"We have a good culture - so why are we STILL in so many meetings!

"We've done a lot of work on culture and agility but we’re still in about 100 meetings a week each! WTF and what can we do about it?!"

 

Yes, I work with lots of very traditional, hierarchical organisations where it’s obvious that their ‘collabureaucracy’ is keeping people in lots of meetings.

But I also work with lots of companies which:

• Have done a lot of work on becoming more nimble already
• Are led by awake, aware people
• Are purposeful and conscious of their impact
• Were founded on empowerment and low hierarchy
• Have actively dabbled in concepts around servant leadership, self-organising teams.

And STILL they are in back-to-back meetings all day.

Does this sound in any way familiar?

Let me talk you through what’s going on and then I'll show you where you might want to look for changes.

 

Reason 1: You're overusing your organisational strengths

I love inclusive, consultative, collaborative organisations and the amazing people who work in them. And conventional wisdom says you can't get enough of these good things! But every strength is a weakness when it's overused.

Taking a strength to the extreme will always harm performance.

- Over-index on inclusiveness >> very slow, bureaucratic decision making

- Over-index on open communication >> bombardment of information which is hard to parse and prioritise.

- Over-index on feedback >> overwhelming and demoralising

Is this your org? What to think about...

All strengths should be held in tension together. Each keeping the other in a healthy range, depending on the circumstances. So think about what strengths are getting overused and which other strengths will hold them in check. How might you create understanding and a language for this in your team and organisation?

An action to try

One example I have used a lot over the last 20 years is take a strength (or value or whatever) and make two lists: what it is and what it isn't. This is a nice collaborative activity as the discussion can be very mindset-shifting for everyone involved.

 

Reason 2: Lack of decision-making ecosystem

I'm just gonna casually slip this in at number two 😂

In your organisation, are you clear about:

- What decisions are we making on a regular basis?

- What types of decisions do we have in this org?

- How do we make decisions and how does that vary by type?

- Who plays what role in the decision making process?

- How are decisions reviewed in retrospect and this process improved?

 
I see two scenarios:

1/ Committee lock down ("No worries, that will need a board paper and can go to the next Steering Group session in... let's see, three months time!")

2/ Free for all ("..." <--- literally nothing said out loud about what decisions are being made, by who, how, when, why)

Almost no organisation does this well and it's not surprising as it's hard to do.

Is this your org? What to think about...

Is RACI the answer? It's a part of it - and a helpful start in understanding the different decision making roles, though I much prefer DACI for a more logical set of roles.

What about a big spreadsheet or detailed process map? Probably not the answer either.

 

An action to try

Instead, sketch out:

- The mindset and culture you want to cultivate around decision making

- The key types / patterns of decisions that need making and how you want to handle them

- A role structure that works for your team or org (whether RACI, DACI or something else)

- A very simple framework for framing and making a decision in a meeting

- How you capture and make decisions transparent in your team/org

 

Do that and you'll be a long way ahead of most teams!

 

Reason 3: Low psychological safety

I know, I know. Can there EVER be anything written about organisational culture without talking about Psychological Safety (PS)? 🤔

For now, probably not!

The thing about some of these very forward thinking organisations is they are often personality-led. There can be big egos around who is the most awake, aware leader and sometimes a bit of a purist approach to reinventing work.

Even if you feel your organisation is a place where people can speak up, you will know if low PS is causing you an excess meeting problem if:

- People feel they need everyone to rubber stamp something

- No one feels safe to take decisions i.e. choose one option and rule out others.

- While things are moving quickly, no one is keen to take responsibility and meetings are a way to distribute accountability

- Leaders are feeling the need to closely oversee and control every step of the process and holding lots of meetings to monitor progress and provide detailed instructions​

- Things that could have been resolved in 10 minutes, drag across several meetings because no one is truly saying what they feel

Is this your org? What to think about...

Let's shift our thinking from a psychological safety to psychological strength - a thoughtfully designed and well scaffolded, semi-permanent containers in which important conflict can take place in safety. It's the strength of space needed to get the job done. Work is inherently not safe for many people BUT we can create containers in which crucial conversations can happen and people can take decisions and move things forward.

An action to try

Use a safety statement at the start of a meeting to build that container. You are crystalising something about the behaviour you want whether that is constructive conflict or encouragement to decide or clarity about what will be discussed vs what they will decide themselves afterwards.

 

 

Reason 4: Too many interlapping complex projects

Many organisations are just working on too many different things at once. You know it, I know it.

Every project or priority you add, creates overlaps and dependencies with other projects - requiring an exponential increase in connection interfaces AKA meetings.

Each project or priority you add to someone's bucket, likely adds anything from 1-10 meetings a week to their diary.

Is this your org? What to think about...

Most organisations I work with, need to reduce WIP (work in progress). Volume of meetings is a natural bottleneck to the volume of projects each team can manage.

An action to try

Option 1: Do fewer - what can you simply cut out that can wait until another priority has finished and has got to value delivery?

Option 2: Do less - can you take a thinner slice of a project? Can you do less work before you have learnt more?

 

Reason 5: Lack of clear vision and priority churn

When the vision isn't clear enough and/or the priorities are shifting very rapidly, the result is... a lot of meetings.

Every time people don't feel clear, they will call a meeting.

Every time priorities shift, a whole load of meetings will be needed.

Combine it with some of the other reasons above and you'll see why it's a perfect storm.

Is this your org? What to think about...

Your vision should be your anchor. Priorities will inevitably move but your overall vision should ground everyone in their every day role. It has a very important job to do and needs to work very hard for agile organisations. To do so, it needs to be clear and specific and centred all the time.

AND, you are probably still shifting priorities too often. If you are unleashing people full gas on something important and difficult - and then having them switch track over and over again before they are anywhere near the end of that cycle, there is a massive people and efficiency cost to this. Yes, people need to be ready to move fast - and often they are. But there comes a priority churn rate at which people become very frustrated and there is just too much 'effort waste'.

An action to try

I don't have a simple answer to this. It requires some hard choices at Leadership Team level. (One for another FrictionFree newsletter - reply to this email if you'd like me to write one on this topic!)

If I couldn't change the pace of priority switching then I would double down on the vision, I would hold priorities lightly, emphasising that this is a road we are going down to explore and we may well need to reverse and try a different road and I would be carefully thinking about which specific activities are appropriate given the level of certainty for this road. See also Lean Start Up as a way to think about this i.e. you test your riskiest assumptions first and minimise work that will be wasted if there is a change in direction.

 

Which one of these is your biggie? Or is it... all of them??!! Let me know on LinkedIn.