Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Meetings are the Silver Bullet

I used to think much like the writers of the "West Wing" that education is the silver bullet. Education could keep people out of jail. Education ends violence. Education would even help to eradicate disease. Now I've come to the realization that meetings, not education, are the silver bullet to all of the world's problems. The only problem with that is, most meetings are really dull, boring, and unproductive.

I just read on John C. Maxwell's Twitter that he thinks "When a meeting is good, it's never long enough. When bad, it can't end soon enough." We've all sat through countless meetings. We were sitting in meetings even before we knew what meetings were. We had parent/teacher meetings, or an appointment to meet with a doctor. We've been meeting our whole lives and didn't even know it. You meet your soulmate. You meet your enemies. You meet new people and reaquaint yourself with old friends by meeting them on Facebook.

Of course, the meetings mentioned above are on your terms and are, presumably, of your own will. Meetings in the business world aren't of your own will. We are all forced to sit in droll meetings that seem to go on and on and on and on. The Energizer Bunny has nothing on these meetings.

An article published December 5, 2007 in The Onion tried to poke fun of meetings. The article stated, "Our meetings have become disorganized and sprawling, and far too much time is lost to non- actionable items." The article, being from The Onion, had a funny spin to it. The writer proposed having more meetings to solve the meeting problem. This seems to be what we all do.

I've been to almost 100 meetings in my time at this church (only a year). That's one meeting every 3 1/2 days. Not that I'm counting! But I can't relate to you how many minutes and hours I've spent having my time wasted by people being late to the meetings. Or people bringing "non-actionable" items to meetings. Or people just rambling on about something that doesn't pertain to the meeting or the people in the meeting.

Sometimes I sit across from the clock in our meetings. It's interesting to see who uses the most time in meetings talking. It's just as interesting to see who interrupts the most in those same meetings. Do you think that the people talking the most and interrupting the most are the same? You bet they are!

I have read many times a book called "Death By Meeting" by Patrick Lencioni. The book is subtitled "A Leadership Fable About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business." That says it all...and includes all of our thoughts about meetings.

The book is a fiction story about a man who runs his own business but has terrible meetings, which is hurting his business and morale. Until a young business-minded new guy comes in and changes all that. Without a doubt the book ends happy and everyone is successful again. The book also outlines the proper way to have meetings.

One point the book makes is about meeting times and different kinds of meetings. Staff meetings are weekly and therefore should be strictly kept to an hour. Staff retreats are all day-long events. Planning meetings are once a month and can be three to four hours. Then there are the daily check-ins, where whoever is there gets together to let everyone else know what they've been doing. The daily check-ins only last five minutes! I can't imagine having a meeting for five minutes...but how refreshing!

Another point the book makes is the one minute briefing in the weekly staff meeting. Each person has one minute to say what they want to talk about at the meeting. The leader then makes an agenda. Then you follow the agenda. You don't necessarily go around in a circle, in the same direction every week. And everyone doesn't necessarily get to say everything they need to.

BUT...and this is a big one...BUUUUUUUUUUUUT the leader can choose topics that will engage the whole group. The leader is able to mine for conflict. Because conflict creates results. You don't get results from everyone just by letting the topics pass them by.

I'll admit, I'm a very passive person in our weekly staff meetings. I don't usually pipe up for any reason until it's my turn. And even then I keep my comments to the bare minimun. Ocassionally, I will leave out topics that I would like to cover just because I don't want to hear what people have to say about them. But, that's part of not being engaged and not wanting to stretch out an already overly-long meeting.

How dare me. So hypocritical. But you can see that although I know the secrets to having a good meeting, I don't live by them, becuase living by them is difficult. But if we were to get past the difficulty, then we could solve all our problems...or at least the one's the leader has chosen for us.

There is no "i" in team...unless you spell it phonetically: [tim]. No, I'm kidding, but only because I'm reminded of something from John C. Maxwell's book "The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork." The first law is the law of significance and states, "One is too small a number to achieve greatness."

This to me says what the old Chinese proverb says, "Behind an able man there are always other able men." But...again, another but...I take the second part of that proverb seriously. There has to be those people behind the first that are willing and able. During meetings we've all been up against negativity and skepticism. Those people aren't able or willing, but what if they were engaged during the meeting? Would they then be more willing to look at your idea instead of stifle it?

I can't help but look again at "West Wing." Such a great show, but during the show there were so many meetings held. I can only think that perhaps the real White House runs with so much energy and forward flowing movement. Meetings were the place where problems were solved. Each person had the opportunity to weigh in. People disagreed, but were on each other's side in the end.

One instance I remember is a meeting with the President playing chess with his head of communications, who had just made a huge public blunder. I don't remember exactly what was said, but words were exchanged and yelling happened, but in the end all was forgiven and the problem was fixed.

Now, I know that we can't all live in a television show. Sometimes problems are just big and harry and ugly. But I would implore anyone reading to engage yourself in your meetings and to cause that conflict with positive results. I would like everyone to bring only actionable items to their next meeting and challenge yourself to keep your personal agenda and needless goings on to a minimum.

I'm willing to give it a shot, even if we don't play chess during it and even if we don't meet for the five minute check in. It's hard to do, but I'm sure we can solve this "meeting problem" when we meet next time here on my blog.

2 comments:

  1. Meetings CAN be torturous. (Is that a word? You know what I mean.) The worst I've had to endure, I think, are the staff meetings we had at The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. We would be at that table for HOURS - literally. All of us girls, sipping from our water bottles, looking more and more desperate to take a bathroom break. For some reason, Janna just liked long meetings. We even had a name for it: POJ, prisoner of Janna. :)

    You might enjoy reading Michael Hyatt's blog, by the way. He's the CEO of a book publisher, and he writes about leadership and management. Sorry if I've already told you this. His blog is http://michaelhyatt.com/.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I hate board meetings! we typically get off topic so badly we never get back on it. and all im thinking is "when can I get out of here!"

    ReplyDelete