In some settings groups are unable to reach consensus and decisions. If the exchange of ideas has stalled and if all point of views are clear, then change settings towards a cosy and warm atmosphere.

Location: a normal meeting room

Are you ready to move on?

We had started our meeting half an hour earlier. And the stakes were high. The team was about to implode and levels of trust between management and team were at an all-time low. In the two earlier meetings, the manager had not been present, even though the team had requested so. Now, to the great surprise of all, he had settled down in one of the chairs.

In order to open up the discussion, I had decided to remove the table. It didn’t want a wooden no-man’s land besides which participants would be able to trench deeply in their seats. So people sat in an open circle, exposed to one and other. For the rest the meeting room was simple, nothing that could really help smoothen the discussion.

The bottom line for the discussion was: ‘will everyone stay in the team?’ The willingness to stay on board would depend largely on the willingness of the manager to disclose some details of last year’s operation and to come up with a compelling proposal for the coming year.

But even without a table the discussion hopelessly derailed. We were going nowhere as argument after argument was shot down by the opposite party.

So I asked for the bottom-line: ‘Please tell me, are you in or are you out?’

I realised my question would not be welcomed. Stating openly in front of the manager you wanted the team to implode was quite something. But stating the opposite might put you into trouble with your teammates.

And indeed, everyone looked at me. In silence. Waiting to see who would be the first one to move.

I had foreseen this. I wanted to stop the discussion, and I wanted it to stop with everyone knowing what was at stake for themselves and the group. Stopping with unfinished work was exactly what the group needed at this moment.

Location: in a bar nearby

I invited everyone for a break in a bar nearby. The group was standing around a high table, with some drinks and some snacks and chatting away about weather, the kids, the latest movies, sports, etc… The atmosphere was warm and cosy.

Fairly quickly, the big topic crept in. But the tone and the way participants discussed had changed from the discussion in the meeting room. The whole group, including the manager were kind to each other. But they were also frank (of course they were, they all new their positions by now). And within some 10 minutes, as if falling out of the sky, the miracle happened and the group found an agreement on how to move forward.

Location: at the office / a few days later

A couple of days later, I asked participants how they had experienced the meeting. Most of them had mixed feelings but they all liked the outcome. When I asked them about the bar, they all stressed how positive that discussion had been. Not only because of the good atmosphere, that was something to be expected from a decent bar, but also because of the frankness of their discussions.

And it works: starting in a meeting room, getting frustrated and them moving towards a more relaxed environment, were finally decisions are being made. It works because of how we all react unconsciously to different environments. The setting in the meeting room encouraged divergent thinking, accentuating details and differences. Whereas the setting in the bar encouraged convergent thinking, blurring the details, geared towards bonding.

And it’s by balancing the two spheres that groups are enabled to bridge the divide and make great decisions.

Zig Zag – The Suprising Path to Greater Creativity

Keith Sawyer is one of the world’s leading scholars on creativity. He is author of the bestseller ‘Group Genius’ that focusses on group creativity. He has just released his new book ‘Zig Zag: The Surprising Path to Greater Creativity’ in which he shows that the creative process is not and should not be approached as a straight line. A creative process is zigzagging, improvisational, with lots of unexpected twists and turns.

This interview follows the 8 steps of a creative process that Keith develops in his book. And true to the nature of a creative process the 8 steps can be read in any order you wish. Just zigzag through the interview.

The 8 icons are from the book, Copyright 2013 by Keith Sawyer and used with permission.

 

Ruben: Thanks a lot Keith! I hope your book inspires many to lead more creative lives.

Keith: Thanks to you.

Am I seeing myself?

‘Well! If you can’t handle it, I’ll do it!’ She almost screamed the sentence then stood up and left the meeting room. She went straight to her working space, fell in her chair and gazed through the window. She felt exasperated. Her team was not able to pull it off.

The past 2 years, she had been trying everything to give her people freedom to organise their own work: trainings on the job, off-site retreats, team coaching, individual coaching, group discussions with and without external facilitator, etc… And to a certain extent it did help, but never up to the level she was aiming for. The responsibility that came with freedom just seemed too much to bear for her team members.

