If you have been invited to a facilitated meeting which includes a link to this page, this is what you can expect
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Effective Structure
Purpose – The meeting will have a clearly defined goal, communicated in advance, and prominent within the meeting. The goal will be revalidated at the start of the meeting and its fulfilment reviewed at the end. Click here to Read More
Why?
Poorly defined objectives lead to inefficient meetings
One of the biggest problems with meeting efficiency is poorly defined (or even non-existent) objectives. This especially true of regular or routine meetings, where a clear purpose for. the meeting may be lost in time, obsolete, assumed. Or the purpose may have become incidental, and the meeting becomes whatever the leader or influential participants feel it needs to be. As a result, there can be little regard to efficient design of the meeting to best achieve its purpose.
Alternatively, the meeting objective may be recently defined but vague or ambiguous – to decide this, or plan that, with little reference to what the decision or plan is to achieve, or the changes that need to be facilitated in the participants in order to ensure the decision or plan is best enacted.
Lack of clear purpose frustrates people’s efforts
Meetings are the most criticised activity in modern working practice – by the participants at least (the meeting leaders all too often think they are working fine, but are frustrated by the confusion and lack of progress that emerges as a result). They are also the least measured, improved or designed activity, so the criticism is hardly any wonder when you think about it.
Efficient meetings have very clear objectives which provide good meeting leaders with a mandate to design a clear and efficient process to achieve those objectives, and thence to facilitate participants through that process. The reality is that, if the objective is not crystal clear, the design (If it happens at all) will be subject to the same muddy thinking, and your attendance will most likely waste a good proportion of your time.
Shared purpose empowers people to work together
But meeting objectives are not just about design and facilitation, they are also the means by which all the attendees can take personal responsibility for aligning together behind a clear, common purpose – individually empowered to be part of achieving it. For this reason, you can expect that the objective will be openly reviewed right at the start of the meeting. Not as a tickbox exercise, but as a sincere means to confirm what people want to achieve. This can help to refine the objective if it is missing something or unclear in part. It also forms a contract between the attendees as to what they are all there to support each other in achieving.
Further meeting manifesto thoughts on purpose
Process – There will be a clearly designed process for the meeting to achieve its purpose. Where possible, agendas will be in the form of questions to be addressed in support of that process. Click here to Read More
Why?
Harnessing the power of questions
Questions can form a clear logical and understandable framework of the uncertainties that need to be resolved if the meeting is to result in confident agreement about how the purpose is to be realised. Agenda items like ‘Consider the options’ provide less clarity of what is expected from the team than a question like ‘How can we be confident our ideas include the best contemporary thinking on this topic?’
Exactly what questions need to be addressed, and the order in which they are best addressed, depends in large part on the journey the participants will need to take if they are to form an effective, inspired and committed team in delivering the objective.
Understanding the journey to be taken
A good leader may already have a good grasp on the journey that their own team (and its individual members) requires, but what of leading a meeting of ‘strangers’ where the leader may be unclear on where people are starting out from and the gaps the meeting will need to address?
In such situations, you might expect that the meeting, and the run up to it, may involve one of two things. Either some sort of interview to explore around: where you are coming from; what you see as success, and why; your concerns; past experience of success and failure in this area; any learning you would include; and what you want out of this first step. Or alternatively, an early activity designed to draw out and reconcile some of this thinking (which may involve brief feedback on any interviews that may have been conducted).
Validating and adjusting the agenda
The result of this preparation or early activity can then be used to validate or adjust the questions that have been articulated in the published agenda. Once this is done, it is likely that participants will be asked to confirm that they are willing to support the process, and adjust it when required to achieve the agreed purpose.
Further meeting manifesto thoughts on process
Design Thinking – Wherever appropriate, the meeting will use design thinking in the form of best-practice tools to engage participants in working together to achieve the goal. Click here to Read More
Why?
