think it would be: money. Motivation may come from a host of things: status, competition, empowerment, job security, praise, perfectionism. Sure, mortgage payments will be in there for some, but it could be that only one out of six of you around the conference table is motivated by that. How do you make your next meeting a useful, motivational experience for yourself and your staff?
The problem of successful meetings grows exponentially along with the size of the firm. Getting big also often means meetings will become less efficient, more frequent and more routine. And they will result in less action. Conference rooms can become the bastions of the way-we’ve-always-done-it crowd. And that’s hardly the atmosphere that will enable your strategic initiatives to surge forward.
Pointless meetings and effective meetings, which can happen at any level throughout the organization, each have their own identifiable set of traits. Lethargic versus animated. Unfocused versus analytical. Close-minded versus idea-generating. Passionless versus controversial. Which set of adjectives describes how you want your staff and managers to act? If you’re true to the entrepreneurial nature of our best agency innovators, it’s the latter ones, hands down. I’ll take a debate instead of a yes-vote every time.
The BlackBerry Clue
Before starting WFG Capital Advisors a decade ago, I worked in public accounting. In my 13 years at the accounting firm, I participated in hundreds of meetings, perhaps thousands, and I attended countless more. (Please note the difference.) With WFG clients and business development, the meeting cycle continues unabated, day in and day out, on strategic planning, M&A, business analysis, you name it. Over and over, I’ve seen the same problems crop up. Let me outline some.
Boring by nature. Some meetings just have no hope of being engaging. They are tedious, going-through-the-motions affairs, never a forum for open-ended discussion. Humorless. In this type of meeting, you’ll see more people looking at their BlackBerrys than at the speaker. Call this the first clue that you are not running a successful meeting.
(My observations of meetings run by insurance agency executives and managers lead me to firmly believe that in more than 75% of all meetings, including the so-called critical strategic planning meetings, people are more concerned about their BlackBerrys than the meeting. Note to executives: Ban BlackBerrys at meetings!)
No contribution. At an ineffective meeting, it is nearly always obvious that this is not going to contribute to the success of the agency. Again, it is often an exercise in repetitive motion. Any physical therapist will tell you the results of that malady: you get a pain in the *&%(.
Predictable. No clock has ever moved more slowly than the one presiding over a reading of the minutes from the last meeting. Where is the drama? Apologists will say that we can’t move into the future without a clear view of where we’ve been. I say, get the historians out of my way. In the immortal words of the late rocker Warren Zevon, I’ll sleep when I’m dead. Anyone who needs a reminder of past actions isn’t paying attention.
No there there. Many meetings operate off an agenda that sprang from (and often only exists in) the mind of the head honcho. The structure is not clear to participants, and it’s not interactive. It’s like Gertrude Stein’s famous line about her childhood home of Oakland: when you get there, there’s no there there. (Apologies. It is no longer true.) But if a meeting does not have a clearly defined destination, and a road map with signposts to help people navigate, the travelers will be sorely confused, possibly demoralized and very likely disengaged. Participants need help figuring out whether they’re supposed to be debating, brainstorming, weighing in, voting or just listening. Too often, appropriate topics and expected actions are not organized, printed and brought to the attention of participants.
Incite Intentional Action
For meetings to have purpose, they must be concise, meaningful and draw passion out of everyone around the table. Here are three key steps to making a meeting more effective.
Define the purpose. Each meeting should have an agenda but not a written, preplanned agenda. What goes on that agenda can definitely help you engage everyone in attendance. Instead of boilerplate items that are cut-and-pasted from one agenda to the next, refer only to the unique items to be discussed. Instead of “review sales figures,” make the financial review more targeted, such as “why we’re down 8% in the auto market.” You’ll still make mention of the overall figures, but you’re signaling to staff that you specifically want to debate a problem. Maybe they think you have the answer to that “why,” or maybe they think they know the answer. Either way, you’ll get engagement.
The end justifies the length. No successful meeting was ever too short or too long. If the meeting was defined by the clock, odds are it was not entirely effective. The length of the meeting is dependent on the purpose. In general, the more concerned you are about the issue, the more time you should devote to the meeting. If you just want to quell untrue rumors of a merger, five minutes will do. If you need to lay out the new compensation strategy that will affect paychecks up and down the ladder, take as much time as the staff needs, and make sure you’re in listening mode.
