An old friend sent me a picture the other day of this blue ribbon that says, “I survived another meeting that should have been an email.” He obviously remembers how I feel about meetings.
Turns out you can actually buy the ribbons here, and I know a lot of bosses who should pass them out.
You leaders have got to get a handle on the endless parade of time-wasting, morale-draining meetings you expect your people to sit through!
Routine, regularly scheduled meetings – the ones that are on your calendar until the end of time – are the worst! They typically involve endless droning around a table about activities that only one or two people in the room care about. When the boss at the head of the table tolerates such time wasting, the expectation is that everyone has to say something, and we’ve all experienced the guy who’s a little too fond of his own voice.
Several years ago, everyone in my directorate went to a weekly staff meeting like the one I described above. I used to tuck a couple of Sudokus in my notebook to make it look like I was taking notes (I know, not setting a good example). One week, I asked the director if I could skip the meeting if I was too busy. He said, “Sure.” I never went again.
I’ve got the stick for a minute.
When I was talking the other day with a senior government leader about making meetings more productive, I got some pushback on my value judgement. He said, “It’s the only time we all get together. How else will everyone find out what the others are working on?” I remember one time a Deputy Under Secretary actually saying, “The daily meeting’s not for you; it’s for me to find out what everyone’s doing.”
Trust me, there are far better ways to connect the people who need information with the people who have information. If you’re the boss and doubt what I’m saying, give this to your people and ask for their thoughts.
Productive meetings don’t happen by accident. If you want to see a dramatic improvement in Return On Time Spent In Meetings (ROTSIM – a new metric?), try these proven steps:
Put someone (preferably someone who values efficient use of time) in charge of the agenda. Meetings without agendas usually end up being free-for-alls. If you absolutely have to have a routine meeting to update the boss, make it clear in advance that no one brings more than two or three of their most critical issues that a majority of people around the table really need to know about. Any issues that only the boss and the person speaking care about should be handled one-on-one or in an email.
Get rid of as many routine meetings as you can. I was once part of an organization (for a very short period of time) who actually tracked the number of meetings attended as a performance metric. Try only having meetings when there is something to decide. Have clear objectives, not open-ended ones like “Discuss employee engagement.” Send pre-work to the attendees so they can come to the table as an informed participants, not as sponges.
No marathon meetings! People lose focus and creativity when you hold them hostage for more than an hour or two, especially after lunch. If need be, break the agenda in half and have two shorter meetings appropriately spaced.
Finally, make sure someone’s keeping track of decisions and deferred issues. Make it a written record and include who is responsible for each along with a deadline. It can be part of the pre-work if you need a subsequent session.
What about the time you spend around the conference room table? Want to reduce it and make it more productive?
Strategic Planning is dead. Long live strategic planning…
An interesting conundrum; we know that strategic planning is valuable. Intuitively. Yet, we seldom march lockstep behind that big blue binder when it’s complete.
Why is that??
I have an opinion (surprise!). During a recent strategy session, the client’s chief executive stated that he doesn’t even consider it strategic planning at all. He doesn’t even like the term.
He uses Strategic Discernment.
I hate doing this, but I visited dictionary.com for the definitive definition of discern/discernment…
1. to perceive by the sight or some other sense or by the intellect; see,
recognize, or apprehend: They discerned a sail on the horizon.
2. to distinguish mentally; recognize as distinct or different; discriminate: He is
incapable of discerning right from wrong. –verb (used without object)
3. to distinguish or discriminate.
Now this is something we can get our arms around. It’s not the strategy, stupid, it’s the planning (or in this case, the discernment). It’s the act of discriminating among choices; of choosing one path, direction, or vision over another.
It’s to recognize something distinct or different. Remember, strategy has never been simple trending of current results — that’s simply forecasting, and can be done via Excel spreadsheet.
No, real strategy is creating our future among the myriad possibilities; it’s determining in advance what we intend to be, who we intend to be, and what will matter to us. Then, making that happen.
