Let's Stop Meeting Like This - Information vs. Action

I've been keeping a list of activities that strengthen me and activities that weaken me. At the top of the list of things that weaken me is the word "meetings".

I did a quick thesaurus check for 'meeting' and found:

conference, assembly, summit, seminar, consultation, get-together, gathering, convention, and board (bored) meeting

Damn... none of those sound very sexy, do they?

Here's a little 'rule of thumb' I invented for testing meeting agendas. 

Ask how many of the items on the meeting agenda are actionable, and how many are informational.

In order to keep me engaged in a meeting, the ratio should be 80% actionable and 20% informational. Otherwise, just send me an email with the information... okay?

Of course, that's not the case. I've audited a fair number of meetings, and the informational items always (yes, always) make up more than 60%. 

Sorry, but that's some sleep inducing shit...

So, here are two suggestions:

1. Go for the 80/20 mix. 80% of the items on your agenda must be actionable.
2. Don't use the word 'meeting'. Personally, I'm starting to use the phrase 'jam session'.
   Other ideas are 'festival', 'carnival', or 'workout'. If you're in a more adventurous culture than mine you might try 'orgy'. Yeah, I'd attend an 'idea orgy'...

'yawn' image by Jean-Pierre Knapen

Trick or Treat Leadership

This... is... classic. A Halloween leadership bonus.

If you didn't see or hear Mike Singletary's post-game conference last week: it's must-see TV.

Mike is the new coach of the San Francisco 49ers. In his first game as coach, he sent one of his own players to the showers.

Some of my favorite quotes from the press conference.

• "It will change"
• "We hit people in the mouth, number one."
• "Number two: We cannot give them the game"
• "Number three: We execute"
• "I will not tolerate players that think it's about them when it's about the team"
• "Cannot play with them. Cannot win with them. Cannot coach with them... Can't do it."

As a leader, is this 'trick'? Or 'treat'?

He's positive. He's got clear values.

He's got a mission and vision.

And he scares everyone in the room...

So, what do you think? Trick or Treat?
Personally, I'd love to play for this guy...

The Management to Leadership Continuum

One question comes up in every workshop I've done around management or leadership.
Is there a difference between management and leadership?
And if so, what is the difference?

I created a quick exercise I do at the start of each management/leadership  workshop I lead, or any time the question comes up in a group setting. Here are the steps:

1. Draw a continuum from Management to Leadership across the top of a big whiteboard.
2. Label the left side with the words ' job', 'tasks', 'characteristics', 'attributes', 'objectives'.
3. Give all the participants Post-it Notes - about 5-7 per person is good.
4. Ask them to list the tasks, attributes, and objectives of managers and leaders on the Post-it Notes. One idea per note. Give them 5 minutes or so. When the energy in the room dissipates, move to the next step.
5. Ask the participants to place their Post-its on the continuum. If a task or attribute is purely management (in their view) put it to the left. Purely leadership goes to the right. If it's in-between, place it in-between. No right or wrong here.
6. Bring the whole group to the board and look at the words. Allow 5-10 minutes for discussion. Why did some tasks get put at different spots across the continuum? Share perspectives. Any Post-its we don't understand? Clarify. What trends do we see? Is anything missing?
7. This discussion is usually rich. Allow it time to develop.
8. I now ask the participants to think about where they need to be, in their current role, on this continuum. I start at the left side and put my marker on the board (the red marker in the picture above). I ask the participants to raise their hands when i reach the point that they need to be. As I walk across the board, I draw the profile of the team.
9. Then I ask them where there are today and walk across the board. Sometimes I draw the profile in another color. In this case, the participants agreed on the point where the red vertical line appears.
10. Discuss the gap.

The picture above was taken at a 2-day management workshop I led in Yokohama, Japan in May.

Words like 'planning', 'scheduling', and 'time-management' show up to the left.
'Attracting talent' and 'mentoring' show up at the half-way point.
'Innovation', 'vision', and 'modeling' are to the right.

You can see from the red profile curve that this group of front-line and middle managers believes they need to be demonstrating the skills and characteristics that are between 25% and 75% on the continuum.
The red vertical line shows that they are currently at the 25% point.

A few observations:

• As a facilitator, this exercise shows me how to calibrate the material for each audience. I know where they need me to focus and I can tie the subsequent topics back to this visual.
• This curve changes by country, department, culture - even by time of year or business cycle.
• A few years ago, most Japanese managers - even higher level ones - would have said that they needed to demonstrate manager skills and attributes. The history of Japanese business has been to follow process. That's changing. Managers are now expected to act more as 'leaders'. They have to (and want to) close the gap.

For broader audiences, you can extend this continuum to include Individual Contributor, Lead, and Supervisor and look at how skills and attributes change over a career.

Is 10% Good Enough for You? (from Seoul, Korea)

Over the past 6 months, I've been working with the technical support group to improve the quality of customer escalation meetings.

We made an rough estimate of how many escalation meetings have been held in this company in the past 25 years.
50 a day (across all our divisions, a conservative estimate) x 365 days x 25 years = 456,250.

So, half a million escalation conference calls.
And how much training have we done?
0. Nada. Zip. None.
Seriously. No one has been trained on how to conduct or contribute to an escalation meeting.

Now, you may think that it's a pretty easy thing to do.
You'd be wrong.

We identified 31 key attributes to a successful escalation meeting (it's since grown to 37).
We then ran a couple simulations with experienced technical support engineers.
The results?
8-12% of the criteria were met.

So, we're delivering a solution that will include some training, job aids, practice, and real-time coaching.

Lesson - don't assume that any job is 'easy'.
Will all tasks or jobs require training? Probably not.
But almost any task or job could use quantification and a job aid.

Unless 10% compliance is good enough for you, that is...

How Effective Are Your Escalation Meetings?

Yesterday, I led a new class I'm designing to strengthen our escalation meeting management.

We've built some role play scenarios that show how the ouput of an escalation meeting falls far short of the product that's needed for a customer meeting.

I did a series of web searches in my research, looking for a 'great conference call template' (especially one where plan of action creation is involved), but came up empty.
So, we designed our own.

It seems like running this type of meeting/call would be straight forward, but we identified 30+ attributes of a well-run call.
In our opening role-play, with senior managers/engineers, we are only hitting 10% of these attributes (room to improve!).
After training, we're hitting 90%.

Of course, we'll follow this up with job-aides and action coaching.
No matter how 'intuitive' something seems, you can't assume it will be done correctly...