February 2010
Friends,
Continuing with
theme-based newsletters, this one takes a look at the second
worst productivity killer organizations experience, second
only to numero uno, Information
Overload.
If you work for a large organization you know
what I’m talking about. Read on for some ideas and
observations from my long career in that
space!
Cheers,
This issue’s theme: (In) effective
Meetings
Meetings are one of the most
prevalent activities in most any enterprise – managers
(and many others) in the corporate world spend around half
their time in them. And in a perfect world that would be cool,
since a meeting allows people to put their heads together,
brainstorm, and solve problems. What could be
better?
Unfortunately, ours is an imperfect world, and
meetings are more often than not a waste of time and a cause
of demoralization to all attendees. In a survey held by
Microsoft among 38,000 employees, 69% of them rated meetings
as ineffective. The amount of waste implied is
staggering.
Part of the issue is that people may not
think of meetings as expensive. Andy Grove, Intel’s legendary
founder, once noted that to buy a $5000 photocopier you must
run a gauntlet of approvals, but to call a meeting of a dozen
managers, whose time costs far more, you need none. That was
in the seventies; today, with email based calendaring, it’s
even easier. In fact, as I discuss below, email has a tight
link to ineffective meetings.
What YOU can do about it
Actionable Tip
If you want to restore
productivity (and some joy) to your meetings, you must make
sure the meeting chairperson is on board: I’ve known some who
prefer the status quo, since they want to process email
themselves, and darn the cost to the meeting’s success. If you
have the chair with you (or if you’re the chair yourself) you
should start by involving the attendees, especially if it’s a
recurring team meeting. Survey them: do they find your
meetings effective? Why/why not? What would they change? Then
hold a discussion to review the survey results and brainstorm
what to do next.
There’s a lot to effective meetings
improvement – I was involved in some efforts in this space at
Intel and am available to consult on the culture change
process needed – but one obvious thing you can do right away
is to ban blackberries and notebooks in the meeting – few
managers have the guts to do this, but it can work wonders. At
least one very
senior manager did it - so can you.
Food for Thought
What I tell my
clients is that we should aim to make meetings into foci of
creative energy and exuberant innovation, through a meeting
culture that empowers attendees to generate insight and create
value for the organization! Think about this for a moment:
would any employee in your group call today’s meetings
empowering? Do they look forward to them eagerly? Do
you? If not, you’re missing out on a huge value opportunity.
Think about it.
Analysis and Opinion
Meeting effectiveness was a concern
even in pre-computer days, but in this day and age they are
much worse than even 10 years ago, because of the ubiquity of
notebooks and handheld devices. The key issue in today’s
meetings is that all attendees typically process email on
their notebooks and Blackberries. Everybody stares at their
screens with that glassy look in their eyes... The promise of
true group creativity can’t hope to compete with the
allure of the Inbox. Many meetings were already unproductive
before email arrived, but the new technology has really dealt
them a deadly blow.
As a friend in hi-tech told me, a
few years ago at least the manager who needs to make the
decision at the end of the presentation would be listening to
the presenter; today, even this manager is wrestling with
their email flood. This situation is totally unacceptable:
with meetings being a primary vehicle of management, to have
people sit through them in a daze is deeply wrong. One more
reason to fight email overload, a mission I’ve devoted myself
to. A mission you should undertake too!
Solutions and
Resources
There are many books out there about
meeting management, and one which deserves mention –
if only because of its wonderful name – is
the book “Death by Meeting” by Patrick Lencioni.
If
you’re feeling like trying some leading edge stuff, take a
look at Quindi’s meeting
companion. This innovative product from a Silicon Valley
start-up captures your entire meeting – video, audio, slides,
screenshots, comments – and allows smart replay. It makes
written minutes look like history...
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to blog feed Snapshots of IngenuityGM
crops are hardly in my field of expertise, but one of them has
earned my admiration: the salt-extracting tomato
devised by UC Davis and the Univ. of Toronto. Soil
salinity is a growing issue in a world where more mouths need
to be fed even as soil quality deteriorates. And this new
plant not only tolerates prohibitively high levels of salt in
the soil, but it also extracts that salt and collects it in
its leaves. This means you can grow edible, normal
tasting tomatoes in high salinity soils that normally can’t
yield food, and by disposing of the leaves you also remove the
salt and thus improve the soil for future years. What
will they think of (and deliver) next?!
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