Smart Meetings

Dan Bobinski, in this article on more productive meetings, gives some good advice on keeping meetings tightly focussed. In this case, it’s about strategy meetings and how they should not fuzz into tactics.

He goes on to discuss the importance of good preparation, good wrap up, good follow up and how this is not rocket science: “…the genius is in its simplicity”

Exactly!

High performance teams, sporting and otherwise, always stress the importance of getting the basics right. All those one-percenters add up to being really good at what you do.

As a meeting manager, it adds up to productive events and happy participants. What more could you ask for?

Here’s another excerpt from Chip Scanlan’s article on Tools of the Trade: The Question.

Unfortunately, in all too many cases, interviews have become the street theater of news with both sides tacitly accepting their role. The reporter asks questions that may sound tough but provide subjects a variety of exit ramps while the subject pretends that they are responding when in fact they are using the dull question as a launching pad for their own agenda and rhetoric. The biggest loser in these kinds of exchanges, of course, is the public.

This reminds me of those battles where people spend so much time and effort arguing about the ideologically correct process that nothing actually gets done. Taking a hard line is really a soft option. It’s a way of avoiding the real situation and changing nothing.

This happenes when people drive own agenda in a collaborative situation. They are stuck in the “I” and will not, or cannot, move to the “We”.

John R Brandt had an interesting article a while ago in IndustryWeek self titled Brandt On Leadership — How To Run An Effective Meeting in which he says:

Every meeting should reinforce the idea that nothing of importance can happen without you.

In the article he offers some tips about agendas, background materials, process and follow-up for new managers in their first big meeting.

It’s a very interesting take, and sounds like reverse psychology to me.

At least, I hope it’s tongue in cheek…

Carmine Gallo has an article in Business Review Weekly on How to Run a Meeting Like Google. Gallo interviewed Marissa Mayer (Google’s vice-president of search products) about her approach.

In a shop like Google, much of the work takes place in meetings, and [Mayer’s] goal is to make sure teams have a firm mandate, strategic direction and actionable information, while making participants feel motivated and respected. Mayer’s six keys to running successful meetings follow:

1. Set a firm agenda.
2. Assign a note-taker.
3. Carve out micro-meetings.
4. Hold office hours.
5. Discourage politics, use data.
6. Stick to the clock.

These are good general principles, and offer value to any meeting manager. Their application to the Google context is described in the rest of the article.

Setting an agenda is congruent with designing the overall flow of any meeting event. Assigning a note taker ensures there will be one set of notes that participants can refer to. Carving out micro meetings allows for details within the overall flow. Holding office hours enables the meeting manager to stay in touch with the organisation. Using data first tends to prevent participants from climbing the ladder of inference without a solid basis. Sticking to the clock helps people stay focussed and on track.

As with any principles, they can be used poorly. As used by Mayer at Google, they provide a firm structure within which creativity and innovation can flourish.

Chip Scanlan, writing in Poynter Online [Everything you need to be a better journalist…], has an article on Tools of the Trade: The Question.

Like journalists, facilitative leaders are interested in the gentle art of questioning. The quality of your questions has a critical impact on the quality of what you can achieve.

Scanlan’s article contains some effective exhibits of questions that don’t & do work. In each case, he teases out why they fail or succeed.

One indicator he gives is the ratio of question length to answer length. In one case the query, at 107 words, was longer than the 82-word answer. Conversely his Exhibit 3 illustrated:

…how a short question (27 words) invites and provokes a much longer (212 word) response. But it’s not just quantity; after all, some politicians and bureaucrats go on as if they were paid the word. Here the result is an answer that provides a nuanced, complete response that would help the reporter understand — and more effectively communicate to the public…

Finally, Scanlan ends with A Prescription for Healthier Questions which also works for the facilitative leader. Tips include :

• Whenever possible, prepare questions in advance.

• Ask open-ended questions. Questions that start with how, why, or what, or encourage a subject to describe, explain, and amplify have a better chance to provoke complete responses.

• One at a time please.

• Let the questions do the work.

The folks at the Achieving Styles Institute have an interesting take on the ways individuals get things done. This is bundled into their Connective Leadership model.

Connective Leadership offers an important perspective for bringing together diverse, even conflicting, groups that exist in an interdependent environment. Achieving Styles are the nine underlying behavioral strategies that individuals characteristically call upon to achieve their goals.

The Connective Leadership/Achieving Styles Model includes three sets of Achieving Styles: Direct, Instrumental, and Relational. Each set comprises three individual styles, resulting in a nine-fold repertoire.

I reckon leaders who need to get the most out of the groups they are working with could harness this repertoire of individual styles in several ways. Firstly, it would give good background on where people are coming from and therefore help everyone to understand their colleagues better.

Secondly, it would help when team assignments are being determined. Knowing individual propensities would both make for more transparent decisions and deliver a better connection between how group members get things done, and the doing that’s required.

Finally, it could provide some training and development indicators around individual strengths (to build or capitalise on) and weaknesses (to be addressed in a variety of ways).

Here’s a post by Merlin Mann at 43 Folders on interviewing with “The Sawatsky Method”.

This is interesting for a couple of reasons. Firstly because Merlin Mann is one of the blogosphere’s leading lights on ‘productivity’. This is generally, but not exclusively, focussed on individuals, their technology and their lives.

So in this vein, the post leads on to some pointers about how to get more out of interviews per se.

Secondly, Mann contrasts the Sawatsky method with the “confrontational attack dog methods most of us associate with people like Mike Wallace”. I would also contrast it with the ‘forensic’ approach used by many managers and others in leadership positions.

Good questions are critical in designing and running focussed discussions, workshops and other events. If you harass people, or just interrogate them, you often fail to get to the heart of the matter you’re interested in.

Additionally, you forgo all opportunity to build or enhance something more enduring than a quick ‘win’.

One of my colleagues at the International Association of Facilitators list-serv posted this link to a talk by James Suroweicki at this year’s South by SouthWest festival.

It’s pretty good for the “WordSmart” among us. That is, those of you who do well in what Howard Gardner calls verbal-linguistic intelligence.

Poking around the South by SouthWest site, I also found this video trailer.

Here’s another gem from David Tranter’s book Nature & Society:

Communities are not stamp collections, a name for things that are found together, they are the result of countless interactions between one species and another, interactions which generate laws that govern their collective lives.

Some people assert that groups do not create things per se: really it is just the set of individuals. I disagree completely.

In a workshop situation, for example, yes it’s the individuals who articulate the ideas. And yes, it’s the individuals who work with those ideas: clarifying, questioning, generating new ideas in response.

But here’s the thing: all that work happens in a common language (or two, or three). It happens because those individuals have come together for a common purpose.

We all want to get more bang for our buck, value for money, return on our investment. The time, effort and resources we put into working with others is no different.

There are several ways effective process design can lead to a good return on investment.

Firstly, have a really clear focus question. Take the time to sort out exactly what it is all these folk are getting together to work on. If it’s not important enough for them to be there, then they won’t, even if their bodies are.

Secondly, use a good process. This has to lead to outcomes both in terms of decisions made, plans formed or problems solved and in participants’ commitment to those decisions, plans or solutions. Participation is the way to go here.

Thirdly, document the outcomes and distibute them promptly. Sooner is better, and if people can take them away or find them in their email in-box when they get back to their desks, that’s the best.

Finally, follow up on the outcomes. Hold participants accountable for their actions: did they do what they said they would. Regular evaluation keeps us all honest.