Modern meeting mayhem

Posted on by Blog

You know why people like the period around a bank holiday so much? Because they get stuff done. For some reason, the organisational cogs seem better oiled around a bank holiday and we come away feeling productive and ending our days with a sense of achievement.

Is this coincidence?

No. It’s directly related to a reduction in the number of meetings being held, because people are on holiday and they become harder to schedule. And the time saved is used on more productive activity than locking grown people in a room.

Because there is an irony in business that the amount of time you spend on unproductive activity is directly proportional to seniority and the amount that you’re paid.. The higher you go, the more time you waste being sat in a room with other well paid people and an agenda.

It really is a thing of dumb assed organisational beauty and some people even boast about it, “I’ve been back to back all day”.

Think about it…..

1) Time slots – Meetings happen in half hour and hour blocks because Microsoft Outlook tells us that’s how it should be. We extend the content to fit the time, we never start with content and then work out how long it will take. You’re allowing yourself to be run by the bastard offspring of a paperclip.

2) Creativity – I don’t know about you, but I normally have my best ideas in the shower or the gym. Rarely have I sat in item 2 of an agenda and come up with a stroke of genius related to the stated topic – no matter how far in advance the agenda was sent out. Sometimes I come up with a brilliant idea for a holiday or something to do at the weekend, but that’s another thing.

3) Physicality – I’m sure the modern meeting is morphing into some sort of modern endurance sport. Here’s a thing….stand outside a meeting room and watch people’s faces as they come out. How many other contexts in life can you come up with where people come together sat in a rectangle, in a room with little air or light that doesn’t constitute a war crime?

4) Inclusion – Imagine you were fighting a zombie apocalypse. Every single person in that room is one less person nailing closed the doors and shooting the shuffling, drooling onslaught in the head (which I’m reliably told that this is the only sure-fire way to kill them), would you still have invited Bob from Accounts, just to keep him “in the loop”?

5) Actions – We spend all our time talking about what needs to be done and making lists, but nobody has time to do them. Because they’re in too many meetings. So we  meet and make them b/f or c/f until they no longer have relevance and we can move on to the next agenda item. Seriously.

So that’s all very good Neil, but what are the alternatives, we need to run this business after all?

Well, I’m not against meetings per se, I get they sometimes need to happen for governance purposes. But I can guarantee that I can diagnose the health of an organisation by their approach to meetings. Take the top 20 leaders in your organisation and look at how much of their time is taken up with meetings. Why? Because you can as sure as hell know that they’re replicating it down the organisation. And ask yourself whether this is why you hired them, to do this.

If we genuinely want people to collaborate, we should facilitate but allow them to come together organically to solve problems and create value. We need to trust and empower people to deliver against an overarching purpose. We need to set them free to contribute.

And meetings, well they don’t even touch the sides……

Value destruction

Posted on by Blog

The economics of the employment relationship are pretty simple.

We hire resource, put it together and hope to extract more value from it than we invested.

It really is as simple as that.

Now that value could be financial or it could be something else, it really doesn’t matter in this sense. But the point is, that everything that diverts resource away from adding value is destroying value.

– Every time we create a form that isn’t necessary
– Every time we hold a meeting that doesn’t need to be held
– Every time we ask for a report we don’t need
– Every time we add another level of sign off
– Every time we ask for another presentation
– Every time we include someone in an email, FYI

We talk about creating value, but what if we focused on stopping destroying it?

People should be facilitated to do their job, to have purpose and contribute to something and to do the work we pay them for.

Not tied up in endless process and organisational spaghetti.

Our goal, our strategy if you will, has to be to maximise the return on investment and that means freeing people up to use their talent, skills and ability.

Not checking whether they are.

HR is UX

Posted on by Blog

Over the past few years, I’ve written repeatedly about simplicity being fundamental to the future of organisational management. I’m not alone, and increasingly there is a trend to recognise this. You know that when Deloitte starts referring to it as an emerging trend that it is no longer niche.

And whilst it is well acknowledged that simplicity is harder to achieve than complexity. I think, simplicity is…..well a little simple.

For me, the future of HR management lies in a concept that is often attributed to technology, but has as much, if not more, to do with human interaction. I’m talking about “user experience” or UX a term that didn’t really exist in this way until the mid 90s.

But UX and the approach to it can inform our HR and people management practices both in our use of technology and in the wider approach to employees.

It’s Sunday at time of writing and I’m feeling a bit lazy, so let’s borrow from Wikipedia the main benefits of UX based design,

• Avoiding unnecessary product features
• Simplifying design documentation and customer-centric technical publications
• Improving the usability of the system and therefore its acceptance by customers
• Expediting design and development through detailed and properly conceived guidelines
• Incorporating business and marketing goals while protecting the user’s freedom of choice

Anyone arguing with any of those? No, I thought not. But do we really practice it?

Think about when you open a new technology product. Let’s take an iPhone. The design, the presentation, the simplicity that belies the complexity beneath, the configurability and personalisation, the navigation and experience. Think of the excitement you felt the first time you saw or experienced one.

When smart phones came in to existence, nobody could see the point. The seemed like an expensive, laborious waste of time and money. But in time we’ve come to find them an essential that we can’t live without.

Now there’s a thing…..

The blame game

Posted on by Blog

I understand your hurt,
And your disapproval.

I understand why you want to bring this to my attention,
And I’m grateful.

I understand why you’re upset,
And and I can see your anger.

I understand why you feel we could do better,
And how we could be more.

So I ask you.

What did you do recently that could have been better?
Where could you have done more?

When did you upset someone?
And how did you deal with their anger?

What did you learn about how you could be better?
And how did you take that?

And, most importantly, how do you feel,
When you hear disapproval?

Each time you complain.

Each time you forcefully make your views heard.

It’s unique.
For you.

But if you’re the person on the phone.
Behind the desk. In the office.

If you’re the person paid to listen.

You’re just another one.

Nothing special.

So what could YOU do. To make that experience difference?

To make it beyond the ordinary.

To really make YOURSELF stand out.