The transformative power of Design Thinking
Design thinking began in the 1950s and 1960s, and fueled amazing transformations ever since, such as the Japanese quality revolution and Google’s ventures programme. It achieves this success through two key strategies: intelligently structuring questions to engage the best of people’s thinking; and capturing the outcomes in a form where helpful patterns and insights can easily be identified. Design thinking is tremendously powerful and continuously evolving, and it enables meetings to achieve their goals efficiently.
Overcoming barriers to collective empowerment
So why, after 60 odd years of development, is it not more prevalent?
The problem with design thinking is that it empowers people to think collectively and independently and to have a voice, and it requires facilitative leadership skills to harness all that productively whilst maintaining that sense of empowerment. Skills which provide confidence in relinquishing control at the detail level knowing that they have the proven insight and capability at the meta level to orchestrate eventual success, even arriving at better solutions than they imagined. It is primarily about successful servant leadership.
Shifting leadership paradigms in a complex world
Unfortunately, most people’s time in business schools has not grounded them those skills. It has probably taken them more in the direction of how to arrive at the ‘right’ answer themselves. As a result, while they may not see it that way, their approach is more directive by nature. They have achieved success and promotion by knowing what to do and leading from the front. And relinquishing all of that can be scary.
But faced with increasing complexity, uncertainty, and the advent of Agile practices, Design Thinking is gradually receiving the recognition it deserves. Yes there are still plenty of leaders and senior people who prefer meetings that they can effectively dominate by force of logic and personality, and who can nurture their brand and reputation in this way, but times are changing.
Further meeting manifesto thoughts on Design Thinking
Meta Perspective – The meeting leader (facilitator) will be responsible for maintaining awareness of the meta processes at play in the meeting, and for initiating changes in them – often subtly but sometimes explicitly. Click here to Read More
What does this mean?
The nature of meta-processes
Meta processes sit above the content of what is being worked on in the meeting. They concern ‘how’ the content is being worked on, and consist of two types of process. The design of the meeting and the process or flow of how it is to deliver its goals – as prepared or selected by the leader beforehand. And the emergent process arising from the interaction of people within the meeting, and how they:
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Define, maintain, and evolve a shared and aligned intent for what is to be achieved
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Support, utilise (and sometimes adapt) mechanisms for working together to deliver that intent
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Engage in, and contract for, specific responsibilities both within and outside the meeting
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Interact with each other to utilise the best of what each can contribute to achieving the outcomes
Guiding dynamics and collective focus
Facilitative leaders are skilled both in the initial design of the meeting to achieve the above, and in monitoring and understanding the subsequent dynamics of how the meeting evolves, and what might be utilised to keep this on track. Often this will be effected subtly in ways that may not be obvious to the group. But sometimes it may involve engaging the group in explicitly thinking through and making changes. Please fully support the leader in doing this.
Trusting the leader’s meta-perspective
However, please be aware that the design of the meeting is the leader’s prerogative. It is not helpful to have 15 different perspectives on ‘how’ the meeting should proceed and, where this happens, it rarely ends well. However, the leader may solicit help and ideas from the group (indeed that may even be part of the meeting design) but will have the final say on such matters. The design of the meeting needs to be experienced to be fully appreciated and understood, and participants will have the opportunity to feedback their perspectives in the review at the end.
Because of the need for the leader to focus away from the content, and thereby to be accepted as acting impartially by all participants in respect of the content, they should not be expected by the group to engage in the actual discussion. They can however ensure that their perspective (if they have one) is reflected by another participant included for that purpose.
Further meeting manifesto thoughts on meta-perspective
Use of Timers – Timers may be used as a means to better support a flow of participation. Where these are used, participants will be expected to seek a balance of perspectives within the allotted time. Click here to Read More
Why?
Why discussions can get bogged down
Getting to a 100% correct solution can take a lot of time, particularly where, as is often the case, not all of the data is yet available to guide that solution. In these situations, opinions as to what that data might be tend to vary, and to dominate the discussion. The sense that we need the ‘right’ answer, and that ‘this is where and when it happens’ can lead people to push their honestly held opinions strongly, to the extent of not fully engaging with other perspectives. And this can all too easily lead to entrenched and circular debate.
