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Let’s try doings

Meetings can be a living nightmare.
Let’s try “doings” instead. What’s the difference?

Meetings have an agenda, doings a goal.

Meetings cover topics, doings aim for results.

In a meeting, you talk about things.
In a doing, you do things.

To be sure, getting to results can involve lots of talking.
But it’s not about the talking.

Too often, we meet just for the talking.
Ending up with lots of, well, talk but no result.

But where will the talking lead you?
Asking that question is a powerful shift already.

You don’t meet to talk.
You talk to make progress.

Often, when a meeting is over, the work starts.
But when a doing is over, the work is done (ideally, at least).

Here’s a simple recipe:

  1. There’s an issue. (For example, a decision needs to be made. A plan needs to be made. A conflict has emerged and you seek alignment.)
  2. No issue, no gathering.
  3. You agree on what exactly you want to do in the meeting.
  4. You gather in a room.
  5. You do what you said you’d do.

Even if the result is merely a plan, if that’s what you agreed upon as the goal of gathering in a room, then that’s much more than the open-endedness of many meetings that simply end because time’s up.

Getting people together, whether in a meeting room or online, to work on solving problems is great. The problem is when it’s just for the sake of it.

How do you deal with meeting madness?

PS: Don’t get me wrong. There’s tremendous value in “merely” meeting for the sake of it, but there might be better places than a meeting room.

Meeting madness

This meeting could have been a memo.
Unfortunately, no one reads memos.
So it had to be a meeting.

.

The best way to get rid of unproductive meetings is to create an environment where they are not needed.

Can’t quite put my finger on it

Recently, in the mind of some random person: “It’s… odd. I just had two meetings, back to back, and they’ve left me feeling so different, and I’m not quite sure why. The first one had it all – flashy presentation, persuasive arguments, all the right words. It was like a well-rehearsed play, everything in its perfect place. I felt… well, I felt impressed.

“But then there was the second one. It wasn’t as… shiny? We chatted, we laughed. They seemed genuinely curious about what I had to say, which was a pleasant surprise. There wasn’t this rush to get me to agree or nod my head, just this… space. A space for thoughts, feelings… connection?

“I don’t know how to put it. With the first, I felt like I was on a fast-moving train, being shown the sights outside the window. But with the second, it was like a leisurely walk in a park, noticing things together. It’s strange, isn’t it? Both paths led to the same destination, but one journey just felt… richer? Warmer? I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s something about that second meeting that lingers with me.”

The impressive performance in the first meeting can be bought with time and money. Hire a good agency, practice, and you’re there.

The second meeting requires empathy and genuine interest, things that can’t be bought.

What was being said?

It never ceases to amaze me how much time people spend in meetings without writing anything down.

Which leads to time being wasted with repetitive statements and arguments about what was actually being said, let alone: being meant.

Writing things down forces us to become focused and specific.

It streamlines the discussions when everyone can see what was already mentioned. It removes vagueness in the statements when we can challenge a specific wording. And it commits everyone to a written result as opposed to thoughts and feelings that are different in everyone’s memory.

The cool part of the story is that the same benefits apply when you’re having a meeting with just yourself.

“Can all of you see my brilliance?”

Status updates are supposed to quickly inform everyone about the status of a project.

Too often, though, these updates are much rather about the status of the people in the project and carry double meanings along the lines of “I’m not to blame for the delay.”, “This is my kingdom. Don’t you dare to invade it.”, “I’m smarter than her.” etc.

In many cases, this happens when the team can’t see how the project is about something bigger than themselves. And so, they lack a sense of belonging to a team that achieves more than anyone could achieve on their own.

Which means that, effectively, everyone’s on their own team.

Which is why they need to protect their status.

Great project leaders create that sense of belonging. They light the path by communicating with irresistible clarity where we’re going as a team, why we’re going there and why everyone belongs.

Clear communication is revelation work

Some things are hard to understand and even harder to explain. Which is a real problem when this thing is your idea and it has the potential to change something for the better.

Yet, you’re so deeply expert in that field that it’s hard to find simple language. The Curse of Knowledge has its mighty grip firmly wrapped around you: the more you know about a thing, the harder it gets to speak about it in simple terms.

Here’s what happens in many companies at that point:

Meetings are scheduled to figure it out. Long meetings, in fact. Also, PowerPoints are produced. Whiteboards are filled. Heated discussions about the implications of saying “X” vs “Y” erupt. Opinions clash … until … finally … they settle with a compromise that everyone can (only) kind of live with.

The one thing that they didn’t do was speak with their audience. Start a conversation. Figure out what language the audience uses. Check how they really understand what you say. Validate your assumptions. Cross-check them over many conversations.

Clear communication is much more revelation work than it is creative work. It starts with valid data.

What do you mean?

It’s a simple question that changes everything.

And yet, we often shy away from using it rigorously.

