Seven specific 'mechanisms' you must understand if you want to improve collaboration

A crash course in the seven mechanisms that will fundamentally change how you meet and collaborate - and therefore how you decide and get stuff done with others.

 

Before I share this week's idea, I want to offer my solidarity for all my black, brown and immigrant readers in the face of the shameful racism in the UK over the last week. If I haven't DM'ed you already, my inbox is open for a conversation, a rant or an ask. 

Now for the crash course.

No one has time to do a long course on 'running meetings better'. They just don't. 

And anyway, so much of the advice on running meetings better is completely ineffective! It sits at surface or process-level - like having an agenda. Nowhere near enough nuance to help people create fantastic value in a room together.

So I have challenged myself to create a < 30min ecourse for less than £100 which will help anyone to reduce their meeting load, change how people behave in their meetings and to create huge and obviously valuable progress every time they meet.

It will focus on what I uncovered in my PhD research - namely that meetings are influenced by a range of underpinning mechanisms and it's these we need to tackle, if we want to think, decide and do better in groups.

Today, I'll share those seven mechanisms with an example of how to intervene in simple ways for each one. I'd love to know what you think.

 

Mechanism 1: Precision

Problem: We are spending too much precious meeting time and energy on activities that are not a good use of synchronous time like updating or consuming information. This is essentially a design issue. Meetings are booked with low precision and lots of tasks are lumped in together.

Answer: Take non-sync work OUT of precious meeting time and free people up for deep work. 

How? Flipped meeting.

Take things that are not well served by group sync time out, specifically:

- Content consumption

- Digestion / consideration / reflection

- Consultation

- Information

This is a big habit shift as it requires people not only to design meetings differently but to complete work outside the meeting differently.

I will explain how to do this in my ecourse and share templates that will make this easy and normal. 

 

Mechanism 2: Group mind

Problem: It takes 20 minutes of each meeting to figure out what meeting you're in.

Answer: Simplify the mental processing each meeting requires

How? Social contracting

A social contract (unlike a 'contract contract') is an unwritten set of expectations about any type of collaboration - at work or indeed at home! As social contracts are implicit, they are often not shared between parties. You think it's one thing. I think it's another. Someone else has no clue either way! There is no Group Mind and that means it's difficult to know what to say and how to behave.

A meeting is a pop up event that thrives on a social contract. An agenda is one example of a social contract. A good social contract means that everyone understands what we're trying to achieve, what they are expected to contribute and how we're going to work together. Often an agenda goes nowhere near achieving any of those three things. It's a list of topics. We can create a much more powerful social contract and in the ecourse we'll look at exactly how to do that. Here's an example.

Another way is to develop some signature meetings: clear norms to guide the key types of meetings you need in your organisation to drive value and how they work best. Get people to become experts at each signature meeting type (and know how to vary and flex them).

 

Mechanism 3: Contribution

Problem: It's crucial to hear all voices but just 'discussing' something makes this hard to do and it can be very inefficient. One person talks then another person talks, then another etc etc. 

Answer: Use light structures to enable full contribution, truly effectively

How? Scaffolding

In FewerFasterBolder, scaffolding is this set of light structures that help encourage full contribution. You can explore my top three scaffolds here.

  

Mechanism 4: Candour

Problem: Lots of words... but we're not getting to what matters. And we need to.

Answer: Teach and make it safe to disagree in important and healthy ways

How? Strong space

A strong space means creating a container in your team, your meetings, your conversations for connection and candour where people feel they can say what they really think and feel in service of the task and team. It's how we speed up collaboration and head off risks. Bad news is good news if you know it soon enough.

More on how to create a strong space here.

 

Mechanism 5: Agreements

Problem: Finishing meetings with as much uncertainty as you started. Often this is because no one wants to force a decision or overrule others. Language is tentative and 'unclean' i.e. not precise.

Answer: Drive real progress out of complex discussions

How? Sharpening questions

Sharpening questions are the simplest way I know to intervene when there is a lack of progress. Here are a number of questions I use all the time to turn discussion into decision and action - i.e. clean, clear agreements. Here are some of them:

• What's the best possible use of our time today? What will we walk out of this session with?

• What information are we missing and how can we get it fast?

• What do we agree on and where is there still uncertainty?

• Is that a decision? If so, who do we need to tell?

 

Mechanism 6: Capture

Problem: Great stuff that happens IN the meeting fails to transition into real action back IRL

Answer: Capture outcomes and put them to work quickly for the organisation

How? Capture canvas

Making a list of actions (and sharing them!) is a good start but it's not enough to capture the value of a meeting. I capture in four core categories:

- Decisions

- Actions

- Car park

- Heads up

...and I use a table to do this so I can see as much of it as possible at the same time. If it's a recurring meeting, I do it in one doc.

Here's more on this technique.

 

Mechanism 7: Relationship capital

Problem: There is low trust in general across teams and meetings are compounding the problem.

Answer: Use meetings to demonstrate fairness, consistency, clarity, safety and a listening mindset. 

How? Meetings as demos 

Without relationship capital, we merely transact at work. We need relationships that are big enough to get the job done and traverse the inevitable bumps in the road.

You can develop relationship capital through demonstrating and designing for brilliant collaboration in meetings. Meetings are the currency of collaboration. They are a public theatre for culture and values. Use how you facilitate meetings to demonstrate and moderate the values, behaviour and norms that are needed. Use them to deepen and strengthen relationships, exposing each other's experiences, beliefs and worldviews to break down mistrust and assumptions.