Death by a Thousand Meetings

Reading Moishe Lettvin’s blog on “The Windows Shutdown crapfest” brought back memories of my own war stories on surviving meeting madness during my life in the big corporation.

Here are few tools that worked for my team and me. You can find more about these and other leadership tools from Conversant. These tools helped us improve the overall effectiveness of our meetings and our decision-making process, and I hope you they will help you as well.

•Manage meetings with purpose – Everyone knows that no meeting invite should be sent out without a proper meeting agenda. However, an agenda in itself is not sufficient for conducting a successful meeting. Using the PMO (Purpose, Method and Outcome) framework sets up the proper context and expectations for your meeting.

o Clear purpose brings everyone into alignment as to why the meeting is being called;
o Spelling the outcome sets the proper expectations on what agreement and alignment will be achieved in the meeting;
o Properly stating the method that will be used indicates the how issues at hand will be discussed, who will be presenting what and the process for achieving the outcome;

In many ways, PMO helps you as the meeting owner to ensure you have done your homework on the Why, What, How and Who for conducting an effective meeting.

• Establish clear roles in your decision-making process – It is a common belief that decision by consensus is not an efficient decision making model, yet it is probably the most effective one for achieving alignments. Identifying the key stakeholders for a given issue and establishing clear roles for the decision-making process will improve the overall effectiveness of the process while achieving alignment. The RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consultant, Informed) model can be used for role identification in a given issue.

o Identify one key person that is accountable for the decision. This person should not only be an individual with power, but should also have the responsibility and accountability for the results of the decision when it’s rolled out. If the group cannot reach a decision, this individual also has the power to make the ultimate call;
o Responsible individuals are basically the ones who will roll out the implementation of the decision. As such, they have more at stake on the final outcome.
o The role of the consultants is to ensure that all aspects of the issue are studied and considered objectively prior to making a decision. However, they usually are not as knowledgeable on the integrals of the issue at hand, or have the accountability for actual on-time, on-budget implementation of the decision.
o Finally, the informed group reflects all the individuals that should be notified of the decision, but are not in any way implicated by the outcome.

This role identification should be part of your decision-making process, as it is a good way to ensure right individuals are included, needed questions and alternatives analyzed, and appropriate accountability lines are clearly established. The Matheson and Matheson’s Decision Quality Chain captures the necessary elements required to achieve quality decisions (The Smart Organization: Creating Value Through Strategic R&D).

• Separate facts from opinions – Perhaps this is the hardest aspect of the decision-making process: determining what is fact vs. what is fiction, ie. opinion. However, a good decision requires analysis of the facts, and acknowledging opinions to achieve a common view of the group for gaining alignment and agreement. So, even if the process is slow, start by identifying the common facts that everyone agrees with, and determine how those impact the issue at hand. From there, address the opinions and their relevance to the decision process.

As a departing thought, don’t forget to watch for deja vu. Revisiting decisions and issues that you thought were closed is a common phenomenon, especially in larger firms. If you find yourself experiencing this, go back and review your historical records to ensure the correct stakeholders were included in the decision process. At the end of the day, you want to address the root cause problem and not the symptoms. It’s not only tiresome, but also very unproductive to play the whack-a-mole game.

Wishing you a season full of efficient and effective meetings. ☺