Timers can help maintain perspective
Timers, and sometimes competition between teams, can help people rehearse what the answer might be. And often when this happens, people find that, even though the (draft) answer may only be 60-80% right, it is sufficient to make progress, and also to help clarify and obtain the data needed to refine it. Furthermore, the safety net that the resulting solution will be tested rather than cast-in-stone gives people the confidence that, if their ‘right’ answer was not yet part of the solution, that will become evident, and corrected, very soon.
Embracing Agile principles (in part)
Timers fit in very well with the Agile philosophy and relate to two very empowering concepts within that. The first is the acceptance that “everything is a prototype, until it isn’t”. In other words, whatever we have, or newly create, is a means to gather data on how it can be improved. It can however be selected to act as the solution until it is improved. The point is, that even if the solution proves to be ‘perfect’ at a particular point in time, the world is changing increasingly fast around us, and the potential for improvement will inevitably return soon. And at that point, it is back to being a prototype, providing a basis for gathering data to fuel that improvement, and inspire the next prototype.
The power of too little time
The second concept is ‘the power of too little time’. The challenge of arriving at a (reasonable, if not perfect) answer in a short fixed timescale helps people to be more pragmatic about their contributions and their responses to the contributions of others. Agile design tools such as Design Sprints, and Lightning Decision Jams have consistently demonstrated the creative, constructive and energising power of such techniques, and have done much to shift the paradigm of entrenched debate.
Further meeting manifesto thoughts on using timers
Engaged People
Human Centric – The design and operation of the meeting will support the primacy of people. Process will be used in support of this. Special needs in respect of participation should be raised with the leader beforehand. Click here to Read More
Why?
Process should serve people, not vice-versa
Good meetings are not about using people to reach decisions and plan actions – they are about utilsing decision-making and planning to align, equip, inspire, and empower people. Arriving at the perfect decision is sterile if people are insufficiently engaged to take ownership to make it happen. The result can too often be seen in delays, incomplete actions, and lack of entrepreneurial drive.
Facilitating constructive and inclusive contributions
However, people being people, they often are all too inclined to get in each others way, misunderstand, ignore quiet people, and occasionally seek to dominate through force of character or opinion. Process, particularly in the form of best-practice thinking and collaboration tools, can be used to ensure more constructive and balanced means of contribution, where everyone can see their contributions respected and woven into the emerging solution. Process can also be used to intentionally disrupt, or challenge, or discomfit assumptions and entrenched paradigms. Or too play back trends or patterns in the emerging consensus.
Ensuring the best quality of input
However, the final say will always be human. This is vitally important for both ideological and practical reasons. That said, the human ‘say’ needs to be at the top of its game. And to achieve this the meeting process needs to accommodate human needs, particularly in respect of breaks, sustenance and embracing diversity.
Therefore it is important that where breaks are agreed, they are taken fully for the purpose they were intended – to use the time of the break efficiently to prepare ourselves mentally, emotionally, physically and biologically to be present without interruption, and at the top of our game, for the next session – however long that might be.
Further meeting manifesto thoughts on human centricity
Participation – The attendance will have been carefully considered. Everybody is expected to bring the best version of themselves, and will be enabled and expected to participate fully. There are no passengers. Click here to Read More
Why?
The power of shared learning
Effective meetings are essentially a collective learning process. The only thing they can change in reality is how the participants in the meeting think and feel about a situation – their understanding, enthusiasm, energy, insight, confidence, sense of purpose, resolve, cohesion, intention … It is not the decisions that determines the success of the meeting, it is people’s true intentions in regard to those decisions that matter. If all the participants leave a meeting with exactly the same mindset and attitudes they entered it, then the meeting has been a waste of time.
Delivering symphony
In a well-designed meeting, the participants will have been selected with care for the role they will need to play in orchestrating eventual success. And the process will have been designed to best ready them for that role, or to fulfil that role in the meeting. However, this can only be achieved if people fully engage with the goals, the process, and each other. This is why there is an emphasis at the start of the meeting of explicitly agreeing the purpose, process and ground rules with the participants.