Provoke input. Leaders must look for a way that each meeting can uncover relevant, constructive conflict. Such engagement leads to passion and will fuel future successful meetings. How do you do this? Plan ahead. Don’t go into the meeting with just a three-item agenda or three words to scribble on the white board. Dig down into the problems that you’re trying to solve or the tasks that you’ll be doling out to the staff. Prepare questions for discussion or potential courses of action that you’ll lay open for debate. Send out pre-meeting assignments to key staffers and bounce around the room getting one-minute reports from them. Make it clear that you reward creative input and unconventional contributions. When you get it, make sure it is accurately recorded for future action.
Meeting Strategies
Meetings are like spouses. Each one has different needs based on their personalities. Some have Tiffany-level tastes, while others are happy with take-out and a single-stemmed rose. Make sure that you’re paying attention to meetings as you would a significant other, by giving them what they need—and nothing more. (Actually, that last part might not be good advice for relationships, but you get my point.) What I’m trying to say is, don’t lavish time and energy on a situation that requires only a quick review.
I have seen many types and forms of effective meetings. No one format is perfect for everybody, but in the MUST READ book by Patrick Lencioni, Death by Meetings, the author outlines four types of meetings that I believe are the framework to turn your meetings into a positive experience for the participants and actually bring results to an organization.
Check-in
Frequency: Daily
Suggested length: 5–15 minutes
Whether you gather just your executive team or include others throughout the management structure, a daily get-together each morning can keep everyone on the same page as the day proceeds. Quick reports will ensure that nothing important falls through the cracks and that collaboration is taking place where appropriate. Lencioni suggests that for these meetings, nobody even sits down. I like that idea!
Tactical
Frequency: Weekly
Suggested length: 1–2 hours
If you’re executing a vibrant strategic plan, you’ll need to regularly discuss the immediate tactical needs that will move your plan forward. This is essentially a follow-up meeting to ensure that assignments are being carried out and projects are on track. Action items include answering the question “why not?” if, for example, the work is not on schedule. If possible, decide on the spot how to overcome the challenges that prevented effective actions from taking place.
These meetings should not be addressing strategic issues, only the tactical issues critical for that week. Lencioni suggests that, since issues discussed will vary every week, there should be no preplanned, written agenda. The agenda should be set at the meeting based on the tactical issues that need to be discussed.
Strategic
Frequency: Monthly
Suggested length: 2–4 hours
You knew I’d get back to the strategic planning, didn’t you? Well, these are the 12 most important meetings of the year. Most firms spend less than an hour a month discussing strategic issues. You can vault above the crowd just by holding this important analytical meeting. Each month, get all your key executives and employees together to review the relative success of your plan.
Decide on the critical strategic issues that will have an impact on the business, both now and in the future. These might be internal or external concerns or both. You need to chart your progress, compare against your vision and adjust as necessary. Many firms fall off the wagon of their strategic plan because they let the business stray too far from the course set by management. Too long between meetings and you’ll have a hard time getting back on track. The key to having a successful strategic meeting is not putting everything on the agenda. Each month, tackle only two or three crucial items, come prepared with up-to-date information about each one, then dig into possible ways to increase performance.
Off-Site Review
Frequency: Quarterly
Suggested Length: 1-3 days
As much as you’d like to just be able to put your head down and move forward every day, it’s simply not possible to expect to do that with the array of meetings outlined above. Every so often, you must step back, get away from the office hubbub, and take a more objective view of what you’re doing. At this meeting, your strategy is put under the microscope, but you also review industry trends, external forces influencing your success, any people issues you might have, and all other major factors that affect your ability to achieve your goals and objectives. The length of the meeting is dependent upon agency size and complexity. To be truly effective, consider employing a professional facilitator to keep the meeting on track.
Building on your success will never be easy. If your firm excels in short-term execution, try to improve on long-term goal setting. If you’re really good at seeing the big picture, work on the ability to identify all the trees in the forest and what might be behind each one. If you’re not really good at any of these things and are just keeping afloat through mergers and grueling tail-chasing, immediately drop the phone back into its cradle and spend some time planning and scheduling these suggested meetings.
A thriving agency is often one that has learned how to effectively utilize its time and talent to conduct successful meetings. You can expect and demand that those meetings will add value to the organization. The greatest impact will be seen in the ability to implement and continually propel forward the firm’s strategic plan. The future of your agency lies not just in the vision, nor is the devil lurking only among the details. It’s the grand combination of planning and execution that will get you there, and you can be sure that recipe is cooking only through regular, appropriate, expertly planned meetings.
Lieblein is a contributing writer and managing principal of WFG Capital Advisors. rlieblein@wfgca.com |
