Are your meetings smart?
It’s a typical Tuesday morning and Steve is sitting in a “brainstorming” meeting that his boss has called. He is one of eight people spread around the boardroom with post-it notes and sharpies covering the table in front of him. He is distracted, checking his email and his LinkedIn account whilst his boss is talking to the room. Sheets of butchers paper cover the walls and the team has been asked to “come up with ideas to fix their latest logistics problem”.
Several of his colleagues are fully engaged in writing down ideas. He is not. Steve doesn’t like these meetings. He doesn’t believe his ideas are heard, and he also feels like he can’t keep pace with the others. He looks over and Sarah who is looking pensive while she also tries to think of ways to solve the problem. He knows that no one listens to Sarah, even though sometimes she has great ideas. “Why am I even here?”
Does this sound familiar?
Meetings are expensive — but they are a hidden cost that can undermine productivity and effectiveness.
“A survey of 6,500 people from the USA, UK, and Germany found that among the 19 million meetings that were observed, the ineffective meetings cost up to $399 billion in the US and $58 billion in the UK” — Doodle, Otter
Effectiveness
Not everyone works well in a group session or meeting. In fact most people work better on their own. However, collaboration and the connections that are made between different people’s experiences are really important. It is the connections made between disparate ideas that spark the new idea. The process behind creativity and developing new ideas is known as bisociation, a term created by Koestler when he wrote the seminal piece The Act of Creation. New ideas occur when two (or more) unrelated ideas come together and new and unexpected ways.
Group meetings are a “best attempt” to extract information and experiences from people to make visible the possible connections that can occur. People apply metaphors or other “frameworks” to new situations, which aids in finding new ways to solve problems. However, the benefits that can come from such connections in groups, are often outweighed by cognitive bias, social norms and other group or interpersonal influences. What then happens, is the loudest voice wins or you get the same ideas over and over again as stereotyped and risk averse thinking kicks in.
And then Covid-19 happened…
Who doesn’t love a good Zoom meeting? (I think we are all a bit over teleconferencing, but it is here to stay.)
Teleconferencing has made the “connecting” part of the idea generation process difficult. We use tools like Mural or Miro to do the same things that we did in person — online. Digital whiteboards help us “collaborate” when we can’t be together in person. They also provide a digital record of the output of the session — so they are slightly more efficient than face-to-face workshops. But they also increase the opportunity for distractions to occur and people are more inclined to multi-task. These meetings are also still constrained by physical limitations which mean that the best ideas don’t rise to the top.
So why don’t we collaborate differently?
Rapid change and necessity means we need to rethink how we collaborate. The sequential meeting, one person speaks at a time, or one person has the floor, is no longer a viable option. We need to adapt and try new models for collaboration — but ensure that the pivotal elements of creativity, evaluation and decision making are maintained.
I have developed a process that I call a neural meeting or workflow. I was inspired by the brainwriting process to develop a platform to enable concurrent or simultaneous thinking and sharing of ideas. The platform is called SparkTank. Essentially, the platform handles the collecting and “passing” (reallocation) of ideas around the group, collecting suggestions amongst participants in real-time or over an extended period of time (e.g. a week).
Suggestions are collected and returned to the originator of the first idea, enabling them to reshape, improve and add to their idea based on the suggestions of other people. Each person can then submit their idea for evaluation. The process then occurs again with a set of evaluation questions enabling the fast and more objective review of each idea based on criteria. The platform creates a score, enabling the immediate prioritisation of ideas.
The benefits
The neural meeting removes the platform for the “talkfest”. Yes conversations can still occur, but they don’t dominate the important creative process. It also means that no one person (or group of people) can demand the attention of the group, ensuring all people (despite rank, position, gender, race, age or role) can have a say — and be heard. Self-censorship is also reduced as each person can put down all ideas without fear of judgment (particularly when in incognito or anonymous mode).
Evaluation of ideas also happens in real-time, together, but privately. Ideas are evaluated based on criteria providing a less subjective view of the value of the ideas.
Social loafing or free-riding is also eliminated. Every person and their ideas count. Steve can no longer hide (or zone out) and Sarah’s ideas are weighted the same as her boss. Groupthink is also removed, as it is not until the process is over that the leaderboard of ideas is shown, meaning people are less inclined to agree with an idea because of what other people say they like.
The bonus of the platform is you can engage anyone, anywhere and at anytime. You can have a whole organisation work on a problem. (yes 10,000 people could work on one idea). There is immense brainpower in organisations — we need to use it better.
Rethink the meeting
Meetings must become more focused and effective. Use meetings where talking and discussion is necessary. But where there are better ways to collaborate, be smart with your meeting time and resources.
