A bad meeting culture is a time prison.
You get invited to so many meetings. Because they expect you to be involved. Or they worry you’ll be upset about being left out. Or they think you might need to be there, so they collect you and other invitees like coworker Pokemon.
You simply must attend all of them. Otherwise you’ll miss something. Or, perhaps your absence will be held against you. Or you’ll miss your chance to finally have an impact (or just to keep things from going off the rails).
The meetings accomplish little. It’s talking in circles. A nightmare improv session where everyone pitches in to hear the sound of their voice and pat themselves on the back. “Contributions” that just signal insecurity. There is no active listening here, just moments of boredom (and email browsing) interspersed with “finally, my turn.”
And what’s guaranteed? Yeah, another meeting. No wonder we hear complaints of back-to-back-to-back meetings and not enough time to get anything meaningful done.
It’s easier to act your way to a new way of thinking
than think your way to a new way of acting.
We called this a “bad meeting culture” at the top, but that’s no diagnosis. That’s just how people talk about it.
Culture is a rearview mirror. It’s an abstract concept, too far behind us to do anything about. Anytime someone blames “culture,” I’m reminded of this incredibly important shift:
In short, if you want to see a change, start with the behaviors and artifacts.
In Strategy Teaming, we take Edgar Schein’s path, putting artifacts first and prompting for different kinds of actions in the meeting.
In particular, we prefer meetings that gather around drawings and documents, to keep folks oriented and give them something to shape together.
Sandtable Exercise (2017). The whole conversation is around an artifact.
These meetings do need a deliberate process, but it’s doesn’t have to be difficult.
Could be as simple as making a list of questions, or diverging and converging to surface answers to one of those questions. It could be filling out an experiment template, making a Wardley Map, or just drawing “how it works” together. Hell, I’d even settle for someone screensharing the notes they’re taking about a meandering conversation. That stuff has an impact.
Change your meetings in any of these ways, and you WILL see incremental progress on the challenge at hand.
Want ideas about how to handle the chokehold meetings have over your organization? Book a free 15m chat here! There are so many easy ways to get traction. We’d love to help find one to start!
Ben and David
StrategyTeaming.com