Recommendations from last week

 Last week.

thanks to antoniofurno on flikr for the picture

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What was it that made this time so different?

Last week

With the above in mind, Denis creates a list with a few decent ideas from last week’s brainstorming and so he decides to have a vote to decide which would be best for increasing sales. He writes them up on the flipchart and announces it wouldn’t be fair of him to vote as the boss. Laura, Dora, Peter, David and Kata decide that democracy has to be better than the endless arguing with no result that they have been having until now and so get their thinking hats on.  Laura was fastest and said that she voted for idea 3.  David agreed. Kata and Peter thought that idea 5 was the  solution. That left Dora, after a bit of thinking and a quick smirk at Laura, she decided that she would vote for 5 too.

Thanks to bending light on flikr for the photo

Last week.

 

  

Denis asks them to explain their idea and writes them all down in his note book and then sends the colleagues on their way. The ideas are a mixture of good and bad with some of the more exciting:  Fire Laura; FACEBOOK!; Less meetings more work; I think we should start to push down the costs of suppliers; Buy better Christmas gifts for customers; Lapdancing!................”

 

On top of that, all the participants leave complaining that the meetings are useless and they never really get anything done. What do you think is going through Denis mind now?

 

 

 To see what happened previously, check out the earlier posts.

So let’s see what Denes could have done better……..well he has plenty of potential for development but i t would be a start if:

Have a concrete goal. e.g. just to know what the colleagues think.

Get the right participants.-  In spite of her difficulties, Laura is more useful than her assistant. 

Set goals for each of the participants . e.g. for Laura to show her colleagues some marketing solutions that can help the situation.

Send a professional, motivational invitation. 

With all this in mind Denes decides to have another go:

„Right everyone I want to get to know how you all see the situation we are in and what we can do about it!” Laura, here for the first time, is sure that the key to all the difficulties is in the marketing and so speaks for 15 minutes about how important it is that they build their brand through social media as well as TV spots. Dora has a pat hate of all things marketing as well as Lara’s habit of endless monologues and then ignoring everyone else, and so interrupts. She is just about to start making the finer aspects of financial control and management systems clear when Laura cuts her off and starts on about posts, pokes and profiles. 

Peter is asleep and so perhaps a poke would be useful.

After an hour of long monologues interrupted by bickering about some people being “sooooooo rude”, Denes decides that things aren’t going the way he wants.

What do you think went wrong this time?

It's Monday morning, the weekend was great and the atmosphere in the office is good. The only sour note is that Denis, the managing director is mad, very mad. The company is losing market share and sales and he is going to do something about it. Someone is going to get it today. So he calls a meeting….

Peter from sales brings along a couple of colleagues who weren’t invited, Laura from marketing can’t come but sends his secretary to take notes, Penny from finance completes the group. Banging his fist on the table Denis explains the problem and that if something isn’t done about then heads will roll. Peter quickly realises there is danger and so quickly starts to smooth things over with figures from the market research and sales forecasts for the next six months. Getting worried, the secretary from marketing starts to explain about the promotions that are planned and what great results should come out of it.

The rest of the group are nervous but not sure what they can really do about things. Nevertheless, after a few hours everyone has agreed that they are going in the right direction but that everyone should „redouble their efforts„

What happens next?

Nothing. Denis will hit the table a little harder and maybe heads really will roll. When it comes to running effective  meetings, Denis is in the three legged race.

But what do you see as the problem?

The prospect of a brainstorming (BS) session more often than not results in a collective groan in offices around the world.

Some people’s brains are just stormier than others.

“We have been brainstorming for the last 30 mins and have loads of ideas. David has given 30 of the 50 ideas, Judy hasn’t given any and neither has the boss who has been moderating the whole thing with a distinct frown until he mentions ‘Judy, you haven’t got much to say’

We have 12 sheets of flipchart paper each with a small essay on them.”

 On the surface it seems like a great result. So why is it that 6 of the 8 people look close to rigor mortis?

Who to invite can also be an interesting question but underlying conflicts and hierarchy within the group it is not the main reason meetings go wrong.

“In general the staff are motivated and enjoy their work.But! -  It is Friday at 4 and the boss has called all staff into a four hour meeting to “discuss the results for the last quarter.” Today, the 35 guys from the factory are feeling so involved one of them has started knitting. The finance team are just about awake while HR, purchasing and logistics are already planning their ever shortening weekend. The only active people are the sales managers, the MD and the finance managers.  The other 250 people are not thinking of signing up to the company loyalty program.”

It would have been better to go fishing, but what went wrong?

  
Dave had a clear agenda for the meeting

 Not such an exciting post but I liked the picture.  Joking aside. It is worth preparing an agenda because it is usually the first thing the colleagues hear about a meeting and so has a big influence on their preparation, motivation and possibly if they come or not.

The room is warm. 8 of us are crammed around a table too small for four. The boss has been rambling on for hours, but he is still on his first PowerPoint slide because that is all he had time to prepare. Susan and Robert are half asleep, Jozsef has got down to some serious work and is sending mails on his phone and David, as usual, has shouted, interrupted and generally bullied his points onto the non-existent agenda. I only have two things to discuss which are burning issues but we are already overtime and nobody will have time or energy to deal with them. At least the projector is blowing out some refreshing warm air.  All of these things could have been solved if someone had just taken responsibility for the meeting.

Situations like this are happening more and more over the past few years. Meetings and their culture are one of the key motivation/demotivation factors in modern organisations. Not to mention their effect on operation. When you take remote meetings where groups of people are standing screaming into a single mobile on loudspeaker while the boss/customer in the US, Germany etc listens helplessly, the situation becomes even more colourful. As a trainer, coach and consultant, my goal is to foster a better meeting and leadership culture. In the next few posts myself or one of my colleagues will share some of our experiences on ways to do that. Until then feel free to post your comments on some of the meeting experiences you have had!