Avoid Death by Meeting - Episode 10

Transcript:

Lou Quinto:
Hi. Welcome to Q and A on Breakthrough Leadership. I'm Lou Quinto.

Craig P. Anderson:
And I'm Craig Anderson.

Lou Quinto:
Today what we're going to do is we're going to talk about something that makes the hair on everybody's back stand up, and that is how to not suffer death by meetings. One of those things in every organization that, I got another meeting I got to go to. It's so-

Craig P. Anderson:
I think one of the first things I ever heard from you, Lou, was going on and on against meetings. So it is a topic near and dear to your heart.

Lou Quinto:
Yes. Well, as a consultant, that's most of the time when I'm working with people is in meetings. So I think I may experience meetings more than the average person who actually works at a location.

Lou Quinto:
So what we're going to do is talk about some basic things that, in many instances, I think, don't you people already know this, but unfortunately in real life, we may know it but we don't put it into practice. And that is written agendas, meeting rules or guidelines that we'll live by, and lastly, effective facilitation.

Lou Quinto:
So Greg, tell me about written agendas. I know that people, we say we should have an agenda. You've been in the trenches. Why don't we see them more often on a daily basis?

Craig P. Anderson:
Yeah, I've said that a lot. I don't know that I always did it. It's a tough rule to follow.

Lou Quinto:
So you broke the rule yourself.

Craig P. Anderson:
I'm just as guilty as anybody. Let's get a meeting on that. And then, do you really put together the written agenda? But I can tell you my experience is, when I did have a written agenda, things went a lot smoother. And I think written agendas are just the basic blocking and tackling on why the heck are we meeting?

Lou Quinto:
Right.

Craig P. Anderson:
Staying focused on that meeting and being able to put things that were off the table that aren't part of that agenda, but then come up. And I would add as part of the agenda is who's coming? You know?

Lou Quinto:
Sure.

Craig P. Anderson:
Are you part of this solution or are you getting invited because somebody said we should invite Lou. Let's make sure that that agenda includes a thoughtfulness in who's there.

Lou Quinto:
Right. And I don't think a lot of times we do that, think about who's going to be in the meeting. Many times, we put together a meeting, we type it out, we're going to have a meeting. And we go to that, who we're going to send out the recipients to, and we approach it almost like we're having a party. The more the merrier.

Lou Quinto:
And so, studies have shown that those groups with seven people or fewer are more effective and more productive than those with more than seven. So seven is your point of marginal diminishing returns. And so, in that particular instance, yes, who's going to be there, but once you figured out who's going to be there, having that agenda distributed in advance.

Lou Quinto:
I had the opportunity a long time ago, one of my clients, and this was an edict that came from the top down, they actually had a form that when you had a meeting they wanted to be able to maintain the efficiency of everybody. They got tired of everyone going, "Well, I've got a meeting. And then we ask people, "What are you doing in that meeting?" And they go, "Nothing gets done in the meeting."

Lou Quinto:
And so, they said, well, let's go ahead and try to learn to walk before we run, and let's come up with what they referred to as a PAL. It was a form, they put it on their computer. But it stood for purpose, agenda and time limit. And you had to put what the purpose of the meeting was. Then you had to list the agenda, what your key topics you were going to talk, who was going to talk about them. And then, what was your time limit for that meeting. And it had to be distributed at least 48 hours in advance of the meeting. Or if you got your PAL and it wasn't 48 hours in advance, you didn't have to go to the meeting.

Craig P. Anderson:
That's great.

Lou Quinto:
Now, I always questioned that, because if someone higher up on the food chain who had the authority over your position and you didn't attend their meeting, I don't think you would do that.

Craig P. Anderson:
You've got to think through the career-limiting moves, but-

Lou Quinto:
But noble attempts, noble attempts. But purpose, agenda, limit, go ahead and distribute it in advance.

Craig P. Anderson:
I think my most cinematic leadership moment was when a consultant, sorry, was ... he assembled probably 15 people from my team. And we were five minutes in and I just stood up and said, "We are not ready for this meeting. Meeting's over." And walked out. I felt like I was in a movie, but I was 100% right. I think if that happened more, we'd probably have a lot fewer meetings and a lot more relevant ones.

Lou Quinto:
Sure.

Craig P. Anderson:
So. Well let's talk about meeting rules to live by, Lou. Rules feel constrictive, but why should we have rules around meetings?

Lou Quinto:
Yeah, well, rules like everything else, and I think I've said this plenty of times, but success has to be planned and once you're there you have to have the guidelines and the rules to follow. And yeah, there are the simple rules, we've all heard them before. Make one person talk at a time. No killer statements. Make sure you have time limits. You appoint a time keeper. Make sure that you have a facilitator. Make sure that you have a client in the room that is responsible for the problem. Make sure that you've got your information readily available. Those are some of the basic rules of meetings and I think we talk about them a lot. And again, we know that we should be doing it, but we don't do it.

Craig P. Anderson:
Oh, yeah. And I think there's an opportunity to take those to the next level too. I always like to think of terms in, in my business, around culture and engagement, mission and values. And do your meeting rules focus on those and do they represent them? One of my favorite meeting rules we had at my last company was respectful cursing. And we can get into what respectful cursing is, but do you allow that in your meetings or is that off the okay list?