She just wondered why…

What she didn’t see was the impact of her own behaviour on the group. She wanted her team to change their behaviour, yet so far, she had not questioned her own behaviour.

We mirror the behaviour of others

And this is crucial. It brings me to what in psychology is called the theory of mirroring. Mirroring is something that happens in all form of human relationship. We tend to copy the behaviour of other persons in order to connect and get accepted. If a colleague smiles at you, you probably smile back. It’s difficult to resist. Mirroring helps us understanding others’ state of mind. And therefore acts as a ‘social glue’ because we know what’s going on with the other.

And we do it on a subconscious level

Interestingly enough people will mirror behaviour on a subconscious level. If someone feels bad and answers cheerfully ‘I’m fine’ then the other person will mirror the slightly hanging head and feel the sadness, not the cheerfulness.

And exactly the same happens here. Deeply inside herself, she questions the ability of her team to take responsibility. Despite the positive words she’s using, despite all the training, her people mirror her reluctance. It’s on that level that the mirror works and thus her team members do not take responsibility.

On the surface, the team seems to be making headway. But from time to time an outburst confirms the deeper feeling and true nature of the relation between the manager and her team.

A true story

This is a true story. I was discussing meeting culture with a client and the manager of the team stressed her point by telling this story. After our discussion she became more aware of the impact of her own behaviour and which parts of it were effective and which were not.

As I left the building, I was imagining the team members in the room, left behind in bewilderment. After an endless silence one of them would say: ‘Well, I guess that concludes the meeting.’ For sure, this team would not be taking any responsibility for a long time to come!

Confusion

Sometimes I’m just a participant of a meeting. I cherish these meetings. I’m just one of the pack, do not need to lead the meeting and can decide my own role according to my whims. This time I was in an observing and learning mood.

A crowd of approximately 40 participants had gathered around the facilitator. He was standing in front of a big empty sheet on the wall. There were just a few post-its next to one and other forming various lines on the sheet.

The facilitator asked us a deceivingly simple question: ‘please fill in the chart that is behind me’. In a brief demonstration he showed us how the chart was working; it was indeed fairly simple.

Confusion

But the group didn’t move. One participant asked a clarifying question. And then people started to stir around uneasily:

• Why are we doing this?
• You didn’t use the prep work from the past months!
• This is a tedious task; we’re not going to manage with 40 of us at the same time.
• Could you explain again how the chart is working?
• What makes you believe this is the best way to handle this issue?
• Can’t we just skip this part and move straight on to the next part, that’s what I’m here for.

Growing confusion was taking hold of the space. Energy levels dropped. Smart phones appeared; some started to talk with their neighbours; others moved backwards out of the group. Clearly, people were disengaging. A few sat down on the ground realizing that this would be time-consuming. Participants were rejecting the process.

Not all leadership works

Standing out

Suddenly, one person stepped forward. He had had his share of it. ‘If this is going to be the process, don’t count me in anymore. I can spend my time in a better way.’ And by ostentatiously leaving the room, he made clear that he also was rejecting the group. No one else followed. Of course, as he had just been rejecting the group.

A second person gave it a try. His proposal was quite identical to the first person: leaving the group. The biggest difference, however, was that he explicitly invited others to join him in his secession. He proposed to work on the objectives of the programme but with a different process. That ad-hoc process would be built with all the seceding participants.

He too was negating the whole group so again, no one followed.

(Why is this? By rejecting the group the individuals within the group also feel rejected. They feel rejected in their initial choice of being part of the group. Also many feel rejected by the leadership of standing out. You risk being rejected by the group without being seen as a leader. So at first instance, there is nothing to gain in following.)

Leadership that helps the group

It was already 20 minutes that the group was in a state of confusion when finally a breakthrough occurred. The third person to stand out reversed the proposition of the first two and said: ‘I’m not sure if this is the right process but I’m willing to give it a chance.’

