Death by Meeting*

August 21, 2009 by janet · Leave a Comment 

strategiesIf your management team suffers from boring, tedious, and unproductive meetings, here is a solution.  Patrick Lencioni’s book, Death by Meeting proposes a better structure and context for meetings:  Stop throwing every topic needing discussion into 1 meeting (meeting stew) and instead, create 4 different meetings – each with its own important purpose and function.

 

  1. Quarterly comprehensive strategy – the opportunity to step away from the daily and weekly issues that tend to occupy most of our attention and take a holistic view of the business
  2. Monthly strategic – the time to review ‘parking lot’ items that have come up in weekly tactical meetings and wrestle with and decide on the critical issues.
  3. Weekly tactical – resolve issues, remove obstacles, and ensure everyone is on the same page
  4. Daily check in – wait…don’t panic!  This is only 5 minutes per day and it will save you heaps on time in the rest of your day because you will coordinate schedules and cut down on email chains

I actually had the opportunity to implement this in my own organisation once, and I can say…it really worked.  Some people will object with ‘it’s too many meetings’.  But, as Lencioni points out, if you add up the hours your management team spends leaving voice mail, roaming the halls to clarify issues, and the lag time of staff waiting for clarity, the methodology suddenly doesn’t seem quite as overwhelming.  Doing meetings right is about getting it right the first time so everyone can get on with the business at hand. 

Tips for success:training

  1. Daily:  don’t sit down, keep it administrative, hold it daily, regardless of travel schedules
  2. Weekly:  don’t set an agenda.  Start with a lightning round where each manager gives an update and shares key metrics for 60 seconds.  Let the group set the agenda after the lightning round, based on what is most important.  Postpone strategic discussions until the monthly meeting
  3. Monthly strategic:  Discuss, deal with and decide critical issues impacting long term success.  Do research prior and engage in ‘good conflict’
  4. Quarterly off-site:  Don’t overstructure, but don’t turn it into a boondoogle either.  Consider using an outside facilitator

The book is written as a management fable, which sometimes feels a bit insulting to the intelligence.  But, it’s worth persevering.   We all know how frustrating and time-consuming un-productive meetings can be.  I can speak from personal experience – this is a powerful tool that can make a huge difference to productivity and job satisfaction.  Need help?  Give me a call.

*Lencioni, P. (2004).  Death by meeting.  San Francisco, CA:  Jossey-Bass.

Filed under: Business, Strategic Planning
Tagged:

Book Review: Immunity to Change*

August 7, 2009 by janet · 1 Comment 

A must read for anyone involved in organisational change.  This is the changemissing link…the interplay between the people and the organisation and how both can achieve the changes they desire.   Why will you love this book?

  • It’s positive – we learn about the ‘brilliant immune system’ we create which, in turn, creates behaviours that prevent us from changing
  • It’s approachable – Kegan and Lahey take some very complicated concepts on adult development and human complexity and distil them down in a way we can use, understand, and apply them
  • It’s based on research  – literally a life’s work of 2 Harvard professors
  • It’s about people and organisations:  One of the few books on change that addresses the inter-play between individual and collective mindsets

Summary

The reason why organisations fail to make intended changes is not a lack of motivation or desire, but of the hidden conflicting commitments carried in thier goals – their collective immunity to change.  Kegan and Lahey describe this as ’one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake’.  Take, for example, the school that set a goal of higher academic achievement for its students, yet uncovered that the administrators felt protective of demanding too much from their students.  Or the professional services firm that set a goal to create a culture of mutual trust and respect, but also a strong desire in the members for independence and entrepreneurship.  Until these conflicts are uncovered and understood, organisations simply cannot make the changes they desire.

And once these conflicts are understood, the organisation must learn to how change the way it learns.  Remember that old saying ‘we can’t solve problems using the same thinking we used to create them’?  Kegan and Lahey point out that we need to learn how to learn beyond our existing mindsets.’   Rather than focusing simply on developing skills (technical learning), we must focus on genuine development of human capacity to learn and grow (adaptive learning).   Adaptive learning requires both head and heart.

Sound hard?  Well, it is…and it isn’t.  It does not happen overnight.  It takes time.  Not so much huge amounts of time, but patience to allow change to occur.  And then it takes courage – collective courage of an entire leadership team to take personal risk.  One business leader is quoted in the book:

“Whatever you tell leaders, tell them this:  the courage to make these kinds of changes is energizing and contagious.  I saw people inside and outside my senior team go from ‘this is too personal’ to ‘I want to do this too!’”

So are businesses ready for this kind of transformation?  Our collective corporate language about ‘growth’ has traditionally been about numbers, not about the people behind the numbers.  But if Kegan and Lahey are right, growth in one cannot be achieved without growth in the other and it might just be time to look beyond the spreadsheets. 

Handspring teaches leaders about Immunity to Change in our training called ‘One foot on the gas and one foot on the break’.  Read more about that here:  http://www.handspring.com.au/for-individuals/speaking-and-training-module/

*Kegan, R. & Lahey,L.L. (2009).  Immunity to Change.  Boston, Massachusetts:  Harvard Business Press

Filed under: Uncategorized
Tagged: