21B Managing Meetings

Crisis Meetings

Crises are everyday occurrences in most complex organizations. They must be dealt with rapidly and effectively as discussed previously in lecture 20. Meetings are necessary and they should be staged to minimize wasting time of workers involved. Stage the meetings as follows:

·       First meeting- gather only those likely to have data needed to define the problem

·       Second meeting- gather only those necessary to solve the problem

·       Follow-up meetings- gather only those needed to status the problem and plan for solution. (Crises are abnormal events so standard information systems aren’t likely to be adequate to status progress and brief meetings such as daily stand-ups are needed.)

Think about how the crisis solving team can be structured so that few meetings are needed. For example, if a manager is available with the necessary problem solving skills that manger can be part of the team and be responsible for reporting status so that other team members need only concentrate on problem solving.

Work Meetings

Many work tasks require collaboration of knowledge workers and collaboration requires communication. Work communication can be informal face to face or electronic involving just two or three workers or it can be formal meetings involving large numbers of workers. Managers are involved as organizers, facilitators, workers or all three roles. Useful guidelines for work meetings include:

·       Separate status reviews from working sessions

·       Keep working sessions small and informal

·       Keep status reviews from becoming working sessions

·       Exploit modern technology including all forms of electronic communications

·       Develop agreed upon guidelines for electronic communications

·       Hold working sessions and status reviews at fixed times and places so that people prepare and attend automatically

A fundamental principle is to minimize information latency* by means appropriate to each situation. If possible co-locate team members to reduce the need for frequent meetings to exchange information.  [* Information latency is the time between when information is generated and the time it is available to others depending on the information for the next steps in their work.]

The availability of inexpensive large screen display projectors, n to one video switches and inter/intra nets makes it cost effective to set up special work rooms where teams of 10 to 25 knowledge workers can gather with their laptops and software tools to simultaneously work and share work results. Many organizations now use such facilities for teams to gather for intense work and information sharing periods of three to four hours two or three times weekly. These sessions must be well planned and workers must come prepared to work and share results in real time. Planning, documenting work and time consuming tasks are performed in between sessions in the work rooms. This approach is called by a number of names but Integrated Concurrent Engineering (ICE) is a common name. This approach is effective because it reduces information latency from minutes to seconds or hours to minutes. It is proven to reduce cost and schedule of complex projects by factors of three to ten.

 If you are responsible or desire to be responsible for teams of knowledge workers I recommend you become familiar with ICE. Don’t let the term engineering dissuade you from investigating this approach for any knowledge worker activity.   There is adequate information on the web so I will not include the details here. Start with:

Observation, Theory, and Simulation of Integrated Concurrent Engineering by Chachere, Kunz and Levitt, CIFE Working Paper #WP087, STANFORD UNIVERSITY, August 2004, or

The Integrated Concurrent Enterprise by David B. Stagney, MIT Thesis, 2003.

Knowledge workers spend much of their time in work meetings and much of the time not in meetings in their ubiquitous cubicles. If your organization is housed in cubicles consider arranging the work space of small teams; those with two to eight members, in a common cubicle. This can often be done by removing partitions or rearranging the cubicles. The objective is to enable the small team’s members to see and talk to each other from their normal workstations. This eliminates the need to get up and walk to another cubicle to ask a question, sending an email or calling a meeting to obtain data from teammates. Information latency is greatly reduced for the small team thereby increasing its efficiency. Yes, it likely increases unproductive social conversation but this loss is more than offset by the increase in efficiency for most teams. For teams larger than about eight it makes more sense to use the ICE technique mentioned in the preceding paragraph.

If you work in a large enterprise with multiple locations it is likely that you and your organization are involved in work spread across locations. In such cases it is impossible to physically co-locate workers but virtual co-location is possible with modern teleconferencing and collaboration software. In planning uses of this technology seek to drive information latency as low as practical as well as to coordinate and status work. In my experience these modern techniques are effective if workers that must interact electronically are first brought together in one location for a day or two to get to know each other. Face to face interaction enables workers to learn each other’s work style and quirks. This makes it easier to understand each other later when interacting via electronic communications in spite of the filtering imposed by these methods.