And then she initiated what would become the tipping point: she stood up and physically moved a step forward. ‘I invite everyone who supports this to also stand up and make a step forward.’ Immediately 2 to 3 persons stood up and moved. This leader was not alone anymore and within seconds every participant was on its feet and had made the forward step.

The group was back on track again.

Positive choice made by the body

By reversing the proposition, the last person acknowledged the choice every participant had made to join the meeting and be member of the group. She did not reject the group and thus she made it acceptable for the participants to join in. She made the choice positive instead of negative.

Also, by literally making a step, she invited participants to make the choice in the body and not in the mind. And that’s an easier choice to make. Thinking is ambiguous, feeling not.

It was a tremendous learning experience for me. And I wonder if as I facilitator I am always so vividly aware of dynamics around confusion. I think not.

So when in a decision-making process, keep these 2 things in mind: give participants a positive choice aligned with their wish to be part of the group and let them feel their choice by doing a small physical activity.

Dr. John P. Kotter is a former professor at the Harvard Business School and is regarded as one of the biggest authorities on leadership and change. He has authored 17 books, many of which are bestsellers. ‘Leading Change’, his biggest success was reedited last year a little earlier than his article ‘Accelerate’ in which he outlines his new thoughts on change and innovation. Not surprisingly, in this article his 8 steps come back, but adapted to the fast-changing world we currently live in. I interviewed John just at the beginning of the year.

Ruben: You’ve reedited ‘Leading Change’ past year. To speak in your terms; what was the urgency to do so?

John: The first edition of ‘Leading Change’ sold in incredible amounts across the world. But the book is from 1996 and the publisher noticed there is a whole new generation that doesn’t know about the book and the thoughts. Reediting the book is simply a way of getting visibility to something still very relevant.

Ruben: But your thoughts must have evolved since then?

John: Actually, it coincides with my latest work ‘Accelerate’. This is the title of an article that was the cover story of the Harvard Business Review magazine of November.

Ruben: So why did you go along then with the reediting as it strikes me that ‘Accelerate’ is different from ‘Leading Change’?

John: The reason I went along is that the thoughts in ‘Leading Changer’ are still helpful today. It’s still the leading edge of thinking about change. People tell me: ‘I flipped back to one of the old books.’ There are still many nuggets to be found in there. Even if the world has dramatically changed since then.

Ruben: Does the success of ‘Leading Change’ surprise you?

John: I believe there’s a logic chain from then to the challenges of today’s business world. You could say it started with my book ‘Force For Change’ from 1990, in which I explained the radical difference between leadership and management. I don’t focus on trendy topics; I want to get inside fundamental truths.

Ruben: What do you mean by that?

John: I was and am still leveraging on work done back in the fifties and afterwards on what managers actually really do. For example, in his book ‘The Nature of Managerial Work’ Henry Mintzberg intensively studied research done in the fifties in Europe and he came to the conclusion that managers did not behave as the books told. My research also indicated this as you can read in my book ‘The General Managers’. I wrote a chapter called ‘the Efficiency of Seemingly Inefficient Behaviour’. In order to be able to perform, managers need two things: a vision on where to go and a personal network to get things rolling. You didn’t need tons of meetings for that.

Ruben: You use the word network, yet in ‘Leading Change’ the word hardly appears whereas in the 16-page ‘Accelerate’ I counted it more than 40 times. How come?

John: It’s true. But it has always been there. I’m really into how and why organisations perform. And I’m trying to find the generic pattern behind differences in performance. The one fundamental trend nowadays is the increasing amount of change in the world. Increasingly we’re in a fast moving turbulent world. You have to stretch your capacity to take big strategic decisions. You have to be agile. But the agility is not about moving right or left. You have to move right and left and faster. And for that you need networks.

Ruben: So it’s strategic change at the core of your business. What difference is there with innovation?

John: It overlaps. You can make change without having lots of innovation. But you can’t innovate without change.

Ruben: And what role do you see for creativity? According to an IBM study CEO’s worldwide see creativity as the top leadership quality to be able to handle the accelerating change.

