Honesty and Courage in Meetings ?!

Did it ever occur to you that we often try to fix problems with procedures and systems that are really ethical problems?

Could a lack of courage and honesty be the problem with your meetings? Thinking back, many, many of the meetings in which my time has been wasted had their problems not in lack of agenda, meeting minutes, nice flow charts done in Microsoft Project or all of those other things that managers like to spend classes and money on. The problem was that… get ready for it …

THE WRONG PEOPLE WERE THERE!

Here is one example of a thousand …

A team is announced to address Important Organization Problem Six. We’ll call it IOPS. it doesn’t matter what specifically it was. The team includes two people who are IOPS experts Fred and Susie, one person from accounting who can help us do the budget from IOPS, one manager whose job is to ‘keep everyone on task’, Joe, who is assigned because he works there and needs to be assigned to something, Jessica who is brand new, so it would be good training for her and Bill who is from another organization because ‘we need communication’.

The first three meetings, Fred, Susie, and the accountant decide on how to address the problem, how much it would cost and divide up the work. No work is assigned to Joe, Jessica or the manager because they know nothing about IOPS. After each meeting, the manager reminds them all, repeatedly, that they need to have an agenda, meeting minutes, with copies typed and put in the…