Lucid Meetings Blog

Several years ago I wrote an article for Inc. about 3 Powerful Ways to Help Your Team Cope With Tragedy. At the time, the tragedy was the burning of Notre Dame.

Last week's invasion of Ukraine resurfaced this conversation. Looking back, the Notre Dame fire seems merely unfortunate in comparison to the events of the past several years. We've been bombarded by tragedies, and many teams have developed better ways of processing these events together.

Even still - when new events unfold, we need to decide:
What should we do in our upcoming meetings?

Should we begin by acknowledging what's happening, even though most meetings deal with entirely unrelated topics? And how can you NOT talk about it?

As a meeting leader, you may feel it's important to address something that you believe is or should be on everyone's mind before diving into your agenda.

You might be right, You might also be making an assumption that could derail your meeting.

Meeting overload, zoom fatigue, and too much time wasted in unproductive meetings: these problems grow during periods of rapid change. Bad meetings proliferate when we struggle to communicate well. And when things change rapidly, we need to share more information more often to keep on top of the situation. 

According to a 2013 study by PMI, $75 million for every $1 billion spent on projects is put at risk by ineffective communications. (source)

Remember 2013? Looking back, those seem like such simple times!  How much more money do you imagine we're losing now, after two years of constant uncertainty? If we struggled to share information effectively back then, it's no wonder that today's meeting madness has become so overwhelming.

Now imagine,  what else might we accomplish if we could redirect those wasted funds (and time and energy) towards achieving some worthwhile goals?

Good news! You can solve these problems for your teams by developing an effective communication architecture that includes a well-designed Meeting Operating System (MOS).

You don't necessarily need an agenda to have a great meeting. 

I'm pretty sure you knew that already.

I'm guessing you've attended many useful and interesting meetings that lacked an agenda. I bet that when someone tells you "No agenda, no attenda!" you feel chastened, but also a bit annoyed by this demand for what feels like busy work.  Short, purposeful meetings simply don't need an agenda. 

Every meeting, though, should have a clear purpose. Why does this group need to spend this time together?

Leaders around the world have a lazy habit of adding meetings to the calendar without making it clear why that meeting needs to happen. As Doodle reported in a 2019 study of over 10 million meetings:

Note: These criteria were originally shared as part of our guide to establishing an effective decision-making process. 

Have you ever responded to a Request For Proposal (RFP), with its pages and pages of Musts, Shoulds, and Nice to Have selection criteria?

Or, let's keep it simple. Have you ever worked with your team to decide where you should go for lunch?

If you've ever chosen between multiple viable options, you've used decision-making criteria to make that choice.

Or maybe not? Maybe you and your team acted out this scene?

Recently we hosted two online parties where we invited folks to join us in creating a big list of Tip-Top Top Tips for Smarter Meetings. The whole event was an experiment. We wondered:

• Would it work to combine all these different meeting techniques?
• How much real value could a group of random strangers create within an hour?
• Would anyone find this interesting enough to show up?

Much to my great surprise, we were joined by nearly 80 people over the two sessions. The techniques we practiced worked better the second time through, which is a testament to the value of practice. And it turns out that interested, engaged people can quickly create a lot of value when given the opportunity and structure.

We've all experienced the power of storytelling. A great story can inspire and move us in ways that spreadsheets or presentations full of bulleted lists never will.

We are wired to learn from stories. And yet, only a few rare leaders regularly tell stories in meetings. Most leaders limit themselves to dry information sharing and opinion statements, holding to a mistaken belief that storytelling is somehow unprofessional. But unlike most reports, a good story communicates both data and meaning simultaneously, which makes stories more efficient and effective. 

How do you meet respectfully with people you don't understand or agree with?

As we go into the holidays and strategic planning season, we have so many opportunities to bridge the chasms between us. But how?

Last week we launched Barbara MacKay's new Meeting School course on How to Lead Engaging Meetings. It's sweet. I took it and learned a bunch of handy new tips, and I had fun too. Barbara's a dynamic, warm presenter and a joy to watch.

I was enjoying lunch at a technology conference with a group of CTOs from high-powered companies when the conversation turned from blockchain to meetings.

It’s funny how that always happens.

First, we heard about the awful meetings held at a large manufacturing company. Then, it was the CTO for an NFL team's turn.

“My team meetings are terrible!” he exclaimed. “My problem is my co-manager. If it were up to me, we’d have an agenda for every meeting and a report afterwards. I’m an orderly type of guy. Like, you should see my sock drawer. It’s amazing! But my partner thinks that’s all too formal and stuffy, so whenever I bring an agenda he just ignores it. Then of course the meetings always go long, we never get through what we wanted to talk about, and we just end up having more meetings to hash it out again. I guess I should put my foot down and start forcing him to use an agenda.”

He sighed.

There are easily five things you could pick out of that statement as problems worth addressing, but the big one is the conflicting beliefs between the managers. One wants to “follow rules," the other sees rules as needless constraints.

“Have you heard of a real-time agenda? Or Lean Coffee?” I asked. He hadn’t, so I explained the concept.

We said this in our last post and we'll say it again:

You get what you tolerate.

When you tolerate subpar behavior from your family members, your colleagues or your significant other, that's what you'll get. 

Meetings, in their truest form, are conversations - and conversations are a constant in our lives. Whether we're at work, with family, or socializing - they allow people to connect and understand each other better. 

What if you could improve conversations with your kids - and even have them buy in to the idea?