Instead of simply watching in awe as things happen around us.
Consultants have been around for a long time. Some would argue we’re the second-oldest profession; others may even make some snide, not-so-humorous analogies to the oldest profession.
Ok, some of those are humorous…
Regardless, advisers have been “advising” leaders for thousands of years. Not all “advisers,” however, are created equal. And here’s a key – merely belonging to an important tribe, club, or company doesn’t make the advice any better.
A story…
Almost 2,500 years ago, there was a King called Xerxes, intent on destroying those pesky Greeks and their armies. Surprisingly, the Greeks took exception to this, and were quite formidable opponents.
Just as the King was preparing for a big battle, there was a total solar eclipse. Today, we grab the kids, rush outside and say “ooh,”and “aaah;” 2,000 years ago, people ran inside screaming “oh shit, the world is ending!”
Anyway, King Xerxes needed advice about this new development. Not having a resident expert on staff, he brought in his consultant – called then, a “Magi.” Think modern-day McKinsey by lineage…
Xerxe’s Magi analyzed the eclipse (undoubtedly with PowerPoint slides and 4-square models), and advised the King that he should proceed post-haste with his battle. This Magi foreshadowed a great victory for King Xerxes.
King Xerxes, of course, had his butt handed to him by the Greeks. It wasn’t pretty.
I’m certain the Magi, probably on retainer, had good reasons for this marked lapse in effective counsel.
Why does this matter to you? Simple: be cautious from whom you accept counsel. You didn’t get where you are today by buying snake oil, so don’t by it now when you get advice that (a) doesn’t seem logically thought out, (b) comes from someone who’s biggest or only credential is his or her “tribe,” and/or (c) if it just doesn’t pass your “sniff” test.
Adviser, consultant, consigliere, Magi… these have long been trusted positions of influence in Kingdoms, companies, and mafias (I leave it to you to decide which is yours); they have a place, and are frequently a huge asset to our success.
Another year in the books (or the cloud, or wherever we store history these days). In 2019, we worked with executives in healthcare, technology, contact centers, financial services, higher education and more, and we’ve helped them become better leaders who developed more leaders. Along the way, we had the privilege to help their organizations grow, transform and improve, and in doing so, we saw some noteworthy trends we thought we’d share with you. If any of these sound familiar, learn vicariously from the collective and use this as a catalyst for improvement.
We’re all people first. Relationships before processes. Relationships instead of processes. It’s intuitive that employees do better when change is their idea; we’ve learned that the same thing holds true for the consultant-client relationship. More shut-up, more listen.
Leadership is a contact sport.We’re all busy with a host of really important organizational and administrative tasks, but if you’re in a leadership position, leading is your primary job and not an additional duty. It’s not that idiotic term “soft-skill” if it’s the one you need to do your basic job. You can keep busy staying in your office, but you can’t develop authentic, trusting relationships with those you lead from there. Don’t let busyness become an excuse for half-hearted leadership.
Even the best need help. Michael Jordan had a coach. Tiger Woods had a coach (back when he was good; now… who knows? ???? ). Tom Brady and LeBron James have coaches. Sheryl Sandberg, Jeff Bezos and Sundar Pichai have coaches — even Oprah Winfrey has one. 40% of Fortune 500 CEOs fail within 18 months; 82% of them because of relationships. This isn’t a push for our executive coaching services; it’s a reminder (from our clients) that even those we consider superstars “need someone.” They need help to grow, develop, and continue their superstar status. Leading at the top is hard stuff, and having someone to advise and counsel — and just listen sometimes — is crucial.
Leadership development isn’t an event; it’s a process.If your leadership development program is solely an HR-led, one-and-done training seminar, you’re doing it wrong. It’s just not effective. Top leadership support for development is essential, and only individuals at the highest organizational levels can create a climate that encourages a continuous learning environment.
