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The Strategic Value of Meetings

Published on 23/09/07
by zot

This Sunday’s strategic discussion is a little late due to pesky internet problems. Last Sunday’s strategic discussion covered strategy in conflicts where one force is vastly out-gunned. This time we’ll focus on something a little closer to home for most of us: The strategic value of meetings.

Those of us who enjoy being productive share a common hatred of meetings. They are costly and produce very little obvious value. I regularly take work to meetings so that I can think while people are talking. But I read an article recently at Overcoming Bias that made me rethink my approach to meetings.

The main argument of the article is that meetings are not effective from a productivity standpoint, but they are important from a social standpoint. Meetings let us form alliances, assess confidence, and determine heirarchy.

My Old Meeting Strategy

Till now I have generally approached meetings as with a”too cool for school” attitude and image. I bring work so that I can write and think while people are talking. I stare out the window. Occasionally I crack a joke. Generally I don’t have strong opinions.

This strategy may seem self-destructive, and probably is, but it has been my attempt to deal with what I feel is a waste of my time. Meetings generally aren’t run efficiently and endlessly hash over old topics. In my current job they are basically used as a way to disseminate information from the Director. Something that could better be handled with an email.

But if the real purpose of the meeting is to determine social factors. Might I want to approach things differently? In life I have found that doing the hard thing almost always results in honest participation from others. In this case, the hard thing is to engage directly and openly in meetings, even if I feel like they are a waste of time.

New Meeting Strategy

Any good strategy needs an explicit statement of goals. Making use of social work in meetings, my new goal is to become central to discussions and the decision making process of the organization. There are two basic strategies, I’ll call them manipulation and compassion, that I could use to approach this, but only one that I think is likely to succeed.

A manipulation-based strategy in this case would involve making other people look bad by pointing out errors and generally speaking in a derisive tone. While this approach might gain me some measure of authority, it would only lead to resentment on the part of coworkers and dislike on the part of managers. No one likes someone who is rude and lacking respect.

On the other hand, a compassion based strategy would involve validating people’s work and point of view while not necessarily agreeing with them. By treating others with respect, I gain their respect and as I take part in more discussion would become increasingly relevant to decisions that need to be made as an organization. To that end, these are the major points I’m going to try and follow:

• Contribute in a useful way to each topic of conversation that is brought up, but without being derisive. This will be difficult because often I feel like people are repeating questions, preaching, or otherwise taking up verbal space with meaningless noise. The trick here will be to respect someone while trying to minimize irrelevant discussions.
• Be willing to confront issues that everyone is avoiding. This may not be popular in the short term, but hopefully over the long term bringing up difficult issues will encourage more genuine discussion.
• Endeavor to change the perception of the meeting to be more of an exchange of information instead of a top-down dissemination. This means I will have to have valuable information to convey at each meeting. Hopefully my bringing up information can snowball into other people also bringing up information.
• Create a strike team of coworkers who are effective and productive and shift their perception of the meetings. This group can serve as the core that further shifts the behavior of other workers. To some extent I already have this, but though the group is effective, efficient and possibly the most productive group of employees, right now we identify more as mavericks than as the core of the organization.

To often we view a situation as hopeless or unchangeable. Our organization faces serious problems of motivation and productivity, and a strong fear of confronting anyone about failure. Over the past two years, I have essentially accepted this situation and worked to set myself apart from other employees who are ineffective and unproductive. But perhaps the better and more noble approach is to engage the community directly and work to change the situation and improve both moral and productivity.

I’d be interested in hearing what strategies you use to cope with useless meetings or how you go about creating effective meetings. Both are important and useful skills.

-zot

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