Elemental Meetings

HOW TO TURN MEETINGS FROM TIME WASTERS INTO AGENTS OF CHANGE

I’ve been thinking a lot about meetings; how much time we waste in them and how bad we are at running them. From the small meetings with mentors for advice, to the big meetings we call conferences. We meet to create joint ventures, negotiate deals or simply to get things done. There are a lot of really good reasons to meet, but so few meetings live up to their potential.

Basically, as a whole, we are really bad at meetings. But could we turn them around? Could we take them from time wasters to extraordinary agents of change?

If you ask any executive leading a large organisation they will tell you that huge swaths of their time are taken up in poorly run meetings that suck time and cause extraordinary opportunity loss. In an era when our time is probably one of the top three resources we have, we are squandering it in bad collaborations called meetings. As a result we say, ‘we are not aligned’, ‘they are not engaged’, or ‘we need to work on our team building.’ This may all be true but I reckon we jump to prescribe these bigger issue fixes when maybe, just maybe, all we need to do is better define why we are meeting?

The problem is we call meetings without being clear on why or what we want to achieve and then treat all meetings as equal when they might be served by different structures and procedures. Take for example a meeting to discuss speakers for a conference. There is a degree of brainstorming required but ultimately this meeting needs to reach a decision. Which of the 5 speakers will be engaged and why?

Planning a conference requires you to get clear on some key objectives to answer some basic questions: the meta question being, ‘What do you hope to achieve out of this conference?’ and then specifically ‘Is there a gap in our line up of speakers?’ Having run events for several years and then being a speaker for consideration more times than I count, it helps to see this as two meetings: the first one of awareness exploring choices and the second one of decisions closing down choices.

I created this model to explain to conference committees the different goals of events and different types of speakers you can engage to meet those needs.

Al Pittampalli, a graduate of Seth Godin’s Alternative MBA Program, has written a manifesto titled Read This Before Our Next Meeting. You can watch Al make his hypothesis in the video here and you can read a quick summary as well.

In his manifesto he proposes that there are two types of meetings: ‘decision making’ meetings where the only thing done is the discussion on that topic and ‘brainstorming’ meetings where we ideate new solutions. He calls his approach the modern meeting solution. It includes some really good ideas for how we decide whether we need to participate in a meeting or not and, if we do, what are the rules of engagement? Things like ‘don’t attend a meeting if you don't have to’ and ‘don’t turn up late’ and ‘if you have not read the pre meeting notes you can't attend,’ etc.

I liked the simplicity of his hypothesis; ‘There are only two types of meetings’, but I wondered if it was true?

It’s not.

Well it is useful but it’s incomplete. Those two meeting types are helpful but in no way are they collectively exhaustive or practically useful when there are at least four other meeting types.

Have you ever caught up with someone to build a relationship? Have you ever caught up with someone to get their advice? Both are types of meetings but neither fit the ‘decision making’ or ‘brainstorming’ definition of a meeting.

This got me thinking about the different types of meetings we have and the fact that maybe if we got clear on our choices and the operating guidelines for these meetings we might be more effective at having meetings. We all agree that meetings are not working, I reckon we have universal consensus on that. Put simply, meetings don't work as well as they should. But there are way more than two types of meetings to be had.

The challenge I think is to consider all types of meetings, what they are trying to achieve and then apply frameworks and guidelines for best practice as they apply to each. In a way it’s like cataloguing personality types in some form of enneagram, both useful and flawed. The minute you define me as personality A I will do something that breaks the definition and you will have to rethink the classification. This is the principle behind statistician George Box’s caution that “Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.”

We need a useful model for meetings that we can adopt as a guideline but not a regulation.

I decided to explore some different models that are available, everything from Hippocrates' four body types to some Ayurvedic frameworks but ended up settling on the ancient Chinese I Ching model. It fits perfectly with the six classic types of meetings and might be useful to think of planning meetings elementally; earth, fire, air and water and metal and space.

I Ching is one of the oldest books on the planet. Its literal translation is ‘The Book of Changes’. I love that name. That’s why we meet essentially; we meet to change stuff. We change perceptions, we ex-change information and we change the direction of our pursuits in meetings. Change is the new normal and so getting good at meetings—the primary agent for change—is a big idea.

In short, if we know why we are meeting and what we want to achieve we can make meetings work for us.

Next time you want to call a meeting, consider the six meeting types and apply the guidelines for running them effectively. Often with meetings you will need to mix and combine the six meeting types to achieve your goals but knowing which stage or meeting type you are in is incredibly useful if you wish to make progress through collaboration.

Next time someone asks you to attend a meeting or have a meeting you may want to get clear on the meeting’s intent first. One of my pet peeves is the universal calendar invitation being sent out reflexively without any discussion. The CALinvite is becoming as ubiquitous as email and needs to be defended against as strenuously. In an ideal world your inbox does not run your life, your priorities do. Equally, calendar invites should not plan your day. Project goals should.

The rest of this Talking Point is an attempt at doing exactly that, classifying and optimising meeting types. The I Ching metaphor is a useful way to remember the most common meeting types and how to make the most out of them.

Once classified, each of these meeting types can have guidelines for optimising them towards their goal. A project update might be served by a 12 minute huddle at 12noon but a key relationship would suffer under the constraints of a forced time limit.

Take back your life. Don't let calendar invites and emails rule your world. Turn your meetings from time wasters into agents of change.