John: Creativity is very relevant and overlaps with the other two. In themselves, people are creative. But many senior executives don’t want to hear new and creative ideas, they don’t know what to do with them, they don’t know how to deal with them. Many organisations have no mechanism to pull out ideas. That’s why in ‘Accelerate’ I introduce 2 different operating systems for one organisation.

Ruben: Could you please expand on that?

John: The first operating system is making sure you have dinner everyday. That’s the operating system we know, it handles the day-to-day business and it’s a very important one. But you don’t need a lot creativity to keep that one going. The second operating system is new and that’s the one you organise to pull out all those creative and innovative ideas.

Ruben: In your article ‘Accelerate’ you talk about an army of volunteers from inside the company and throughout the hierarchy. Are people able to combine the 2 operating systems in one organisation?

John: There are plenty of people who can do both. Even moderately competent managers are able to step up and lead. But to the one question ‘what kind of leadership is needed today?’ organisations come up with many answers like ‘it should be more sophisticated’, ‘it should understand technology’, ‘it should work worldwide’. But actually the real answer is ‘more!’

Ruben: More… what do you mean by that?

John: Just more. Whatever type of leadership it is, we need more of it. Everybody talks about leadership but we don’t know how to make it happen.

Ruben: So what could we, you and me, do as leaders to make this happen?

John: It’s actually why I started my company. Its basic vision is ‘millions leading… billions benefiting.’

Ruben: My mission is to change and innovate through meetings. What role do meetings play in the process of change?

John: In most meetings the question that pops up for a rational man is ‘where’s the gun to shoot myself?’ We create these horrible things where time and money are wasted. We all know meetings should be as short as possible, with the right people in the room, with good slides and people having an honest and engaged discussion. It’s no rocket science. You don’t have these problems in start-ups where somebody just says: ‘hey, I have a problem.’ And then they meet and discuss the issue without having to schedule it. In meetings you need to get the discussion on topics that bother you.

Ruben: So why aren’t these discussions happening?

John: The problem is that the initial energy of start-ups gets lost with bureaucracies, hence my dual system. You can retain some of this energy in the second operating system. That’s why it’s crucial to build networks and not hierarchies.

Ruben: One last question: what role does humour have in all this serious business?

John: Humour is a huge deal in organisations. It’s a way to pull people in and to engage them. People need fun at work. We try to have lots of laughter around the work.

Ruben: Many thanks John. Now I usually send a draft of my interview for you to review. Is that OK with you?

John: That’s not necessary. I trust you completely. Do something useful with it as we need people that take these ideas further.

Ruben: Wow, thanks. That’s actually the second time it happens to me (see also my interview with Al Pittampalli). And I must admit, it puts the pressure on me to deliver a great interview.

John: Ha, ha… Good answer.

And it is sad indeed. Because you disengage from the group and that, in the end, impacts on the work outside of the meeting. Energized meetings lead to energized and performing teams and vice-versa. In bad meetings the discussion stalls, in great meetings it flows. We all know the feelings of both meetings. But only few of us know how to reproduce good meetings.

It starts with having the purpose of the meeting clear. What type of discussion do we want to have? Too often, discussions go astray because someone is dealing with day-to-day business while another is interacting on a more abstract level. It doesn’t work.

So here is a little model that will help you clarify the purpose of your meetings. And with that comes different questions we need to ask in order to instill the right mindset during the meeting. How do we need to discuss? What type of questions do we need to ask in order to have a fruitful outcome for the whole team? Having the right discussion will make your meetings productive.

Oh, one important tip: for different meeting purposes hold different meetings! Different purposes deserve their own forum for discussion. Otherwise participants will get confused and you’ll end up having a bad meeting again.

4 types of meetings

It’s all about asking the right questions

You have recurring meetings and the ones you organise for a special purpose. The last type of meetings happens every now and then, say not more often than every half year. I call them the single meetings. The purpose of the recurring ones is to deal with the now, the single ones to reflect on the now. That’s a huge difference, especially in mindset and questions to ask. For the former you’re dealing with efficiency (getting the job done quickly and within budget), for the latter you’re dealing with effectiveness (doing the right job).

