We’ve all been there, sat in room either doodling, daydreaming or thinking about what you are going to do once you are out of this meeting or even wondering why you are there in the first place. According to Atlassian, creators of Trello & Jira, half of all meeting participants consider meetings to be a waste of time. People use an average of 31 hours every month in unproductive meetings. 91% say they’ve daydreamed during meetings and 73% say they’ve done other work. An article in the Harvard Business Review in 2017 reported that meetings have increased in length and frequency over the past 50 years, to the point where executives spend an average of nearly 23 hours a week in them, up from less than 10 hours in the 1960s. And that doesn’t even include all the impromptu gatherings that don’t make it onto the schedule. It seems we have two problems. Firstly, too many meetings and secondly the meetings we do have are far from productive. So, what should we do about it? How do you handle your meetings and how are meetings handled across your organisation? I remember many years ago working as a consultant sitting in a Steering Committee meeting with a group of executives. I hadn’t been at the organisation long and was shadowing a very experienced colleague of mine, the lead consultant who had been invited to his second SteerCo meeting. The meeting started late and there wasn’t an agenda to speak of or much-supporting material. The group proceeded to chat about this and that. About 10 minutes later another two people came in and disturbed the conversation. The previous 10 minutes then got repeated somewhat as side conversations also broke out. I looked across at my colleague who at 25 minutes in was losing the will to live. Then, to my astonishment, he proceeded to slouch in his chair and slowly slide off it onto the floor making a groaning sound as he did so. I didn’t know what to say or do as all the senior executives looked at him strangely as he lay on the floor with a bored look on his face. ‘Are you Ok?’ the CFO said. ‘No, I am not’ replied my colleague. What would you do if you were in this meeting? How would you react? My colleague went on to explain how ineffective the meeting was, the reasons why and proceeded to coach on ways to improve not only on meeting etiquette but also on structure, timings and objective setting. He also did a calculation of the cost of each person multiplied by the number of hours we were sitting there for. Try this: Next time you are in a meeting take a quick check on how much it might be costing, just an estimate and keep it to yourself this is not anywhere near an exact science. You will be amazed at how addictive this can be when you see the cost stack up versus the output. Take a guess at each person’s annual salary and add them together. Next, divide by 250 (approximate working days per year) gives daily cost. Divide this by 8 (roughly the amount of hours in a working day) will give you the hourly cost. Now multiply by the length of the meeting in hours. Wow, pricey isn’t it. The executives sat open-mouthed having never been challenged this way before, no one had dared. One or two of them challenged back which was great for the coach so he could further dive into specifics on meetings. By the end of the session, the group were hugely appreciative of the feedback, even if it was a bizarre way of making a point, a point it certainly did make. It is worth noting that my colleague had gained the utmost respect from this group due to the improvement work that had been carried out. This story has stuck with me ever since and many years later I still see meetings that are equal or worse than this. It really frustrates me as I want to grab the pen, the flip chart or the microphone of a video call. I’ve certainly polished my meetings up as a result and continue to review their effectiveness. You can always tell if a meeting has not been planned properly, always. The irony is, that a well-planned meeting will go largely unnoticed as people are involved in the activity and are engaged. And who reviews meetings after for effectiveness anyway? Not many. Steven Rogelberg’s 2019 book, The Surprising Science of Meetings is a recent attempt of many to understand how we can handle meetings more effectively. It seems obvious that what is suggested is to think carefully about the length of meetings. Yet many organisations still don’t seem to have this cemented as part of every meeting they hold. Think back to the last meeting you attended. How did it go? Did you actually enjoy it? Was it effective? Was it needed? Did all the people have input for most of the time? Now think back to the last meeting you arranged. Be honest. How well planned was it? How much time did you have or spend planning it? Was everyone engaged? Did everyone speak? Did you review it after for its effectiveness? In December 2019 Zoom had 10 million daily meeting participants. In March 2020 it had 100 million, but the following month as countries went into lockdown this increased to 300 million. Astonishing figures. You could argue with