Mutually supporting rapid and purposeful insight
Equally, efficiency in the meeting depends on how fast the required learning can emerge, and that depends on participants deliberately and determinedly bringing ‘the best version of themselves’ to enabling the meeting to happen. To be fully present, and see what is needed, and play their part in a way that best enables everyone else to play theirs.
In a good meeting, everybody learns, but only if they make themselves fully available to that learning.
Further meeting manifesto thoughts on participation
Ground Rules – An explicit contract on the expectations of participation will be mutually agreed between participants at the start of the meeting. Everybody is responsible for ensuring that it is honoured. Click here to Read More
Why?
The importance of a mutually supportive environment
An efficient meeting requires that everyone is able to contribute of the best of themselves and to support others in doing the same. However, it is all too easy to do things which frustrates, undermines, or demotivates people from putting in that effort and constructive vulnerability. And often that might not be the meeting leadership, it can frequently be the result of poor interactions with other participants.
Fostering positive interactions
People’s behaviours and attitudes to each other and to the flow of the meeting can make all the difference to how people feel about their contribution and their commitment to the emerging outcomes.
Ground rules are a means to defining what behaviours will be most productive in ensuring a successful outcome for everyone, and also contracting with each other a willingness to support and be accountable for those behaviours. An example set of such ground rules can be seen here.
Ownership through input
That ‘contracting’ needs to be explicit if it is to be effective. This means that, while there may be standard groundrules proposed to the group, the group may adapt these and supplement them with their own thoughts and ideas based on their experience together. In practice, with a good starting set of groundrules, additions to them typically only amount to one or two.
Further meeting manifesto thoughts on ground rules
Listening – Quality of ‘listening’ will be treated as paramount, both in regard to verbal and written contributions. Everybody is expected to be (explicitly) accountable for this within the meeting. Click here to Read More
Why?
The impact of feeling heard
There are multiple validly-held perspectives in each meeting, of which ours is only one. Efficiency is achieved by everybody understanding and fully appreciating those perspectives, and the reasoning behind them, in the minimum time. Good listening, in reality and in appearance, is key to this.
The reality is, if people do not feel heard or appreciated, they will repeat themselves until they are. Or they will opt out and their contribution and commitment to the outcome will be lost. The former loses time through to repetition, increasingly entrenched views, and circular arguments. The latter results in a lack of progress, support, and creative input following the meeting.
Tuning into ourselves and others
However, in listening to others, we also need to listen to ourselves. The diagram on the right illustrates two very common but different attitudes that we can bring to our interactions with others. And, often, we can be unaware of which one is going on inside us unless we pause to check in with ourselves. Furthermore, if we are subconsciously red, nuances in our tone and body language can easily trigger others to go on the defensive and ‘go red’ themselves, often without really noticing it.
Resetting for collaborative success
If we have any sense that the dialogue is gaining red overtones, we are responsible for highlighting this on behalf of the group, and creating space for the group to acknowledge this and take a moment to deliberately and intentionally reset themselves to ‘green’. Operating in the ‘green’ will not only enable us to achieve the goal faster and more enjoyably, it also creates a subconscious interaction that better enables emergent insights and ideas to arise from the group.
Further meeting manifesto thoughts on listening
Leadership – The meeting leader will have been trained in facilitative leadership skills to help them better understand the dynamics of the meeting and their range of options to maximise success. Click here to Read More
Why?
The future of leadership
The ability to design and facilitate activities which enable groups of people to self-discover better outcomes, and the confidence to enable it to happen, is not yet a common leadership skill. And yet it is key to generating the very best solutions, and building commitment and ownership in people to ensure they are delivered. Furthermore, this level of intelligent autonomy is key to thriving in the increasingly complex, uncertain and fast-changing world of modern business.
Facilitative leadership skills
It requires: a knowledge of the psychology of groups and their patterns of success; awareness and practice in the range of tools which enable groups to work effectively together; skills in subtle techniques that (almost unnoticed) help resolve problems and move things forward; confidence in knowing when to let things run, and when and how to intervene constructively. Furthermore it benefits greatly from training, experience, continuous learning and mutual support.
