you put people together from very different fields and hierarchy levels you have to spend time to make sure that everyone really speaks up and each individual contribution is recognized. Hierarchy in innovative meetings is counterproductive. I imagine it’s a bit like how an orchestral conductor has to pay equal attention to the entire brass section and the solo piccolo.
If I have a lot of people sitting around me who are senior management peers, then fine. But if you have physicians, statisticians or analysts responsible for the data management of a project it is essential to encourage them to speak up and bring them up to a level where they can contribute.
I find that these people often have crucial insights to offer that raise the conversation or bring it down to earth. If they don’t speak up and instead leave the meeting thinking “Too bad,” we are losing value.
Everyone is used to the cliché there are no stupid questions, but to create an atmosphere where this is really the case requires a lot from the person running the meeting. Everyone has to know there will be no punishment for so-called “dumb” suggestions. The creation of a common understanding, culture, platform is important. Management has to create a common language, a license to operate, so that people dare to speak up.
I remember a safety meeting when the imminent swine flu pandemic and the expected distribution of tens of millions of vaccine doses was going to result in an exponential growth of safety events; 20 to 25 times more than the safety department could normally handle. We were starting to think about this. Who else can rapidly join the safety team? Can we get additional resources from other functions in- or outside the company? Then all of a sudden one guy spoke up. He is not very senior but he really knows our operation. He’s what I call a quiet voice. “You know,” he said, “resource is only one way to approach this. Another way is to look at our processes and take fat out of the system. Why don’t we engage with governmental agencies and explore ways to stagger reporting on products which have been in the market for 15 to 20 years?”
This one comment triggered an avalanche of new ideas. That’s what I mean by a really inclusive meeting.
Really Meeting allows Real Conversations to happen
“You don’t really want to have a war, do you, your Highness?”
It’s not a phrase that you or I might use too often. But it’s the sort of conversational gambit you might need at your fingertips if you happen to be the head of a global NGO like Oxfam. Dame Barbara Stocking is a fan of really meeting. She has to be when dealing with potentially explosive international situations.
There is a head of state I can think of who thinks the world is against him. He is constantly about to go to war with a neighboring state. So recently I got on a plane. The fact that I took the trouble to go out there and visit him was already an important step. Sometimes just showing up is the key. We had a very human discussion and in the middle of it I just asked him point-blank if he really intended to go to war. After quite a pause he replied. “No, I don’t want to do that.”
Nearly meeting skirts the dangerous issues. When you are really meeting, people say what they mean, mean what they say, and the conversations that need to happen take place.
This is a great example of what I call “taking the gorilla off the fridge.” Essentially, if there is a subject which should be talked about but isn’t, you severely compromise the quality of your meeting. Imagine having a gorilla on your fridge while you are having Sunday dinner. Everyone is carrying on as normal, but everyone knows things are far from OK. Some people call this having “an elephant in the room.” Different animal, equally debilitating effect. My advice is to refer to the un-talked-about beast right from the start. When you set up a meeting you can include a phrase like “I know some of you are thinking X …” or “If I were in your shoes, I know I’d be wondering about Y.”
You don’t have to go into detail, but just mentioning the unmentionable eases tension and creates the conditions where a real meeting can occur.
Thomas Breuer points to two other key factors when he talks about the importance of “a common language” and “a license to operate” in encouraging real conversations to happen. The in-depth work we have done with him and his organization showed how important it is that everyone has a common understanding of what a real conversation means and that they know they are mandated to have them with colleagues irrespective of their level in the hierarchy. Once you have achieved these two things, real conversations start to propagate through an organization like a healthy “virus.” “Let’s have a real conversation” becomes a common phrase that’s no more threatening than “Let’s have a coffee.” You’ve turned what was an exotic and rather threatening idea into a common currency.
Very few large organizations have really done that groundwork. So it’s often up to individuals—up to you—to start the ball rolling. As we’ll see later in the book, there are many reasons we might choose to back off from and miss the opportunity for really meeting. It requires some confidence in yourself and a real trust in the value of Real Conversation.
“It took a bit of nerve to ask him the war question” admits Dame Barbara, and she is, I can assure you, no wallflower. “But it was worth it to get the subject on the table. I really do believe that all people are equal, so at one level, I don’t care.”
What touches me about the story is that once you create human connection, really meeting another human being, anything is possible.
Really Meeting is Three-Dimensional
Looking at the modern working environment I can’t help thinking we human beings have designed a world we weren’t really designed for. A few centuries of listening to the head and more or less ignoring the wisdom of the body have produced a world that makes sense to the head but bewilders the noble physical being that’s hiding beneath our business suits.
“And here,” they say proudly when they show you around their offices for the first time, “is the meeting room.” There is the big, important-looking table, surrounded by those heavy, expensive chairs. And a bowl of mints. To the human animal inside us, that room is clearly a place of punishment, not work.
Really meeting recognizes that humans are three-dimensional beings designed to move as well as think. If you look through a window at a real meeting, you’ll see movement. Some people are gesticulating, making shapes in the air to communicate the shapes in their minds. Some people are pacing the room. Others have their feet on the table with their eyes closed and are rubbing their temples.
If a real meeting gets “stuck,” the participants know that a bit of physical movement can unstick it. You take a break, a short walk, have a stretch, call a time-out. If you need more inspiration, you literally get some fresh air; because the lithe, versatile physical being that we once were, remembers that when you refill your lungs you also recharge your mind.
Real meetings are three-dimensional because we are, too.
Really Meeting is the new Work
I like to ask business audiences to look at their fingernails. Very few of them have coal dust, soil, or heavy machine oil underneath them. In general, business life doesn’t include the physical labor of clawing commodities out of the earth, harvesting by hand, or grappling with heavy machinery.
We are moving into a post-industrial age where knowledge and ideas are the assets. Meetings are where these assets are formed and traded. They are to our times what the steam hammer, forge, and mill were to the Industrial Age.
Meetings are where value is created—or lost. When people complain that meetings are getting in the way of their work, you might want to point out that, increasingly, meetings are the work.
Information, ideas, concepts are the new commodities. Intellectual property is as valuable as bricks and mortar. The meeting is the modern mine …
Great businesses like Marks and Spencer, Procter and Gamble,