Be aware that small organizations may not know how to organize to work big projects and large organizations may treat small projects the same as large projects and overkill on status meetings when informal communication is adequate. This is because the methods needed to effectively manage projects do not scale with the size of the project. Methods don’t scale because much of the communication that takes place in the work place is informal communication. Let me explain how this impacts work with extreme examples.

Informal communication is completely adequate if everyone involved in a project is located in the same room. Information needed by one worker from another is available by direct asking. Information needed by all can be posted on the walls so there is little need for formally scheduled meetings. Contrast this tiny project with a giant complex project involving several enterprises located in several different parts of the country or world and each enterprise using its own data bases of project information as well as shared data bases. Workers do not even know who is responsible for generating the information they need, let alone being able to ask for it, without there being formal organization, organization charts, descriptions of responsibilities and similar documentation plus the many types of meetings associated with large projects. Note however that within each separate part of the project there is informal communications working locally as always.

If you are responsible for a new project that is either much larger or much smaller than those you and your organization are experienced with it is wise to call in someone with experience with projects of the size of your new project to help you avoid serious mistakes in organizing the project and structuring the meetings necessary to ensure effective communications.  Mistakes in organizing the project or structuring meetings lead to major time wasters that are also money wasters and threaten the success of the project.

The discussion above is couched in terms of projects because projects have limited lifetimes and organizations that do project works face these problems repeatedly. All organizations are faced with project work from time to time. However, the principles apply to other work types and problems of scale arise in the initial stages of setting up an organization or when the size of the organization increases or decreases in size substantially.

I now digress from discussing work meetings with a personal story about the effects of scale on organizations. Feel free to skip this story as it is just an example of the principles described above applied to manufacturing. I was responsible for two manufacturing plants, plant A producing a product at a rate of about 100 per day and plant B a similar product at a rate of about 1000 per day. Applying the methods that are the subject of this course we had improved the effectiveness of plant A to the point that we had the space and skills available to absorb plant B’s work, which would make plant A even more cost effective. My boss, supporting the move but having a lot more experience in manufacturing than I, told me that my plant A team wouldn’t be able to handle the new work because of the difference in rate. Having the arrogance of ignorance I told him my plant A team was a crackerjack team that was familiar with the materials, processes and machines involved with the higher rate product and I was confident they could do the job. Well the boss was right. My team was indeed familiar with everything involved but the difference in rate. They tried to use the work flow management techniques that worked well at a rate of 100 per day on the 1000 per day production line and these techniques were inadequate. I won’t admit to the amount of money we lost before we got proper work flow management processes in place for the higher rate production but I will say that I was reminded of it several times by the top level financial people in the enterprise.

Problem Solving or Brainstorming Meetings

Problem solving meetings are part of crisis meetings and are in a class of meetings that involve brainstorming. Problem solving meetings are particularly prone to wandering off focus and wasting time. If the meeting room has a white or black board, or an easel, then there is a simple technique for making a problem solving meeting effective. You can use this technique as the meeting leader or as a volunteer secretary. The approach is to write down on the board or easel just the key things needed to keep the meeting on track and to follow a logical sequence of discussion. This sequence is as follows:

1.     First get agreement from the group on the definition of the problem to be solved. If it is your meeting you should have defined the problem in your planning (see next section) and be ready to define the problem with your introduction.

2.     Gather data. In a true problem meeting this means using a tool like a fishbone diagram* to guide brainstorming on the possible causes of the problem. [*Fishbone diagrams, also called Ishikawa diagrams or cause-and-effect diagrams, are diagrams that help collect and organize the causes of a certain event. Consult Wikipedia for a more complete definition.] In a brainstorming meeting you are gathering ideas. Be open to all ideas and write each down for all to see. Make sure everyone has the opportunity to offer ideas. Gather all ideas without evaluation, i.e. make sure ideas are not critiqued in real time.

