For what?
One problem in many organizations is that employees are overburdened by too many meetings: they often see meetings as the number one time waster, as the duration of meetings, the number of participants, the quality of the decisions made and the usefulness of concrete results are often out of proportion. If we consider how much time managers in particular spend in meetings - Kununu Engage (2018) assumes that managers spend an average of around 60 percent of their working time in meetings.
sit exclusively in meetings - it quickly becomes clear why it can be worth starting with meetings. As many as 70 percent of managers state that unproductive meetings are the main reason for their chronic lack of time.
Example
Employees in the communications team of a financial services provider have been complaining for some time about an increasing workload that is not balanced out by growing personnel resources. At the same time, the manager is cited as a "bottleneck", as he or she suffers from a lack of time and is often unable to make upcoming decisions promptly enough - a situation that we encounter in many teams in both large and small companies. An initial SWOT analysis (SWOT = Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) shows that the team perceives meetings as inefficient - sometimes even as the reason why individuals are unable to complete their tasks. Some are of the opinion that meetings are detrimental to team cohesion and that the manager should hand over more tasks. It also turns out that some employees are not focused during meetings and do other tasks on the side.
What matters
Meetings thrive on the communication that takes place in them. They play a central role in almost every one of our consulting projects, so we can build on a very broad wealth of experience. We can therefore recommend a number of meeting and decision-making formats that are usually very suitable in a complex environment for putting a stop to time killers and boosting team morale. In the example of the communications team described above, the following meeting system was even able to replace the planned newsroom and reshape collaboration from the ground up.
Tactical Meeting
In our experience, Tactical Meetings can replace a large number of routine meetings and one-on-one discussions with employees. They
originate from the Holacracy system (Robertson 2016) and are geared towards the operational work of a team. Their purpose is to sort out problems that have recently arisen and remove obstacles so that work can move forward. The meetings take place on a regular basis, based on the needs of the team (usually weekly). The Tactical Meetings follow a structured process and are held by a facilitator appointed from the team for this role.
Consensus decisions
Models of integrative decision-making are based on the consensus principle - an alternative to the consensus that is particularly widespread in agile organizations. Consensus can be found in several organizational systems, such as Sociocracy 3.0 (Cumps 2019). The focus here is not on a solution that is perfect for everyone, but one that is
makes the most sense at the moment. Consensus involves integrating different ideas until a feasible solution is reached. Explained in a nutshell, it works by one person presenting a problem and proposing a solution and then giving everyone else the opportunity to ask questions, give feedback and raise objections if the proposed solution would actually cause new problems. If there is such an objection, the parties work together to find a solution that solves the original problem without causing new problems.
Review meetings
So-called sprint reviews originate from the world of agile working (Schwaber 1995). The purpose of the review meeting is to check the result of a sprint or an iteration and to determine future adjustments. The team discusses the results of their work with key stakeholders and progress towards the project goal is shared. During the event, the team and stakeholders review what has been achieved in the sprint and what has changed in their environment. Based on this information, the participants work together on what needs to be done next. The review meeting is a working session and not a PowerPoint event.
Step by step
The steps for the individual meeting formats are described below for each meeting format:
Tactical Meeting
- Check-in: Talk about what needs your attention!
- Checklist (optional): Recurring tasks are marked as "completed" or "not completed".
- Metrics (optional): Each role reports on the status of the current metrics - without discussing them further.
- Project updates: The moderator asks each role for important updates - clarification questions are also permitted here at most.
- Tensions: These form the core of the tactical meetings, which thus take up the "tension-based work" from chapter 3. The moderator collects tensions, writes them down in one or two key words and creates an agenda - again: no discussion.
- Work through tensions: The moderator asks each person who has submitted a tension what they need. The owners of tensions can optionally involve other people or roles. A next step is recorded for each tension. The tension holders confirm that they have received what they need.
- Check-out: Brief reflection on what can be improved in the next meeting - again, no discussion.
Consensus decisions
- Check-in: Become present for the upcoming decisions.
- Agenda: In the case of several pending decisions, the moderator sets up an agenda. The next steps follow each decision point.
- Proposal: The proposer describes his tension and submits his proposal for the decision.
- Clarification questions: The moderator gives the participants the opportunity to ask questions in order to better understand the proposal.
- Reaction round: In the order indicated by the moderator, all participants react to the proposal without discussing it.
- Adjustments (optional): The proposer is given the opportunity to adapt their proposal.
- Objection round: The moderator asks for "valid" objections in the same order as before - objections are valid if they contain aspects that make it clear that the team would be harmed if it implements the current proposal.
- Decision: If no valid objection is raised, the proposal is accepted; if valid objections are raised, the proposal is amended so that both the objection and the original tension are resolved. The objection round is repeated.
- Check-out: Brief reflection on what can be improved in the next meeting - again, no discussion.
Review meeting
- The client for a project brings the stakeholders together for a review meeting: all team members, coaches, external partners, customers, representatives of other teams working on the project, management representatives.
- The moderator explains the objectives of the meeting and the rules for cooperation during the meeting.
- Results: The client reports on completed and uncompleted tasks.
- Demo: Team members show their work results from the current iteration using the following questions:
- What went well?
- Where were there problems?
- How were the problems solved?
- Assessment: The other stakeholders provide feedback based on the following questions:
- What do I like?
- What should be changed?
- Where is there potential for improvement?
- Release: The client decides which project modules are released for the customer and which go into a further iteration via the backlog.
- Roadmap: The client provides an outlook for the next iteration and the further course of the project. We recommend the use of Objectives & Key Results for this purpose
Framework
Duration: Tactical Meeting: 60 minutes
Consensus decision: Allow 30 minutes per decision.
Review meeting: 60 - 120 minutes, depending on the scope of the project
Format: virtual (e.g. working together on a virtual whiteboard during a video conference) or in person in a suitable room
Participants: see respective description of the meeting format
You can find more information on this and other tools for overcoming business challenges with communicative means in the book
