These types of meetings, quite frankly, can be big time wasters.Īnd we can’t afford to waste any more time (because time, of course, waits for no one). You might want to slow down and chat, but perhaps not everyone in the room has the same goals (or time) that you do.” We sometimes call social meetings without realizing it… Unfortunately, social meetings quickly turn circular and expand to fit the time. Social Meetings: “Meetings for the purpose of connection. It doesn’t matter whether these meetings are designed to give off the appearance of control and productivity, or whether they’re a way for managers to subtly exert their status in either case, these meetings are wasteful.” These meetings rarely add any more value than a memo would have.”įormality Meetings: “Meetings called by managers who think it’s their job to hold them.

“Traditional meetings”, as Al writes, tend to “create a culture of compromise” and “kill our sense of urgency” because more often than not, we have a habit of calling meetings that fall in one of three categories:Ĭonvenience Meetings: “Meetings called because it’s difficult to capture everything we want to say effectively in writing, quickly. Regularly interrupting the day to bring our best minds together to focus on the urgent makes it impossible for these people to spend their focused energy on what’s actually important.' - Read This Before Our Next Meeting, page 11 And the solution, as Al explains, is ditching Traditional Meetings and follow The Modern Meeting Standard.ĭitch Traditional Meetings 'I wonder when we’ll realize what a trap we’ve set for ourselves. The problem is in the way we approach and run our meetings. “Meetings are the way we make change, and change is how we grow.” “In our organization, though, and in modern organizations everywhere, meetings are the lever that allow coherent motion,” writes Al Pittampalli in Read This Before Our Next Meeting. And ends later than scheduled.Īnd while you may be physically present, your mind isn’t.Īs you sit there, “stuck” with perhaps the most unproductive sixty minutes you’ll spend all day, you’re trying to figure out how you’re going to make up for this lost time.īut that isn’t to say that meetings aren’t important. Sitting in yet another time stealing meeting you’re “required” to attend.Īnd of course, the meeting starts later than scheduled. If a restaurant kitchen put as little planning into a meal as we put into our meetings, dinner would never be served.' - Read This Before Our Next Meeting, page 3 If an operating room were as sloppily run as our meetings, patients would die. We want to honor both alignment and divergence in groups because fluently working with both is a pathway to innovation.'Over time, we’ve become nonchalant about bad meetings. It can also be interesting to ask for observations about any divergences or polarities the group heard in the values expressed. One prompt that can help engage the group is to ask them to name any commonalities they heard. This is a way of practicing collective sense-making, one of the highest capacities provided by working as a group.

You may want to take a moment for an optional additional round of comments to reflect on themes participants heard in the affirmations.

The advantage of using the popcorn technique is in mitigating time pressures - by not having to hear from everyone while still growing a generative meeting atmosphere. I add the caveat that anyone can pass and we’ll come back to them. I usually compromise by asking for a volunteer to start off and then proceeding around in a circle.

We want to encourage those who don’t often volunteer to go first.

This leads to considerations about how we invite participants to share their observations. Allow each person to offer their positive call-outs. This can either be done using the popcorn technique, allowing anyone to speak when they’re ready, or it can be done sequentially around a circle or tables. We want to honor the rule of “no forced sharing”, so your choice here matters.

At our next meeting