How it impacts your meeting
Your meeting leader will have: clearly defined the purpose of the meeting, and used that to research and design a practical process for achieving it; identified appropriate tools to maximise participation in arriving at the intended outcomes, and set them up where required; equipped themselves with contingency approaches to ensure the meeting remains productive; prepared their mind to best serve the group through monitoring and responding to what is going on at the meta-level.
Please support them in this.
Further meeting manifesto thoughts on leadership
Active Learning
Preparation – The meeting may well require participants to undertake some preparation beforehand to ensure that participants are sufficiently informed to play a full part in the discussions. It is vital this is completed. Click here to Read More
Why?
Arriving un-prepared is unprofessional
Meetings are rarely the most efficient means to share information that can be more quickly and easily read by participants, at their own pace, skipping over bits they already know, and delving more deeply into bits they don’t. Attempting to achieve the same level of understanding uniformly, for everybody, within the start of a meeting is very inefficient, time consuming, energy sapping and non-participative.
But the reason it is so common in meetings is to compensate for people’s failure to behave professionally and take responsibility for doing that preparation. However, that compensation has, in itself, penalised and rewarded the wrong behaviours, and let to a situation where people turn up expecting to be ‘fed’, but then criticising meetings as boring, inefficient and unproductive.
Lack of professionalism should always be addressed
Efficient meetings are achieved by focusing on those things that are most efficiently and powerfully achieved together, and expecting that people take responsibility for diligently undertaking those things that are most efficiently achieved individually. The reward for doing so is in faster moving, more exciting and inspiring and successful meetings. The penalty for not doing so is in line with failure to conduct other important aspects of your role in a professional manner. It will diminish your contribution, and inevitably those of your colleagues also, and it cannot be overlooked.
Cultivating a focused and present mindset
However, there is one piece of individual preparation that can be efficient at the start of good meetings, because it is something that is much more difficult for people to achieve in their busy schedules. That is starting the meeting with a clear mind, devoid of frustrations and concerns from the preceding activity, and readied to bring the best of ourselves to whatever this meeting needs from us. Efficient meetings may well include a short period of silence or mindfulness at the start of the meeting for everyone to put past concerns behind them, focus on what is coming up, and adjust their inner condition to ‘green’ and ‘open’.
Further meeting manifesto thoughts on preparation
Actions – For reasons of efficiency, the meeting will require participants to diligently deliver outcomes post meeting. These will be clear, agreed, timetabled, practical and with a clearly defined owner. Click here to Read More
Why?
Focusing on what meetings do best
Meetings are efficient to the extent that they do things that are best achieved by working together at the same time. This may include things like: aligning people behind a shared purpose; building a sense of belonging and teamwork; collective affirmation and building shared confidence and trust; bouncing off each other to trigger ideas and insight; agreeing a shared understanding of a problem and/or way forward; recognition and affirmation.
Delegating what they don’t
However, once these things are achieved, it is inevitable that there will be a whole host of activities to enact and deploy the conclusions of the meeting. And it is highly likely that these will be most efficiently undertaken by individuals and smaller working groups, outside of the meeting. These ‘actions’, and how well they are completed, will determine the ultimate success of the meeting.
Why delegation fails
Sadly, actions typically prove to be another area of meeting inefficiency. It is not uncommon to discover that they are not completed in the agreed timescales, and then further meetings are scheduled to chase actions, to report on them, and even to progress them. This massively increases the overall meeting time required to deliver the goal and generally adds to people’s dissatisfaction with meetings.
The reasons behind this tend to be a number of things: lack of clarity or accountability; poor prioritisation; over-optimism and unrealistic expectations; lack of commitment or ownership for the task; and a tradition of incomplete actions being ‘acceptable’, even ‘expected’. The consequences however are that twice as much time is spent in meetings than needs to be, and delivery and/or full adoption is regularly delayed.
Ensuring better delegation
Efficient meetings use two key strategies to overcome this. The first is to ensure that all actions are unambiguously and explicitly recorded toward the end of the meeting, with clear ownership, timescales, and quality deliverables. And the second is to ensure that everyone is committed to playing their part in making it happen, and that they realistically believe it will happen.
