Comstock's magazine 0919 - September 2019 | Page 58

n management
“Norms create safety. I’ll tell them, ‘If you’re an
extrovert, challenge yourself to ask do you have
more to add. And introverts, challenge yourself
to speak up and to add something without
requiring a red carpet.”
Tania Fowler, owner, Interplay Coaching
according to Tania Fowler, owner and
founder of Sacramento-based Interplay
Coaching. The huddle is used at Apple,
Dell and Capital One. Fowler gives a
few simple rules: It should be short
(5-15 minutes), every day at the same
time, no chairs (this encourages brev-
ity), “no coffee cake” (you lose focus),
no decision-making and “absolutely no
problem-solving.” (Once you go down
the twisted path of problem-solving,
you’ll blow past your allotted time.)
The Who
How many people should come to a
meeting? We tend to over-invite, in-
cluding this guy and that guy and the
kitchen sink because, as Montanaro
says, “There’s often a fear of, ‘Oh, my
God, we’re going to leave someone
out!’” Large, bloated meetings can
lead to both exasperation (it’s hard to
chime in) or, at the other end of the
spectrum, “social loafing” — as oth-
ers wrestle to grab the conversational
conch, some might slink into the back-
ground. So embrace your inner door-
man and keep a strict guest list. Or you
can use Amazon’s “two-pizza rule” —
the maximum number of people in a
meeting is based on how many can be
fed by two pizzas.
58
comstocksmag.com | September 2019
THE MEETING ITSELF
The Why
The true cause of a bad meeting could be
more foundational. Fowler cites research
from Gallup finding only 41 percent of
employees “strongly agree” they know
what their organizations stand for, which
means 59 percent do not. This ambigui-
ty bleeds into meetings. Meetings can
be lousy, says Fowler, because compa-
nies are “terrible at clarifying what the
hell they’re about. If you’re going to call
a meeting, then clarify why you’re calling
the meeting. I call it the mission of the
meeting.”
I push back a bit. I ask her, “Aren’t
some meetings necessary but, you
know, kind of boring? Take a finance
budget meeting. Should even that
have a ‘mission’?”
Fowler pauses, thinks. She then
cites a classic story from the 1960s
when, at the peak of the space race,
Walter Cronkite paid a visit to NASA
and interviewed its employees. He
spoke to a janitor and asked him what
his role was. Fowler gives the punch-
line: “The janitor said, ‘I’m putting
a man on the moon.’” So, yes, even
a snoozer of a meeting about the
third-quarter budget can be mapped
back to the mission of your compa-
ny, by saying, perhaps, with raising
voice, “Right here, right now, in this
conference room, we will ensure that
we have the right revenue targets, be-
cause if we don’t get the revenue right,
then our company will not survive.”
A St. Crispin’s Day speech this is not,
but employees are more engaged when
they can sniff the purpose.
The How
Another reason meetings can be un-
productive, says Fowler, is people lack
a grounding in the right “norms” of
meeting culture. This can be fixed.
When Fowler facilitates meetings, she
spends the first five minutes quickly
establishing its norms, and then jotting
them down on a f lip chart or white-
board. Example norms: No talking
over people; be succinct; listen before
you speak; and no technology (phones,
laptops, tablets), except during breaks.
Once a team creates its norms, Fowler
instructs the team to print, laminate
and use it for meetings in the future.
Put someone in charge of the norms;
that person doesn’t have to be the boss.
Fowler adds that you can “even have
fun with it,” like tossing Nerf balls at
the person who breaks a norm.