Next to that there’s a difference in meetings to run the day-to-day business and meetings for strategic change and innovation. Running a day-to-day business also requires change, but to a lesser extent than the meetings for strategic change and innovation. And here again: in the meetings you need a different mindset that lead to different discussions. Running a day-to-day business requires an operational mindset, strategic change and innovation requires a learning mindset.

This leads to 4 types of discussions, with 4 different sets of questions. Have a look at the picture.

The discussions you’ll be having

I hope this will help get the right discussion within your meetings.
Please let me know your experiences and questions you ask, I’d love to hear them.

Where does your meeting impact?

But what do these numbers really say? It only tells you how much money you invested in the meeting. And that doesn’t tell you anything about the value of your meeting. So what Return of Investment do your meetings have?

The whole question of ROI of meetings popped up at a recent workshop I was giving with Co-learning in Belgium. Discussing about leadership, meeting design, tools and methods we started wondering what the ROI of meetings was and how to calculate is.

Meetings are just a means

Meetings are just a way of realizing your objectives. So the ROI of your meeting should really be calculated compared to other alternatives. And yes, there are alternatives to meetings as meetings are just a means (see my blogpost here). All meeting objectives could be achieved without a meeting.

And that’s were it becomes complicated. Because we usually do not try the alternatives and even less do we calculate what these alternatives would cost us compared to our usual meetings. When it comes to assessing the ROI of meetings, we currently have no more than our gut feeling.

ROI of meetings: 3 things you should look at

I suggest three things you could be looking at that will give you a first idea of the ROI of your meetings:

1. Growth of your organisation as a result of your meeting structure
2. Actions that resulted from your meetings
3. Behaviour change that resulted from your meetings

ad a. Growth through your meeting structure

Some meeting structures are better fit to enhance and sustain the growth of your organisation than others. So the question is: what meeting structure (and by that I mean the type of meetings, their frequency and their length) should you adopt? If you meet every week sitting around the table for 2 hours because you feel that everyone should be updated, then consider a daily standup meeting for not more 15 minutes. Deeper problems can be solved in a longer monthly meeting. An even third meeting with a frequency of 2-3 per year should be arranged to discuss strategic issues. So basically review your meeting structure, ask yourself why you meet and try to design the best meeting structure fitting your needs.

Be aware that this is a trial and error path. The structure will not be correct right from the start. And you’ll have to revue your meeting structure every once in a while as your environment will change, the organisation will grow and people get bored doing the same after a while.

ad b. Accountable actions from your meetings

The proof of the pudding of a meeting lies not in the meeting itself, but in the actions that follow upon the meeting. So get the actions clear if you want to be able to say something on the ROI of your meetings. List the actions, publish them on a central place where everyone can see theirs and others progress. The ROI of your meeting is a result of how many actions have been identified and how much have been implemented successfully.

Ad c. Behaviour change from your meetings

If your meetings clearly enhance the way people work together, then you’re on the right track. As a result of your meetings, participants change their behaviour and start cooperating, sharing, helping one and other more than they did before. Now, in order to know the ROI of your meetings you should start measuring the behaviour of the participants. This sounds difficult and is definitely something you should plan carefully before your meetings, but once the system is in place it’s a great tool.

These things all give you an insight on the ROI of your meetings. Once you get a clear picture you can start a continuous improvement programme of your meetings, where using alternatives to meetings should definitely be on the agenda.

So, when are you going to start to get an idea of the ROI of your meetings?

PS: I haven’t touched upon the leadership side of the meeting, i.e. how the meeting itself is run. This definitely impacts on the ROI of your meeting. But I’ll keep that topic for a later post.

- But Ruben, what do you mean by self-organisation?

- Well it simply means that you delegate tasks at an even lower level than we currently do.

That was not me! The engagement was at a level that my involvement would only slow down the discussion.

- What tasks? Joined in a third person

- And how do we control this because quality is at stake here. Quality is at stake anyhow in our organisation.