Further meeting manifesto thoughts on actions
Recording – There will be a record of the key decisions, actions, and relevant background and insights that can be easily accessed after the meeting, but this is unlikely to be in the form of written minutes. Click here to Read More
Why?
The importance of meeting records
An accessible reference of what has been agreed, and all of the points of insight and value around that are key to: helping people to retain the important learning; plan the resulting actions; address subsequent points of disagreement; and maintain ownership of the outcomes.
The limitations of formal minutes
However, formal minutes can often delay this availability. Furthermore, producing them can place an unnecessary administrative burden on people, reflect unintentional bias from the perspective of the author, distance people from the emotional connection they have with their own contributions, obscure how things came together, make it more difficult to evolve the discussion further, and waste time. They are rarely utilised to an extent that justifies the effort and time spent in their production, checking and approval.
The potential of online whiteboards
The easy availability of online whiteboards provides a great alternative to this. All of the content and contributions to the discussions can be laid out (even as a by-product of the meeting itself) as a visual, cross-referenced, and annotated flow which is immediately accessible and non-volatile. People can readily use the whiteboards to update people on the outcomes of their actions from the meeting, and can see, support, and augment the progress of others in the same way.
Enhancing engagement and continuity
People revisiting the whiteboard can quickly be reconnected with their thinking and emotions as a result of visual cues, and can trace their own contributions in the collective flow toward the finished items. The visual, spatial, and connected nature of the record makes it a lot easier to retain mentally, and can help initiate new participants into the evolving picture and rationale. And all of that is available as background to taking the discussion on further when required. It also serves asynchronous elements of the meeting.
Online whiteboards are not just for remote meetings
Furthermore, while such whiteboards come into their own in meetings of remote participants, they can also easily support the use of best practice participation and collaboration tools even in physical co-located meetings. And even if, for reasons of inter-personal dynamics or bonding, such tools are utilised physically as wall templates/canvases in the room, whiteboards readily support the use of cameras to record the content of those templates.
Further meeting manifesto thoughts on recording
Review – The performance of the meeting will be reviewed, by the meeting, at the end of the meeting. The learning from this will be utilised to improve participation and facilitation in future meetings. Click here to Read More
Why?
Lack of review leads to lack of improvement
Meetings are about the only key business process that is not measured, monitored, or routinely improved. The lack of regular review of the meeting process has led to a situation where their performance and efficiency falls well below that of other business processes. This failure has meant: more meetings are needed to achieve the same outcome; a large chunk of people’s time, energy and enthusiasm is wasted; people end up busier and busier as a result; and they are frustrated by many of the meetings they attend.
Review is the primary basis for learning
Meeting review provides a means to learn from each meeting that is conducted. It helps identify and celebrate the behaviours and practices that have added value, and to clarify those behaviours and practices that have delayed or diminished that. The outcomes of the review can help the leader improve their meeting design and their methods of facilitation, and it can help participants better understand their own personal responsibility for meeting effectiveness.
Reviewed meetings have huge potential
Good meetings have huge potential to inspire, grow, empower, motivate, align, and affirm individuals and teams in their role. They can increase creativity, innovation, partnership, productivity, clarity, ownership, and progress faster than any other process when well designed to do so. Review provides the insight to ensure that they are increasingly well designed.
Further meeting manifesto thoughts on review
Relevant Links:
Daily re-restructuring for agility? How adaptive structures maximise agile engagement.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast – but what sort of strategy are you feeding it?
Facilitating mental wellbeing – The power of adventure in keeping our minds fit & healthy.
Patterns of collaborative excellence – Rediscovering the lost wisdom of design.
Prescient emotional knowledge management – do you have what it takes?
Culture eats strategy for breakfast – but what sort of strategy are you feeding it?
Facilitating mental wellbeing – The power of adventure in keeping our minds fit & healthy.
Patterns of collaborative excellence – Rediscovering the lost wisdom of design.
Prescient emotional knowledge management – do you have what it takes?