3.     After all the ideas are written down thin and organize the gathered data. This means consolidating data that is similar into one item, throwing out data that doesn’t seem relevant after brief discussion and identifying any obvious hierarchy or relationships between the remaining data items.

4.     If a fishbone diagram has been generated then prioritize the candidate causes collected so that actions can be assigned to determine if each cause is a root cause of the problem. Some causes are likely the result of other more fundamental causes. It is important to track causes back to root causes. Otherwise solutions may only correct symptoms and not the root causes. It may be that additional data is needed to identify root causes. If so, assign actions to collect the needed data, schedule a follow-up meeting to discuss the new data and close the meeting.

5.     Once root causes are identified brainstorm to collect possible solutions to the root causes if possible solutions were not collected as part of the brainstorming in step 2. Follow the same procedure as for collecting and evaluating causes.

6.     Thin and organize the alternative solutions as described in step 3.

7.     Discuss pros and cons of each alternative and make a decision on the best if sufficient information is available. If additional information is needed then assign actions to gather the information.

8.     Define the steps necessary to implement and monitor the effectiveness of selected alternatives, assign actions, schedule any necessary follow-up meetings and close the meeting.

Using a board or easel to write down relevant information at each step keeps the group on track and having the information available visually to all attendees aids their thinking. Being the recorder of information helps you guide the meeting and keep it focused. Once the members of your organization become familiar with the process outlined here the meetings tend to stay focused because they recognize that the process works and doesn’t waste their time. Whereas it is possible to use a computer and projection screen in place of a white board or easel it isn’t as effective unless the computer operator is particularly skillful in capturing and organizing data. For most people it is easier and faster to use a board or easel.

Make Sure Meetings Are Disciplined- Guidelines for Effective Meetings

The reason for most meetings is to communicate, i.e. gather or disseminate information as efficiently as possible. If meetings go beyond gathering or disseminating information then they become time wasters.  Plan your meetings, have an agenda and a time limit. Planning a meeting means thinking through each candidate item on your draft agenda and answering the following questions:

·       Does this item belong in this meeting?

·       What information must be communicated and/or gathered for each item?

·       How do I introduce each item to focus the discussion so that I get the answers I or the organization need?

·       How do I decide when this item is ready for closure?

·       How much time is it likely to take to discuss and close each item?

If you think through the questions above you can limit the items on the agenda to those that can be covered adequately in the allotted time and you are prepared to conduct an effective meeting. If you are not prepared you risk wasting everyone’s time by getting off track or onto unnecessary topics. Don’t be discouraged if this looks like it takes a lot of planning time. With practice you become proficient at this planning and find that it takes only a few minutes to plan an effective meeting.

Start meetings on time and end them on time. Make it clear that you expect to start meetings on time and do not wait for late arrivals. They soon learn that they are expected to be on time and most people do what is expected of them. If you wait for late arrivals you not only waste the time of everyone present but you condition everyone that it is not necessary to be on time for your meetings. As a result your meetings are always late in starting due to waiting for late arrivals and waste the time of those that arrive on time.

Establish intended outcomes for the meeting at the beginning and get agreement on outcomes. Make sure you have a process to capture actions. It is sufficient to identify the action and responsible person in the meeting. Hold a follow-up one on one with the actionee to discuss details, set up guidelines, due dates and what is expected at midterm and final reviews. These details are critical to ensuring that an actionee understands what is expected but they are not important to other meeting attendees.

Keep on schedule, summarize key points frequently and use group problem solving tools as appropriate. Use your judgment on the necessity of keeping and distributing minutes since the necessity depends on the type and frequency of meetings. Formal organization meetings that are scheduled monthly typically require minutes and weekly staff meetings typically do not as long as actions and other decisions are documented.

