The solution to Email and Meetings

Let’s face it, the two things that take up most of your time are Email and Meetings - here are two techniques used by High-Performance Teams to better manage both.

Email

1.Adopt a common process.

1.     Open Mail or Outlook.

2.     Now decide within 10 seconds what needs to be done with the first email.

·       Delete it.

·       Delegate it.             (Pass it on.)

·       Deal with it.            (Solve it or reply asking for more info and move it to Waiting.)

·       Do not reply to it. (There is no rule that says you must reply to every email.)

2.Push back on sloppy email practices.

·       If you don’t know why some sent you the email, ask the sender why they sent it.

·       Let team members know that you may not look at an email for 24 hours.

·       Tell team members that if something is urgent, they should call or come and see you.

3.You decide when to do emails.

·       The best strategy is to control when you check email, not allowing it as an interruption, only significant matters should require your immediate attention.

·       Decide when you will do emails.

a.      The reality is that most of us prefer to do emails throughout the day, few of us do them at fixed times.

b.     If you do them at fixed times (start of day, lunch, end of day) try using Timeboxing to get through as many as possible.

“One CEO on this topic told her staff not to send emails requiring her to make a decision about something - to make a decision she would probably need to ask clarifying questions leading to even more messages in her Inbox. She told her staff to ring her or make an appointment to see her instead.” The Age Newspaper.

Use Timeboxing

Timeboxing is a most effective time management technique to speed through works, like this.

Consider your goals. Take a few minutes to think about what you want to complete.

1.     Set a time.

a.      Set a short time. 15 to 30 minutes maybe, that you know won’t be too painful or difficult to commit to.

b.     Set a longer time. An hour or maybe even two hours if you’re feeling motivated.

Email example

·       My goal is to do as many as I can.

·       I allocate 20 minutes to do it.

·       I look at the time and work out when 20 minutes will be up and set an alarm.

·       I then get as many emails done as is possible in the time allowed.

·       When the time is up, I move on to my next job.

Meetings

This shows you how to run high-performance meeting, its format, its protocols, the concept of shared leadership and how to tell if the meetings are being effective. High-performance teams hold meetings that team members want to attend because they are productive, and efficiently make use of the team members’ time. Every meeting is focused, timely, and necessary, and is used to solve problems, make decisions, disseminate information, and enhance team member skills. These things make for a much better meeting experience.

One of the most common complaints voiced by members of low-performing teams is that too much time is spent in meetings. The real issue is not the time but the content of meetings. High-Performance meetings on the other hand address only those topics that need the team’s collective, cross-boundary expertise, such as corporate strategy, enterprise-resource allocation, or how to capture synergies across business units. They need to steer clear of anything that can be handled by individual businesses or functions, not only to use the team’s time well but to also foster a sense of purpose.

High-Performance meetings are one’s people want to attend because they stick to specific content and are largely unstructured, meaning that they do not use a formal Agenda or Minutes. (A High-Performance team does not need to minute or track an individual’s actions as accepting an action is the same as making a commitment; therefore, there is no need for follow up.)

Contributions need to be focussed on specific content, for example this content suits many situations:

1.     Corporate strategy.

2.     Enterprise-resource allocation.

3.     Business unit synergies.

4.     Customer satisfaction pains and gains.

5.     Staff satisfaction levels.

6.     Service Delivery.

7.     Strategic initiatives such as major projects.

8.     Resolution of disagreements.

Meeting format.

1.     Each team member talks in turn to their items but only from a perspective of telling the other team members things they ‘need to know’.

2.     Questions are then asked, answers are given and discussed by all.

3.     Finally, actions are agreed and are noted by the team member who has taken the action.

4.     Then the next team member talks until everyone except the manager has had a turn.

5.     The last action is by the manager, who delegates tasks they have previously noted down - recording to whom and when the task was given but not when it is due.

6.     Unless a task must be given to a specific team member, the manager asks for volunteers to take on a task. (High-performance team members do not just action or take on tasks that relate to their management discipline or field or expertise, rather they take on any task. Doing this extends their management abilities, their subject matter knowledge and helps them to understand the management accountabilities of their peers. It also goes a long way towards preparing them for more generalised management roles and future leadership positions.)

7.     Team members understand that the managers tasks have a high priority and are to be actioned asap.

Meeting protocols.

1.     Encourage quiet or introverted team members to give an opinion.

2.     Ensure team members do not speak over or interrupt others.

3.     Expect that team members will be truthful.

4.     Encourage views on the team’s effectiveness.

5.     Encourage team members to critique each other’s ideas and comments, rather than criticise the individual. (This is the approach of never criticising a team member but rather critiquing an idea, comment, process, or method they are using or are proposing. This is best done during meetings where ideas are being flown around by team members by having them comment on the relevance and likely success or failure of an idea.)

6.     When a negative event (problem, error, or failure) occurs, blame is never assigned to an individual, rather an autopsy of the event is discussed/carried out to work out how it happened and more importantly, how to avoid it happening again. The same applies to successes, there should be a discussion/autopsy about the actions that led to the success along with follow-up steps on how to repeat those actions in the future. e.g., By updating a process document.

Shared leadership

Shared leadership is when the manager shares their decision-making rights with all team members by promoting the interests of the team members and by practicing social equality. Sharing leadership calls for a great deal of personal initiative from individual team members and is a vital quality of high-performance leadership. Shared leadership invigorates the team members to deliver exceptional outcomes in the workplace and achieve synergies in their results by working collaboratively with all team members.

During the meeting the manager remains as silent as possible, allowing the team members to jointly make decisions and agree actions thereby sharing the team leadership. Another aspect of shared leadership is when the team leadership role is taken up by various team members, according to need at the time. An example of this is the leadership of a major or strategic activity where one team member is a subject matter expert and will lead the team (including the manager) much as a project manager would.

How to tell if your meetings are working

If your meetings are working well, and a collective consciousness is developing, then team members will exhibit several defining characteristics.

1.     There is a sense of real energy being released during the meeting.

2.     Everyone on the team talks and listens in roughly equal measure, keeping contributions short and sweet.

3.     Team members face one another, and their conversations and gestures are energetic.

4.     Team members connect directly with one another, not just with the manager.

5.     Team members carry on back-channel or side conversations within the team.

6.     Team members periodically break, go exploring outside the team, and bring information back.

Meeting tips.

1.     Do not wait for all team members to arrive before starting the meeting, always start exactly on time.

2.     Do not allow war stories or discussions that don’t add value.

3.     Ban the use of laptops, they are distracting and severely limit the amount of information that the laptop user takes in. Multiple studies have proven that manual note taking is far more effective in terms of remembering and analysing new information compared to the laptop user due to different cognitive processes being used between the two.

4.     For a short, sharp meeting, consider standing rather than sitting. Psychologically this makes team members more focussed and more spartan with their involvement and saves considerable time. This approach works equally well for face to face and virtual meetings.

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