- That’s one of the primary discussion we’re all here. It’s all about giving people some control.

- But what control do you mean? Is it control over their time, their tasks…

Definitions, always those bloody definitions…

The right red

The problem is: you end up in a discussion about which shades of red are included in the definition. It’s all very relevant, but it does not help the group any further.

I let go for a couple of minutes until I spotted a gaze of confusion in several eyes. And then I stopped the discussion.

Creating clarity: just take your stance, discuss later

I invited the participants to put their discussion on hold and give their stance anyhow. We would pick up the discussion after all dots would be on the wall. Obviously, some claimed the issue was not clear yet. So I asked: ‘Do you have a personal feeling on where you want to stand?’ The answer was affirmative, so I said: ‘Let’s move to the wall first then. We all know it’s your own personal choice and that there might be interpretation differences on the issue. But we can handle that after the dots.’

And so the dots came on the wall.

And then something interesting happened. As participants started asking and interpreting the row of dots it was intriguing to see that not a single participant was interested anymore in the different shades of red. The energy was now constructive. They all were interested in the reasons behind the choices of other. And slowly the group moved towards a shared understanding. Not all shades of red were clear, but the most important were.

And that’s how clarity usually appears in groups. The impulse is to discuss the delimitation but once you have all the positions on the table, you see common ground and that makes it much easier to move forward.

Dave Gray

Dave Gray, founder and chairman of the visual thinking company XPLANE, has just released his new book ‘The Connected Company’. The speed that information moves across, customers, markets, investors and beyond, changes the environments in which our companies are operating. More and more, customers request special and tailor-made treatments. In ‘The Connected Company’ Dave Gray asks questions and proposes a model on how companies should keep up with these changes. I had the chance to interview him.

Ruben: It strikes me that the your last book is not overloaded with graphics, it’s more a text-based book. Is that a deliberate choice?

Dave: The reason I started writing ‘The Connected Company’ is because I was interested in the topic. I started a learning process and began to write blog posts about it. My publisher asked me if I would be interested in putting these writings into a book. Writing is a process to understand things, it’s actually just like painting or drawing. I originally started as an artist and as an artist I draw to understand the world. Writing a book is another way to do just that.

 
Ruben: I didn’t know you started as an artist. How then did you become a business consultant?

Dave: There is actually no straight line from artist to business consultant. I even was a journalist in between.

 
Ruben: In ‘The Connected Company’ you’re talking about the adaptability of companies. It sounds like you’ve adapted yourself quite a few times in your career. What implication does adaptability have on future career lines?

Dave: Leaders will have to accept that there is no straight line. We couldn’t predict the financial crisis, WWII, the Greek deficit, so why do we think we can predict something so microscopic as someone’s career. Steve Jobs said: ‘You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward’. So learning to adapt is essential.

 
Ruben: That reminds me of improvisation, a word that is somehow lacking in you book. How important is improvisation for you?

Dave: Improvisation is the nature of all innovation. Any project-oriented work can only become innovative with improvisation. There is never certainty about the end of a project. You always need to improvise along the way, with all the risks and many dead-ends that this involves.

 
Ruben: Why do companies have so much trouble getting this right?

Dave: Because we’ve been perfecting the division of labour. We’re working in divided companies. Tasks are all set in advance and can easily be repeated. Workers just have to do these repetitive tasks. That’s the way we’ve organised our companies. So the last 100 years or so, we’ve trained the creativity out of our employees. Our organisations are seeking efficiency, reliability and productivity and these things can all be automated. We have yet to change our organisational structure and our education system. But our schools keep churning out people that learn the mechanistic view. We see that companies that still work that way need loans from the government. And that keeps them alive for another while. But for the people within these companies it gets harder and harder. They can’t find new jobs elsewhere. Service designers, user experience designers, etc… don’t have that problem. They can easily find new jobs.

 
Ruben: But there’s more than services in the world. We still need to manufacture products, so we also need those mechanistic jobs.