the advent of things like Zoom that organisations have got worse as people arbitrarily add Zoom after Zoom. Audiences for them increase too, potentially making them less effective each time. Never mind some users recent security concerns. Is this lazy? Is it too easy to 'throw' in the diary? Should it be standard that these meetings open as one hour-long if not adjusted? Is it need or are they driven by our anxieties to feel like we are all contributing? It is also widely reported that virtual meetings demand a higher level of concentration & emotional effort. People are finding them exhausting especially when they are back to back and set in these challenging times working from home during the lockdown. The calls themselves, much like my opening line, are driving questions as people’s minds wander: What is this meeting for? Why am I here? How much longer? Are we just going around in circles? Can they hear me? Can they see me? Do they know I’m naked from the waist down? Or is that just me? Meetings, or rather the way we do them has always been a problem, it’s not Zooms fault and I love using Zoom. This pandemic has forced us to ask questions about the current way of working which is great. Meetings and their value will be one of those things that should and will have greater scrutiny going forward as people ask: why? How can you make your own meetings more effective? Here are 5 top tips for effective meeting management: Limit the number of meetings you hold - Obvious right? So why do we accept without question multiple meetings and complain about a crammed calendar every day? It shouldn’t be assumed that having a meeting is the best and only way to manage things. Be ruthless and remove or don’t add meetings that are not needed. Even if the meeting is super-efficiently run if it’s not really needed it’s a waste of time. Management guru Peter Drucker said, ‘There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.’ This is true outside of meetings too. Cap meeting times - You may notice in virtual meetings and calendars there can be a tendency to create a meeting that automatically allocates 1 hour. Challenge this, can we do it in 30 minutes? Can we reduce the attendees? Don’t use the full amount of time for the sake of it, finish early, review why and carry lesson to the next meeting. Reduce meetings down to next level - Can a face meeting reduce to a Zoom call? Can a Zoom call reduce to an email? Prepare, Prepare, Prepare - This should include a timed agenda, objectives & expectations. The right people should be invited. No hangers-on, no just in cases. People that have an active part in the session. If you can’t describe this, then they should likely not be there. The agenda cannot be too broad, this is when the invite list gets too long and people are in the room with 50% interest or less. In this case, two 30-minute meetings are better than one 60-minute meeting where half the crowd have no interest. You must record the next steps, owners, and dates and this should feature on your agenda to summarise key actions and these must be sent out afterwards. No action from a meeting is a sin. Review - You must evaluate the effectiveness of your meetings, always. This starts in the meeting itself by spending 5 minutes just at the end asking the attendees how it went. Short and sharp. I like to use ‘Benefits & Concerns’. As in, what are the benefits of the last 30 mins, and what are your concerns? Concerns are always written down using a positive tone. For example, instead of ‘I don’t know what this meeting was about’ we would write ‘I wish I knew more about this meeting’. This helps generate next steps, avoids a whinging session, and also attempts to avoid people airing their concerns privately at the coffee machine to their colleague. We don’t go into detail; we just record it. If the concern can be answered on the spot quickly, it is. When the meeting ends you should review how it went from timings to attendees to tone and how you would make it better next time. You should keep an eye on all of this as the meeting facilitator, but it can be tough so it's useful to have a support person here. So, ask yourself this: How would you rate your meetings? How would people rate yours? Would they be more enjoyable if you could evaluate them for effectiveness? Want to learn more? Please do comment, give your views and get in touch for a chat. Cavan