Discussing details of problem resolution and issuing detailed instructions to an actionee during meetings are just two examples that result in ineffective meetings. It is the responsibility of the meeting leader to keep the meeting focused on the agenda items. Other items will come up and it is necessary to quickly judge whether the additional item is relevant to the success of the meeting or should be dealt with at another time. Items that are not relevant can be deferred to another meeting, to a one on one, or assigned to someone to resolve outside of the meeting. Although such items must be dealt with quickly make sure you take the time to listen effectively to people bringing up items not on the agenda. They have decided, rightly or wrongly, that the items are important for the group and if you cut them off before they complete their explanation you frustrate them, and thereby demotivate them.

Exercises

1.     Develop straw man agendas for the following meetings for your organization:

1.     Weekly Staff Meeting

2.     Monthly All Hands Meeting

3.     Crisis Meeting to Address an Apparent Case of Fraud in your organization

4.     Status Meeting on a current project in your organization.

2.     Review your answers to the exercises in the middle of this lecture and assess the effectiveness of your organization’s meetings according to the guidelines covered in lecture 21.

3.     Identify any changes you need to make to improve the effectiveness of meetings in your organization.

4.     Incorporate plans for these changes in your action plan.

If you find that the pace of blog posts isn’t compatible with the pace you  would like to maintain in studying this material you can buy the book “The Manager’s Guide for Effective Leadership” at:

http://www.amazon.com/Managers-Guide-Effective-Leadership-Organizations/dp/1449000673/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1346946310&sr=8-2&keywords=Joe+Jenney

or hard copy or for nook at:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Joe-Jenney?keyword=Joe+Jenney&store=book

or hard copy or E-book at:

http://bookstore.authorhouse.com/Products/SKU-000269270/The-Managers-Guide-for-Effective-Leadership.aspx

21A Managing Meetings

Communications

Communications are required in all organizations and the old truism that you can’t communicate too much is indeed true but sometimes communications are ineffective and become time wasters. Remember, managers communicate by what they:

·       Say

·       Don’t say

·       Do

·       And don’t do.

Make sure your actions are consistent with what you say because you can’t explain away behavior inconsistent with what you say. It’s also important to remember that you cannot satisfy all communication desires and it’s not effective to try. In this lecture I address how meetings can be effective communication tools and how to keep meetings from becoming time wasters. This is a long lecture and there are a lot of concepts presented. I recommend that you read through it a couple of times to make sure you capture all the concepts. I have divided the lecture into two halves, 21A and 21B, with exercises at the end at the end of each.

Too Many Meetings

In large complex enterprises many meetings are necessary to ensure effective communications. If managers aren’t cautious unnecessary meetings creep into everyday use and become time wasters. Typically what happens is there are too many meetings within a functional area and too few meetings across functions. If you observe yourself or your subordinate managers holding daily meetings with most of your/their direct reports you should suspect that many of these meetings are unnecessary. Typical causes of too many meetings include:

·       poor meeting discipline,

·       poor information systems,

·       insecure or incompetent managers.

If a subordinate manager is holding too many meetings you must investigate and take action quickly. The manager holding too many meetings must change or be changed to avoid the organization becoming ineffective due to the workers not having enough time free of meetings to do productive work.

The first step is to determine the reason the manager is holding so many meetings. If the reason given for too many meetings is due to meetings being so long that additional meetings are called to complete agendas from previous meetings then the problem is meeting discipline. Solve the problem of poor meeting discipline by teaching the manager better methods and insist that the better methods be followed to reduce the number of meetings and the time per meeting.  Methods for effective meetings are described in the last section of this lecture.

If the reason is poor information systems then work with the manager and others responsible to fix the problems. Sometimes poor information systems can be fixed within the organization using quality improvement techniques discussed in later lectures and sometimes professional help is needed to augment the group’s efforts, particularly if the system is software based. Changing software based information systems can become a costly quagmire. There are always those that argue that available information systems don’t fit the organization’s requirements and therefore a new system must be developed that is tailored directly to the organization’s special needs. Be wary of such arguments. In my experience such thinking leads to long and costly efforts to develop systems that still aren’t effective for the organization. Whenever possible it is advisable to use or adapt an existing commercial system.

