{"id":3689,"date":"2014-07-26T10:02:36","date_gmt":"2014-07-26T10:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saasoft.com\/blog\/?p=3689"},"modified":"2014-07-26T10:02:36","modified_gmt":"2014-07-26T10:02:36","slug":"the-productive-meeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/?p=3689","title":{"rendered":"The Productive Meeting"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"networking_people_PA_300_wht_1844\"<\/a>The engine of improvement is a productive meeting.<\/p>\n

Complex adaptive systems (CAS) are those that\u00a0 learn and change themselves.<\/p>\n

The books of ‘rules’ are constantly revised and refreshed as the CAS co-evolves with its environment.<\/p>\n

System improvement is the outcome of effective actions.<\/p>\n

Effective actions are the outcomes of wise decisions.<\/p>\n

Wise decisions are the output of productive meetings.<\/p>\n

So the meeting process must be designed to be productive: which means both effective and efficient.<\/p>\n

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One of the commonest niggles that individuals report is ‘Death by Meeting’<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That alone is enough evidence that our current design for meetings is flawed.<\/p>\n

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One common error of omission is lack of clarity about the purpose of the meeting.<\/p>\n

This cause has two effects:<\/p>\n

1. The wrong sort of meeting design is used for the problem(s) under consideration.<\/p>\n

A meeting designed for tactical\u00a0 (how to) planning will not work well for strategic (why to) problems.<\/p>\n

2. A mixed bag of problems is dumped into the all-purpose-less meeting.<\/p>\n

Mixing up short term tactical and long term strategic problems on a single overburdened agenda is doomed to fail.<\/p>\n

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Even when the purpose of\u00a0 a meeting\u00a0 is clear and agreed it is common to observe an unproductive meeting process.<\/p>\n

The process may be unproductive because it is ineffective … there are no wise decisions made and so no effective actions implemented.<\/p>\n

Worse even than that … decisions are made that are unwise and the actions that follow lead to unintended negative consequences.<\/p>\n

The process may also be unproductive because it is inefficient … it requires too much input to get any output.<\/p>\n

Of course we want both an effective and an efficient meeting process … and we need to be aware that effectiveness\u00a0 comes first.\u00a0 Designing the meeting process to be a more efficient generator of unwise decisions is not a good idea! The result is an even bigger problem!<\/p>\n

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So our meeting design focus is ‘How could we make wise decisions as a group<\/em>?’<\/p>\n

But if we knew the answer to that we would probably already be doing it!<\/p>\n

So we can ask the same question another way: ‘How do we make unwise decisions as a group<\/em>?<\/p>\n

The second question is easier to answer. We just reflect on our current experience.<\/p>\n

Some ways we appear to unintentionally generate unwise decisions are:<\/p>\n

a) Ensure we have no clarity of purpose – confusion is a good way to defuse effective feedback.
\nb) Be selective in who we invite to the meeting – group-think facilitates consensus.
\nc) Ignore the pragmatic, actual, reality and only use academic, theoretical, rhetoric.
\nd) Encourage the noisy – quiet people are non-contributors.
\ne) Engage in manipulative styles of behaviour – people cannot be trusted.
\nf) Encourage the\u00a0 sceptics and cynics to critique and cull innovative suggestions.
\ng) Have a trump card – keep the critical ‘any other business’ to the end – just in case.<\/p>\n

If we adopt all<\/strong> these tactics we can create meetings that are ‘lively’, frustrating, inefficient and completely unproductive. That of course protects us from making unwise decisions.<\/p>\n

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So one approach to designing meetings to be more productive is simply to recognise and challenge the unproductive behaviours – first as individuals and then as groups.<\/p>\n

The place to start is within our own circle of influence – with those we trust – and to pledge to each other to consciously monitor for unproductive behaviours and to respectfully challenge them.<\/p>\n

These behaviours are so habitual that we are often unaware that we are doing them.<\/p>\n

And it feels strange at first but it get easier with practice and when you see the benefits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The engine of improvement is a productive meeting. Complex adaptive systems (CAS) are those that\u00a0 learn and change themselves. The books of ‘rules’ are constantly revised and refreshed as the CAS co-evolves with its environment. System improvement is the outcome of effective actions. Effective actions are the outcomes of wise decisions. Wise decisions are the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The Productive Meeting”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,24,42,46,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-6m-design","category-improvementology","category-how","category-teach","category-trust"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3689\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}