Last week saw a new age in spaceflight with SpaceX launching successfully carrying astronauts Bob Behnken & Doug Hurley on board. It's almost 50 years since a man went to the moon. In 1961 the space race between the USSR and the United States was in full swing. But the Russians were winning. They’d launched Sputnik, the world’s first satellite, and shortly after made Yuri Gagarin the first man in space. The US followed just a month afterwards. John F Kennedy had to regain the lead. So, in a famous speech in May of that year, he made a promise to the nation: he would put a man on the moon and return him safely to earth before the end of the decade. Several months after his speech JFK visited NASA headquarters for the first time. While touring the facility he introduced himself to a cleaner who was mopping the floor. “And what are you doing at NASA?” the President asked. The cleaner stopped, looked up at the President and replied, “I’m helping put a man on the moon.” The cleaner got it. He understood JFK’s vision and America’s ambitions in the space race. He also understood that his role, however small, was part of the same goal and he had a purpose. The sense that he was part of something bigger than himself. Now, more than ever companies need to consider how they are going about their business with huge changes already taking place and more on the horizon. The organisational structure that once was is no more. The choices that are made with what to invest in, be it workforce, buildings, and office space and how it all fits together both vertically and across the business itself are going to be huge. The vision (where), purpose (why) and strategy (how) to go with this is crucial as it's likely changed. We need a method that will allow organisations to deal with this effectively, remembering that to do this was difficult to begin with as my story explains. I’ve recently been working with the COO for one of the biggest utilities company in the UK. He had some major frustrations. He and his colleagues had been working on a vision & new strategy for months. They’d spent lots of money on a high-end consultancy firm which had told them what to do and it sounded great. They achieved buy-in from senior leaders and the CEO loved it as she could see her vision reflected in the strategy. She couldn’t wait for it to be put in place. The management team created documentation, the communications went out and the intranet site looked fabulous. But four months in, when the COO went out to the company’s operations sites and asked about the new strategy, no one had a clue what he was talking about. So, what was the problem? The board had done a good job formulating the vision & strategy. Communication had been clear. But the strategy had failed to be executed on the ground. He’s not the only one. A Harvard business review in 2016 reported that ‘67% of well-formulated strategies failed due to poor execution.’ The truth is, they did do a good job of designing the vision at a corporate level. But no matter how well thought out that vision & strategy was, there was a vital flaw. While they’d put a great deal of effort, thought and money into creating the ‘where & why’ and labelled it strategy, they’d spent next to no time thinking about how that strategy would translate to the workforce I went to speak to some of the operations managers to see why they didn’t know about the organisation’s strategy. The managers and leaders I spoke with were up against it. When I mentioned strategy one response was ‘we haven’t finished last year’s yet’. I heard about activities, objectives, initiatives and projects. But as one person quipped, “Business as usual activity got in the way.” Does this sound familiar? How confident are you that leaders and managers understand the strategy? Perhaps they do. But does your workforce? Mark Smith, a lean master at Breakthrough Management Group speaks about effective strategy deployment: ‘Done right, it addresses a wealth of deficiencies in corporate planning, that are not suited for the realities of the shop floor and plans that aren't ever reviewed’ Those leaders told me that the workforce just didn’t get it. ‘What starts with the loud voice of the CEO at the top becomes a faint whisper by the time it reaches the front lines of the organization where value of whatever description is created and where improvement becomes real.’ James P Womack. Founder and chairman of the Lean Enterprise Institute and author of the book The Machine That Changed the World. It was too corporate, too hard to translate, email communications didn’t cut it and cascading of information didn’t work. This was confirmed when I spoke with some team members. They said they knew a strategy existed, but they didn’t know what it was or how they made an impact on it day to day through their work job purpose and work responsibilities. The measures in place at grassroots didn’t link clearly to the strategy and some even contradicted it. The further down the organisation I went the gap became bigger. How can you give your vision, purpose, strategy, and its deployment the best chance of success? The Strategy Deployment Matrix (SDM) is a collaborative process for designing and deploying the goals and objectives set from senior leaders throughout the organisation. Read my top tips on aligning & executing your organisational objectives using strategy deployment. 