Insecure managers should be mentored or coached carefully until they are secure in their job or you determine that they are not ever going to be secure with limited meeting time with their staff. Everyone isn’t suited for management and the sooner you replace someone found not to be suited to the job the better for your organization.

Managers that lack understanding of their organization’s work, lack effective interpersonal skills or insist on excessive meetings in order to micromanage their staff are incompetent managers and must be replaced as rapidly as possible. In some cases sending them to special training, assuming it is available, may work but in most cases it’s better to replace them. You do not have enough time to train, or retrain them yourself, (and some are not trainable) and perform well in the rest of your management responsibilities.

Electronic Communications in Lieu of Meetings

Today electronic communications are used effectively by top management to communicate training, policies and plans directly to all employees. This removes most of the need to pass down communications from top management and therefore reduces the time needed for staff meetings. However, it is important for you to acknowledge communications from top managers and give your staff an opportunity to ask any questions they have. Don’t assume that just because senior management has explained new ideas, policies or plans in emails that everyone understands what is expected of them and how to respond. Remember, it’s your job to ensure your staff understands and is correctly supporting the policies and plans of your superiors; otherwise you are creating an ineffective environment.

If your superiors are pursuing what you and/or your staff believes is a dumb policy or plan it’s your job to work with your staff to figure out how to make the policy or plan effective in your organization. This topic was discussed in an earlier lecture. If you are still unsure how to handle bad policies or plans of superiors please review the earlier lecture again.

Whereas electronic communications do reduce the time needed for meetings and even the need for some meetings don’t let email or an equivalent replace all face to face meetings. As an extreme example, a college dean that I know found that one of his department chairs was using email to conduct annual performance reviews of the professors in the department. Remember this case when you are communicating electronically to your staff and ask yourself; is this topic suitable for an electronic communication or is it so personal or so important that it should be handled face to face?

An important function of an effective leader is informally walking around the organization’s work area and having brief personal interactions with workers. Don’t let electronic communications replace walking around and talking with workers. The primary reasons are to gather information and to demonstrate that you care about the workers, their work and their work issues. Often it is easier for a worker to bring up a problem with the boss when the boss drops by just to say hello or to ask a question. You learn important things by walking around that you do not learn in formal meetings or via email. If you find yourself sitting for long periods at your desk doing email or some other tedious task break up the task by taking time out to walk around for 15 minutes. It not only clears your mind and gets your circulation going it helps keep your workers motivated.

Types of Effective Meetings

I can’t give you an exact list of what meetings are needed or not needed in your organization. You have to use your experience and judgment to determine the cost/benefit of each meeting that you control. Here are some meetings that are useful in most organizations:

•        Staff Meetings

•        Vertical Staff Meetings

•        All Hands Meetings

•        Crisis Meetings

•        Work Meetings

•        Problem Solving or Brainstorming Meetings

Staff Meetings

The one meeting that managers control is their staff meetings. The cost/benefit analysis of staff meetings is subtle because the meetings are rituals and deeply wound up in an organization’s culture. Some of your direct reports expect a staff meeting and feel cheated somehow if you don’t hold regular meetings. Others feel they are a waste of time and only attend begrudgingly. I believe staff meetings are necessary for the staff to feel involved and therefore committed. In my experience it is best to discuss candidly with your direct reports what you intend to include in staff meetings and why. Ask them what they want to include regularly on the agenda. Hold staff meeting regularly; weekly or biweekly. Have an agenda and commit to limiting staff meetings to an hour or even 15 minutes if you can complete your communications in no more than 5 minutes.