Dave: I’m convinced that services will replace manufactured goods. In essence a manufactured good is a service, it has functionality and that’s what you’re buying it for. You’re buying the product for its service. And increasingly manufacturers will make customized things. That’s what we’re heading for. You already see initiatives like Zip Car (car sharing company) where a single car is being used by about 15 families. Customers don’t own cars anymore they buy the service a car provides.

 
Ruben: But still, innovative products like the iPad need to be manufactured?

Dave: These are not devices, they’re stores! It’s just a screen that you take along with you. The real product that you as a customer are interested in is on the screen and that’s not even a product by Apple. So all these iPads are customised. The device is so simple you don’t notice it anymore.

 
Ruben: You talk about the analogy of the ’city’ as an organisational model for connected companies. The ‘city’ provides the structure and leaves small units (pods) within the ‘city’ develop their own services. The ‘city’ is the platform for pods to thrive. That’s a great analogy and it’s how the iPad works. But it raises the question about the bad reputation of government services. What advice would you give governments to improve that?

Dave: The difference with other services is that most services can be offered globally. But moving to a different city is quite difficult. The switching costs between cities, governments are quite high. That’s not the case with companies. In that respect, governments and cities don’t really have competition. I would say: get your citizens involved to improve the service.

 
Ruben: What about meetings? What’s their place in the connected company?

Dave: First of all meetings exist because we need alignment and coordination. I would reckon that at least 50% if not up to 80% of all meetings aren’t necessary at all. The issues discussed are essentially to maintain control over things that people should take care of by themselves. Meetings are there to fulfil the manager’s need. In a connected company people have a better idea on what their jobs are because they craft them themselves. They’re not automated, so control is less needed and meetings will become more and more optional.

 
Ruben: How do we get managers to accept this idea?

Dave: Managers should ask themselves what makes self-organising systems more effective than top-down controlled systems. Most meetings are just called out of laziness. If meetings are optional then there will be no more problems with the meeting itself. It will become the manager’s problem on why he or she needs the meeting. In that respect agile software is cutting edge. It makes the work process visual. Not only on the inbound side as is traditionally the case, but also on the process and output side. What have my co-workers planned? What are they working on? What have they finished? And making this visual at all times makes most meetings obsolete because everyone can see where the process stands. More and more people are going to manage their own work and they don’t want to lose productivity. So they’ll find new ways of arranging their work.

 
Ruben: That’s a great way to make employees more connected. But in my opinion tools won’t be enough. How to change the culture towards the connected company’?

Dave: That’s an extremely difficult transition. Traditional workers and managers have grown up with the ‘stay in lines and follow the rules.’ It’s easier to do nothing because doing anything requires force and jeopardizes your promotion chances.

 
Ruben: How long will it take before the connected company is everywhere?

Dave: Amazon was founded in 1994. It took them 15 years to become the global player they are now. Look at Skype; they completely disrupted the market. It takes time. How long will it take to disrupt industries like energy or health care? Information-oriented industries are the first to be disrupted, that’s why traditional media is having big problems right now. But industries with higher financial entry barriers will be able to hang on a bit longer. How fast will it go? I don’t know but it will happen.

 
Ruben: How do you prepare for this shift?

Dave: Workers should be looking at their own company and make two estimations. First, Will the industry be around in say 20 years from now? Second, does my company have the awareness needed to make the changes that will be necessary? If you don’t believethat, then you’d better start looking for a new job. Most people wait too long. Some friends of mine are still in journalism and it’s interesting to see they’re still going to the same old conferences. The big difference is that students now populate these conferences. Journalists have no money any more so they hardly attend. And that’s even more frightening because the students are learning useless things.

 
Ruben: this brings us to the theme of education. You’re particularly harsh on business schools in your book.

Dave: I’m harsh on all schools. We have a factory-oriented education style in which the learning is standardised. It’s not designed for creativity and collaboration. We’re being evaluated as individuals but not as teams. You get a degree for yourself. So of course, there is no collaboration. In that respect sports teams are ahead: athletes know that working together leads to better results. I believe we’re past the point of factory-oriented education. It does not work anymore. Increasingly employers will ask for people that work in teams, network efficiently and are self-directing. That in the end will drive the change.