We notice that the team member uses a vague statement to gloss over their lack of preparation. But we’re polite and let them get away with it.

Another team member might be struck by The Curse of Knowledge and uses language that most of the team don’t fully understand. But we let her get away with it because she’s the genius.

A third one might make a hand-wavy claim and we let him get away with it because “it’s just a thought”.

This helps no-one. It might feel easier in the moment but it slows everything down in the long run.

“What do you mean?” is a really simple question. When you use it rigorously (as opposed to ruthlessly) it benefits the whole team. When you use it to clarify (as opposed to finger-pointing) it removes misunderstanding.

Clarity is your responsibility.

If the meeting isn’t working, change the meeting.

The default way of dealing with bad meetings is to pick up the phone and check social media, Slack, or mail. This has become an even bigger problem in times of online meetings.

And it’s not even specific to meetings. People watch movies while surfing Instagram. Attend conference talks while replying to mail. Meet with their friends in the park while at the same time meeting with other friends on Snapchat.

Here’s a rule of thumb that has proven very useful for me: If an activity doesn’t feel worth my full attention, I change the activity – rather than add another activity.

If the meeting isn’t working, change the meeting.

If the conference is a waste of time, leave (which is especially easy with online conferences).

If the movie is boring, turn it off (or watch a different one).

If the conversation with your friends is leading nowhere, give it a direction.

Justifying a meeting

If you want to be responsible with people’s times, you need to justify the need for a meeting from quite a number of angles, each of which can be summarized with a simple question:

Why do we need the meeting?

Including: Is it really required that we have that meeting? Or might there be more effective ways of dealing with the matter?

Who needs to be in the meeting?

Is the purpose of the meeting important enough to justify asking for these people’s presence? But also: Will their contribution be large enough to justify their presence at the meeting?

How long does the meeting need to be?

Can we ask this much time from the people who need to be there?

When do we need to have the meeting?

Is everyone who needs to be there available at the time of the meeting? And would it be the best use of their time?

Where do we need to have the meeting?

Is it required for everyone to be in the same room (adding to their time budget if it’s a physical space)?

Doings often make it much easier to find answers to these questions than meetings. When it’s clear what needs to be done, it’s much easier to identify the people who can and cannot contribute, whether we need to gather in the same physical space and whether the product of the doing is worth spending the time.

Rewarding meetings

Meetings are madness. We all know better. But still, most of us don’t do better. Because we’ve accustomed ourselves to the way that meetings are run. We’ve let inefficient meetings turn into a habit basically from the very first meeting we joined (we were the juniors, after all).

It’s just the way it is. They’ve always been like that. Get over it.

Or not.

Let’s revisit this statement: We have allowed inefficient meetings to become a habit.

The thing with habits is that they are automatic behavior. Once you experience the trigger for the habit, the habit takes over. The trigger in meetings is the meeting room. The habit is to drift away in your mind doing things like planning your next vacation, thinking about new career opportunities, or just catching up with mail.

The bad news is that habits, even if you’ve uncovered them, never go away, as Charles Duhigg argues in his fabulous book “The Power of Habit”. Bad habits can only be replaced by new habits.

One possibility to replace a habit is via what Duhigg calls the “reward”. For example, for some of you a reward of the inefficient meetings habit might be that you feel like you’ve managed to catch up with mail (finally!). Much better than to waste your time listening to a boring PowerPoint presentation.

So, the question becomes: How can you make the reward of paying attention more desirable than the reward of catching up with mail?

Let’s look at what causes meetings to feel so inefficient. Some of the more important ones are:

  • Too many participants who don’t have anything meaningful to contribute.
  • Too many topics that don’t impact us.
  • Nobody’s prepared.
  • Statements (especially when they’re conveyed via PowerPoint) are vague, abstract and inconcise.
  • Nothing comes out of it. People make great promises that they never keep.

Making meetings worthwhile means eliminating these causes. If you’ve got something to contribute, if you can articulate your thoughts with clarity because you’ve prepared well (and don’t rely on your teammates to figure out what you mean), if what gets agreed upon gets actually done because people take responsibility, people will pay attention because they will feel like they can affect change.

I believe that that’s the actual meeting problem: People feel that their contribution doesn’t matter (that much). So, if you manage to make every meeting member’s contribution matter a lot, your meeting problem will vanish. If their contributions matter and have an actual impact, then that’s potentially a much bigger reward for people than catching up with mail.

Here are a couple of steps you can take towards this:

  • Enforce a being prepared policy!
  • Insist on clarity (Say what you mean)!
  • Have people take on responsibility (Mean what you say)!
  • Include only the people who can contribute in a significant way or are directly impacted!
  • Exclude people who don’t contribute or aren’t paying attention!

In other words: switch to a doing!

Spread the Word

Picture of Dr. Michael Gerharz

Dr. Michael Gerharz