Limit your comments to items not suitable for e-mail or personal conversations. This can include explaining new policies, new directions, etc. It is also wise to fully explain new things you or your boss wants. Take time to celebrate successes and give credit to those contributing to successes (remembering what was said earlier about the dangers of rewarding individuals). The rest of the agenda can be what your staff wants. Always leave 5 to 10 minutes at the end to let each person comment on anything they think the group needs to hear. This helps some feel involved and contributing.

Vertical Staff Meetings

Vertical staff meetings are a manager’s way of finding information that is not in regular communications channels; particular information that subordinate managers neglect to report. These meetings also help ensure that the manager’s views are flowed down and understood.  A vertical staff meeting includes the manager plus 5 to 12 workers and subordinate managers with no direct supervisor of any attendee present. The reason for excluding direct supervisors of other attendees is to enable workers to speak freely about things that they see as problems but their supervisor is ignoring. 

The manager uses a third to half the time to explain the ground rules for the meeting and to communicate his vision, near terms goals or other relevant information that the group needs to hear directly from the manager without it being filtered by subordinate managers. The remainder of the time is for questions by the group and answers by the manager. All questions are fair and the manager must commit to answer all questions in the meeting or in a follow-up communication within a day if possible. No question or comment by members of the group is to leave the room without consent of the person asking or commenting. The group should be encouraged to share everything the manager says with the rest of the organization.

Hold vertical staff meetings regularly so that everyone in the organization attends once every year or at least every two years. Hold over lunch if lunch can be provided for the attendees. Keep the time limited to one hour and encourage workers to share their concerns. You find out problems exist that you haven’t heard about any other way. If these meetings aren’t successful at first keep holding them. If the ground rules are followed over time trust develops and workers begin to communicate freely. Problems due to a subordinate manager that are disclosed in a vertical staff meeting without the subordinate manger being present must be handled discreetly without embarrassing the subordinate manager. Otherwise you will lose the trust of the subordinate manager.

All Hands Meetings

Hold one hour all hands meetings monthly if possible. These meetings are to build the trust of employees in their management and the organization, which in turn builds commitment by the employees and effectiveness for the organization. All hands meetings can be held at lunch time if lunch is provided or before work if coffee, juice and donuts are provided.  This is because many organizations do not like to see the overhead expenses associated with all hands meetings during working hours. I am convinced that these meetings are cost effective but proving it is difficult as the numbers are “unknowable”. These meetings are primarily downward communications. A sample agenda includes:

·       Status of the organization’s annual plan

·       Status of any special projects

·       Introduction of new employees with time for the new employees to tell about their background

·       Celebration of successes and acknowledgement of defeats

·       Brief Q & A period

It is important to share real information, including financial data, in order to build trust. Employees are trusted to keep trade secrets and other proprietary information that is more valuable than financial data so there should be no hesitation to share financial data. Withholding such data implies that management does not trust workers and therefore the workers reason that if they aren’t trusted they shouldn’t trust management.

Exercises

1.     Jot down a list of all the meetings you led over the past week. Then think about each one and answer the following questions:

·       What would the regrets be if the meeting was not held?

·       Did the meeting accomplish your objectives for it?

·       Was the meeting efficient and effective or was time wasted with off the track discussions?

·       Do you think the other attendees left the meeting believing it was efficient and effective?

2.     Are you communicating with your organization via effective staff meetings? Vertical staff meetings? All hands meetings?

3.     Is your use of electronic communications sound or are you using emails where face to face meetings should be used?

If you find that the pace of blog posts isn’t compatible with the pace you  would like to maintain in studying this material you can buy the book “The Manager’s Guide for Effective Leadership” at:

http://www.amazon.com/Managers-Guide-Effective-Leadership-Organizations/dp/1449000673/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1346946310&sr=8-2&keywords=Joe+Jenney

or hard copy or for nook at:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Joe-Jenney?keyword=Joe+Jenney&store=book

or hard copy or E-book at:

http://bookstore.authorhouse.com/Products/SKU-000269270/The-Managers-Guide-for-Effective-Leadership.aspx