 
Ruben: These are nice words to end with. Thank you very much Dave.

Dave: Thanks to you.

adding some colour

Henry Ford would have loved producing our current day meetings the way he produced his cars.

His famous ‘any colour – so long as it’s black’ would have marvelously fit the numerous meetings that are being churned out worldwide. A meeting room is a meeting room and a meeting is a meeting. All black, all the same. There’s just a slight variation in black because they’re not being produced all by the same firm.

So here are 49 ways to spice up your meetings and make them fun and colourful.

And by the way: fun usually means also more effective (and no, I did not say efficient, that’s a whole different story).

So which one do you like most?

4 ways to spice up your prep work

• prepare no agenda
• let each participant bring a song that makes one happy. Between each agenda item listen to one of the songs.
• prepare agenda items with at least 2 participants
• make a list of the participants you need, then shorten the list by half

6 ways to time your meetings colourfully

• schedule it in the middle of the night
• don’t have the meeting
• shorten the meeting by half
• split the meeting in two parts: one in the early morning and the second in the late afternoon
• assign speaking times and have a huge clock to keep people stick to the time
• schedule the meetings only in the afternoons, never in the mornings

5 ways to play with meeting roles

• let the note-taker be the leader of the meeting and the leader the note-taker
• present someone else’s presentation or comments
• have one chair less than participants, the one without the chair is the only one to speak. That participant is also the one that can choose the next speaker
• have only one chair, the one person sitting on that chair is the speaker. Once the chair is empty someone else can choose to sit
• ask the most junior person what agenda item is most important to him or her, start with that agenda item.

11 ways to communicate with all your senses

• don’t use words in the meeting, communicate with doodling and drawing
• don’t take any notes during the meeting
• say ‘yes, and’ to every suggestion someone makes
• communicate only by whispering into the ears of the participants next to you
• communicate between participants only by writing
• asks questions only by writing them down on a post-it and hanging them on the wall
• always let someone else speak your thoughts and concerns
• let the highest in hierarchy always speak last
• let the participants sit in a circle with their back to each other. This will make them listen carefully
• only let participants react in pairs
• let others present each others presentation

8 ways to spice up your space

• remove the table from the meeting room
• have nice sofa’s, comfy chairs and a glass of wine for the meeting
• play Mozart on the background
• organise a walk and have the meeting outside
• let every participant take off their shoes before entering the meeting room
• after each agenda item change places
• have the meeting in the car park, the commuter train or in the café
• have the meeting around the desk of the most junior participant. Thus you’ll need to be short in order not to disturb other persons.

10 ways to spice up your decision-making

• let one random participant make the decisions and then discuss about them
• make a list of all items that need discussion, throw the dice and discuss not more than the number of dots on the dice.
• make a list of all items that need discussion and flip a coin for each item. ‘Head’ = will be discussed now, ‘tails’ = not this meeting.
• don’t make any decisions, discuss only the issues and then leave
• organise a greek chorus: have a random participant comment personally after each closed agenda item. This person can do it the way he/she wants
• after each decision ask: ‘what’s the fun part of this decision?’
• do a round of ‘what do you really think?’ after each decision, keep it anonymous
• only make decisions that affect everyone, if it affects a subgroup or a single participant leave the decision out of the meeting room
• vote one participant out of the meeting after each decision made. The person voted out is the least relevant for the following agenda items
• do a round of drinks (coffee / tea) after each decision made, as a way to celebrate them

5 ways to follow-up differently on meetings

• only allow participants in the meeting if they’ve done their actions agreed from the previous meeting
• schedule the next meeting only when every item on the to do list has been done
• take 5 minutes to draft the meeting notes at the end in the form of a graphic visualisation. No other meeting notes are allowed
• let another participant sum up your action notes and then let him/her ask regularly about your follow up.
• make a list of all the decisions at the end of the meeting, cross two from that list by asking participants to vote for the ones they like least and don’t follow-up on these two