Craig P. Anderson:
How do you handle when you leave the meeting? If you're a leadership team and you've gone through maybe a controversial topic, and maybe you're at 80% agreement, but we had a rule that said when we walk out of this room, even if you were part of that 20%, we're a hundred percent agreement, because we have to present ourselves as a united front to the team.

Craig P. Anderson:
And so, I think there's other next level rules to think about that are saying, the how of meaning and that tie into who you as a company.

Lou Quinto:
Yeah. And that's great in that situation, I think a lot of companies would be happy if they just started with the basic rules that you read about in how-to books and things like that, and make them part of your meeting. In fact, when it comes to an agenda, I always tell people, if you attend a meeting without an agenda, ask, "Can we get an agenda?" And chances are that person, even if they take two minutes and on a flip chart or on a whiteboard, they write down the topics that need to be covered to meet the objective, you've got an agenda in the meeting. So it's little things like that that help with it.

Lou Quinto:
So effective facilitation. Once you get your people in the room, there's got to be a facilitator. There's got to be someone who's going to put the mortar between the bricks. What have you found?

Craig P. Anderson:
Well, I think, a big challenge is usually, especially if you're doing, depends a lot on the meetings ... If it's a small meeting, internal, who is facilitating? And make that decision, who's running the meeting and when. And I think sometimes if you're doing bigger topics or emotional topics or long-term planning or different things like that, it may make sense to bring in someone who's not emotionally engaged in the business and actually can help you do that basic blocking and tackling of staying on time, staying on focus and putting things off to the side that aren't relevant to that topic. And take the emotion out of it. That's also a way to help with facilitation. I don't know. What are the rules you give to your clients?

Lou Quinto:
Well, particularly in coaching executives is, a lot of times if an executive, you called the meeting because it's your problem, it's your decision that you need to make. I always tell people, you shouldn't be the person in the front of the room with the marker, standing in front of the group, watching the agenda, watching the time and everything. Because if it's your problem, whether we like it or not, you're biased about what solution or what decision needs to be made.

Lou Quinto:
And chances are, if you're doing the facilitation, you're going to only capture that information that you already agree with. Where if you were to sit in the meeting as a client and let the group do their work with a facilitator who's not attached to the situation, or maybe doesn't have any prejudices or biases, you'll find that as you're listening, you're going to hear more about your problem and learn more about your problem or the situation than you would have if you were standing in front of the room juggling all the balls and trying to be a facilitator.

Lou Quinto:
And so in many instances, I tell people, don't be the person in the front of the room with the marker if it's your problem. You've invited these people to help you solve your problem. You want what their perspective is. But if you're in the front of the room, you're only going to hear what you want to hear because it coincides or supports what you believe the final answer should be. Where if you're sitting down, that can't happen. So you're eliminating that part that could be detrimental to your problem solving.

Craig P. Anderson:
Are there pieces in that though, where the leader, if they're in the audience, people want to be deferential to the leader? What should they do about that?

Lou Quinto:
Well, in that particular instance, if you really want people's ... I always say, introduce the meeting and then get your butt out of the meeting, because you can apply a peer pressure. Even if you don't say anything, you're sitting in that meeting. You can apply peer pressure just by being in that meeting that people may give input to the problem or the decision based on what they think you want to hear, or how you want the problem to be solved. And then, come in at the end of the meeting, for the last 15 minutes and get a recap and update. This way, you let people discuss the problem and you avoid that situation of biasing the group. So.

Craig P. Anderson:
That's fair.

Lou Quinto:
Yeah.

Craig P. Anderson:
Great.

Lou Quinto:
Okay. So key takeaways for today. Don't have any more meetings.

Craig P. Anderson:
Kill all meetings?

Lou Quinto:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, Meetings, it's one of those things that in an organization, they're needed, but they're hated at the same time. We hate to go to another meeting. However, instead of complaining about the meeting, there are things you can do, whether you're the leader of a team or whether you're just a participant in the passenger seat in the meeting, that you can do to make sure that the meeting is incorporating some solid foundation, some rules to make sure it's effective and it's productive.

Lou Quinto:
So if you're starting at nine o'clock, start at nine o'clock. If you end at 10 o'clock, end at 10 o'clock. People will know that when you say an hour, they know you mean an hour. So some of those rules are important and if they're not in your organization, you need to make sure that they're there.

Craig P. Anderson:
Yeah. I think something else is, I always used to, on the back of a napkin, figure out how much a meeting cost. I was part of an organization where we made sure everybody who even remotely needed to be there was there, because no one wanted to hurt feelings. And you look around that table and calculate up the cost of that hour or two hour meeting and it was astonishing.

Craig P. Anderson:
So I think a big piece is, a lot of way you said, but also getting the right people at the table and really having those rules of, what is it we're trying to achieve here and let's stay focused on what that's for. I think people would hate meetings a lot less if they were a lot more effective. Because they are necessary, but I think we could run them a lot better. And that's how you start going to the next level of leadership.

Lou Quinto:
Yeah. Yeah. Without question. Okay. Well, we hope you've enjoyed our episode on meetings at Q and A on Breakthrough Leadership. I'm Lou Quinto.

Craig P. Anderson:
And I'm Craig Anderson.

Lou Quinto:
If you like this particular video, go ahead and click on the like button down at the bottom, subscribe, and in the future, you'll know when a video is going to be coming out. So have a great day.