1. Be clear what Strategy Deployment is. Make it tangible. It starts with a Vision (where we are going) and a Purpose (why we are going there). This is your ‘True North’. Your workforce needs clear Strategic Objectives (how we get there) that have their plans of action attached to drive Results (how we know we are getting there). In my experience, a Strategy Deployment Matrix (SDM) X matrix used correctly addresses the problem of aligning people toward common business goals. It can help to translate a vision into concrete actions relevant to each level of the organisation both vertically & horizontally and is hugely engaging. If you would like to know more about the SDM tool itself let me know. 2. Use the Vision to create Innovation Aims. Even if the workforce hasn’t been involved in creating the overarching vision directly, they can still understand it. Create a small number of Innovation Aims, about 3, that link to the vision and keep it simple and straight-talking. Bringing the vision to life is crucial. 3. Align function & department leaders to Vision & Purpose. Often functions & departments have competing or even conflicting objectives especially as time goes by. As a first step, each of these function leaders should be brought together to understand the business realities today versus the vision for tomorrow. All activity that does not support the vision should cease. A clear message from top-down should echo this clearly. Furthermore, a clear line of sight should exist from the work being carried out daily to the company goal. 4. Include managers. Each function will have several different activities going on that needs recognising. It’s important to include your managers at a lower level as they know the detail and practicalities involved. Managers should be highly encouraged to step up and get involved in the next level of SDM. This has many benefits and will also motivate, drive engagement & inclusiveness making the message land with the workforce so much easier for you. (see my other article: Why your workforce isn’t engaged and how you can fix it) 5. Define what is tactical versus strategic. Separate trivial problems from the important ones. ‘Tactical’ day to day activity & improvement actions need to be set aside from longer-term ‘strategic’ activity and a decision made on what to do with them. Remember strategy and its deployment is driven by the organisation's vision & purpose, not today's problems. 6. Deselect items/activity & draft new activity. It’s easy to decide what to do but it’s a real skill, and courageous, to decide what to stop. Be ruthless if you can’t see a link to the vision then it stops. It can also be exceedingly difficult for an operations manager to stop doing something that was relevant 12 months ago but is not today. Challenge managers kindly on activity and its link to the vision. A new strategy will no doubt bring new activity which is why deselection is so critical, we can’t just keep adding to the list. Do this at a high-level leaving managers and key staff members to follow up with the detailed plan per function. 7. Define Leading Measures. Why is it organisations have measures that can mean so little to so many? Recently I asked a global telecom company how many Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) they had. 123 they said. There is nothing ‘key’ about 123 measures. The work involved in maintaining them was ridiculous and no one knew why half of them existed anyway, this is so common. If you add a measure, challenge yourself to take away two. To define good measures ask yourself ‘what are we measuring & how will we know we are getting there?’ If you have new objectives, then it stands to reason you may need new measures. Develop leading indicators that will predict results rather than waiting for results to happen. Track important ones visually so gaps can be identified and problems solved without delay. Leading measures will help you manage the problem as opposed to the problem managing you. 8. Regularly Review. Once a strategy is designed it’s certainly not ‘done’, the example above shows this. Set frequent review dates both within functions themselves and at function head level and communicate. Information should flow freely across organisational boundaries as well as the workforce having access to information. They need to understand the impact of their day to day choices. Think about this: If you keep useful information from the workforce, you can expect them to do the same for you. One way to do this informally is ‘catch ball’. A method used whereby ongoing conversations take place back & forth between leaders and people in the process. This allows leaders to check their thinking is correct and address any gaps. It also builds huge trust between the layers of an organisation as the workforce feels valued and everybody is on the same page. Just like you, JFK had a vision; his communication was clear, and it went down to every level of NASA so that even the most unassuming cleaner could align with that vision. So, ask yourself this: Does your cleaner know how they are impacting your vision today? Can the people in your organisation repeat back the vision to you with confidence? A vision without a strategy is just a dream. Do you need support in making your dream a reality? Please do comment, give your views and get in touch for a chat. Cavan W:bizimprove.co.uk E: info@bizimprove.co.uk

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