Often, you have to choose sides. Leadership—and consulting—has risks. In this profession, too many try to be all things to all people, tripping over non-committal PC verbiage. We must stop. Sometimes we have to tell the CEO that the SVP of Operations has the better plan to consider. It’s what’s best for the client that must always drive our actions, advice and counsel.
We can do two things at once. No, no one is advocating individual multi-tasking, but organizational multi-tasking is a must. We simply cannot focus on just one strategy, direction or objective. We must have the leadership bandwidth to move multiple objectives forward while still dealing with the occasional organizational fire.
Process cannot overcome culture. There is no single 12-page Guide to Leadership; if there were, I’d have written it, become a kazillionaire with my own island and you wouldn’t be invited. If an outfit’s culture is not conducive to, say, empowered decision-making, then for Pete’s sake don’t allow some outside consultant to teach or coach on empowerment or high-level delegation. Work on the culture first, then use leadership “pull” instead of consultant “push” to marshal through necessary objectives and behavior changes.
Talk’s cheap; meaningful conversations are priceless.Most senior leadership teams declare themselves to be great communicators… and they’re usually not. Not with each other or their employees. Think about the conversations you have around the conference room table. Are they about hard things, or are they guarded to ensure everyone “gets along?” Trust is never built hiding behind the thin veneer of playing nice; it requires authentic and meaningful conversations. Collaboration and deference look a lot alike. They aren’t.
Don’t stop doing what works. We saw this so many times in 2019 that we felt compelled to remind you. If you’ve changed a process (or put a new one into place) to correct a problem, don’t quit following it when the problem goes away. That’s like stopping your blood pressure medicine because your blood pressure isn’t high anymore. It’s hard enough to implement a new process and get it to stick; having to do it twice is self-induced suffering.
Check your ego at the door. When leaders let their ego influence decisions, they become deaf to the messages their behavior conveys, and blind to how others perceive those messages. Ego is the major culprit behind leaders who won’t admit they might have been wrong or refuse to show vulnerability. When the little green monster keeps us from making good objective decisions, we lose trust not only from those affected but also from those who watched – and don’t even think no one was watching.
I can only imagine what I’ll learn from my clients in 2020.
Not too long ago, I worked with a group of executives for a fast-growing client.
Two things struck me as interesting, and somewhat of a paradox: First, they were all reasonably successful in their jobs (and their jobs were substantially the same, just different geographic regions). Second, they were all incredibly different. Yes, they each had similar core characteristics, such as intelligence and work ethic. In other areas, such as sales, marketing, people management, organizational skills, strategy, planning, and so forth, they were all over the charts.
So what? Well, I’ll tell you “so what.” You hear a lot about understanding your “strengths and weaknesses,” then you’re supposed to work on your weaknesses, right?? Sort of like the big Superdude combating kryptonite, right??
Bunk.
Let’s look at it differently. Let’s assume that succeeding in a position can be done in any of several different ways, using a variety of skills. With that reasoning, you don’t have strengths and weaknesses; you have learned skills and skills you have yet to learn.
Wow!
So, then, we should then simply “learn more skills,” right??
No, no, no…
We should, instead, clearly identify our skills, since we know that we can succeed with them, and work on improving our strengths! That’s right, improve our strengths, since we already know that they work for us. Learning new skills is time consuming, and depending on application, may or may not work for us the way they work for others.
Now, this logic assumes current success, so don’t confuse this with those managers who are clearly unsuccessful, though I would argue this could help them with their improvement also. In other words, as Bum Phillips (retired Houston Oilers coach) would say, “Dance with who brung you.”
Use the skills you have — improve and hone them to a razor’s edge — and continue your increasing levels of success. Over time, identify some additional skills you would like to pick up, and develop a plan to learn them in a reasonable time and fashion.
King Xerxes, of course, had his butt handed to him by the Greeks. It wasn’t pretty.
We should, instead, clearly identify our skills, since we know that we can succeed with them, and work on improving our strengths! That’s right, improve our strengths, since we already know that they work for us. Learning new skills is time consuming, and depending on application, may or may not work for us the way they work for others.