Did it ever occur to you that we often try to fix problems with procedures and systems that are really ethical problems?
Could a lack of courage and honesty be the problem with your meetings? Thinking back, many, many of the meetings in which my time has been wasted had their problems not in lack of agenda, meeting minutes, nice flow charts done in Microsoft Project or all of those other things that managers like to spend classes and money on. The problem was that... get ready for it ...
THE WRONG PEOPLE WERE THERE !
Here is one example of a thousand ...
A team is announced to address Important Organization Problem Six. We'll call it IOPS. t doesn't matter what specifically it was. The team includes two people who are IOPS experts Fred and Susie, one person from accounting who can help us do the budget from IOPS, one manager whose job is to 'keep everyone on task', Joe, who is assigned because he works there and needs to be assigned to something,Jessica who is brand new, so it would be good training for her and Bill who is from another organization because 'we need communication'.
The first three meetings, Fred, Susie and the accountant decide on how to address the problem, how much it would cost and divide up the work. No work is assigned to Joe, Jessica or the manager because they know nothing about IOPS. After each meeting, the manager reminds them all, repeatedly, that they need to have an agenda, meeting minutes, with copies typed and put in the IOPS project binder, and the next meeting written on the master schedule. He also encourages them to include Joe, Bill and Jessica in the tasks because 'everyone has to contribute'. Susie points out that none of them know anything about IOPS. Fred gets the brilliant idea to assign Joe, Bill and Jessica to type up the minutes, write up the agenda and put the meeting on the schedule.
When Susie asks why they need all of this stuff and these people, the manager always gives one of two answers, either "People in the community want it" or "Our leaders want it". Susie thinks that neither their leaders nor the people in the community could care less about the IOPS project and don't know it exists, but she doesn't see any point in saying so.
After FIFTEEN WEEKS of meetings, Fred and Susie have pretty much worked the problem out and solved it. The accountant quit attending the meetings after the eighth week because her part of the work was done. The manager schedules three meetings with tribal leadership to see what progress the IOPS project team is making.
Fifteen meetings in, what has been accomplished? Fred and Susie did some good work with help from the accountant and solved an important problem. Neither Joe, Bill, Jessica nor the manager really contributed anything to the project's completion. Jessica may have learned something but there was no real structure for her to do that, so if she was bright and paid attention, she may have picked up some facts and procedures. The main people who benefited from the minutes, agenda and schedule were Joe, Bill, Jessica and the manager since they were not very familiar with what was going on. If there had only been two or three people meeting, it would have been much easier to arrange times. Did the tribal leadership really need to meet with this group three times? Not at all. The manager justified it as 'seeing progress' but his real reason was so that he could get seen by the tribal leaders as an effective manager.
How could we make this better? First, we could not add Joe just because he has no useful skills. That is avoiding a real problem of why he got hired in the first place and, hello? he has no useful skills. Sending him to 15 hours of meetings does nothing about the real problem. Second, we can ask why Bill is there. It almost always turns out that somewhere else there was a big failure in communication. To address that issue, a high level decision was made to have 'inter-agency communication'. On one reservation, this was so extreme that project directors often spent 12-15 hours of their work week in inter-agency meetings. Was the original failure because the project directors didn't go to enough meetings together? Usually not. Usually it came about because some of the directors were just incompetent in their jobs or plain hostile to one another (we all know how, in a small community, personality conflicts arise and can go on to make the Hatfields and McCoys feud look like Mother Teresa).
How is this for an honest look at meetings:
Does every person invited to this meeting today really need to attend? Do we even need to have official meetings on this project? What is the purpose of this meeting?
What if the manager had just told Susie and Fred, "We need you to fix the IOPS. I asked the accounting department manager to recommend someone who could help you and he said Francine would be available. Can you get it done in six weeks?"
Could a lack of courage and honesty be the problem with your meetings? Thinking back, many, many of the meetings in which my time has been wasted had their problems not in lack of agenda, meeting minutes, nice flow charts done in Microsoft Project or all of those other things that managers like to spend classes and money on. The problem was that... get ready for it ...
THE WRONG PEOPLE WERE THERE !
Here is one example of a thousand ...
A team is announced to address Important Organization Problem Six. We'll call it IOPS. t doesn't matter what specifically it was. The team includes two people who are IOPS experts Fred and Susie, one person from accounting who can help us do the budget from IOPS, one manager whose job is to 'keep everyone on task', Joe, who is assigned because he works there and needs to be assigned to something,Jessica who is brand new, so it would be good training for her and Bill who is from another organization because 'we need communication'.
The first three meetings, Fred, Susie and the accountant decide on how to address the problem, how much it would cost and divide up the work. No work is assigned to Joe, Jessica or the manager because they know nothing about IOPS. After each meeting, the manager reminds them all, repeatedly, that they need to have an agenda, meeting minutes, with copies typed and put in the IOPS project binder, and the next meeting written on the master schedule. He also encourages them to include Joe, Bill and Jessica in the tasks because 'everyone has to contribute'. Susie points out that none of them know anything about IOPS. Fred gets the brilliant idea to assign Joe, Bill and Jessica to type up the minutes, write up the agenda and put the meeting on the schedule.
When Susie asks why they need all of this stuff and these people, the manager always gives one of two answers, either "People in the community want it" or "Our leaders want it". Susie thinks that neither their leaders nor the people in the community could care less about the IOPS project and don't know it exists, but she doesn't see any point in saying so.
After FIFTEEN WEEKS of meetings, Fred and Susie have pretty much worked the problem out and solved it. The accountant quit attending the meetings after the eighth week because her part of the work was done. The manager schedules three meetings with tribal leadership to see what progress the IOPS project team is making.
Fifteen meetings in, what has been accomplished? Fred and Susie did some good work with help from the accountant and solved an important problem. Neither Joe, Bill, Jessica nor the manager really contributed anything to the project's completion. Jessica may have learned something but there was no real structure for her to do that, so if she was bright and paid attention, she may have picked up some facts and procedures. The main people who benefited from the minutes, agenda and schedule were Joe, Bill, Jessica and the manager since they were not very familiar with what was going on. If there had only been two or three people meeting, it would have been much easier to arrange times. Did the tribal leadership really need to meet with this group three times? Not at all. The manager justified it as 'seeing progress' but his real reason was so that he could get seen by the tribal leaders as an effective manager.
How could we make this better? First, we could not add Joe just because he has no useful skills. That is avoiding a real problem of why he got hired in the first place and, hello? he has no useful skills. Sending him to 15 hours of meetings does nothing about the real problem. Second, we can ask why Bill is there. It almost always turns out that somewhere else there was a big failure in communication. To address that issue, a high level decision was made to have 'inter-agency communication'. On one reservation, this was so extreme that project directors often spent 12-15 hours of their work week in inter-agency meetings. Was the original failure because the project directors didn't go to enough meetings together? Usually not. Usually it came about because some of the directors were just incompetent in their jobs or plain hostile to one another (we all know how, in a small community, personality conflicts arise and can go on to make the Hatfields and McCoys feud look like Mother Teresa).
How is this for an honest look at meetings:
Does every person invited to this meeting today really need to attend? Do we even need to have official meetings on this project? What is the purpose of this meeting?
What if the manager had just told Susie and Fred, "We need you to fix the IOPS. I asked the accounting department manager to recommend someone who could help you and he said Francine would be available. Can you get it done in six weeks?"
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