Transforming IT

Meeting Madness - Are You Really There?

Various members of the IT team file into the conference room.  Yet another meeting.  Everyone sits down and promptly opens their laptops.  Everyone is in the meeting, but is anyone really there?

If you were to ever ask someone why this is the case, the answer you'd hear is that it's because they are just too busy.  They'll whip their laptop around to show you their calendar of double- and triple-booked meetings to prove it.  They'll say that they have more things to do than can be done in one day, so they must "multitask or die."

So everyone sits in the meeting, but isn't really there.  Questions are raised which no one answers - until weeks later when someone, by chance, is paying attention.  Meetings become nothing but a place where you come together and wait your turn to give a monologue, but in which very little real dialogue takes place.

I am as guilty as the next guy when it comes to multitasking.  (Don't get my wife started about me, my iPhone and the dinner table!)  And I'm pretty insanely busy - I'll put my calendar up against anyone's!

But here's the real secret.  I don't multitask because I'm too busy to avoid it.  I multitask because most meetings I attend are just a waste of time.

It made me wonder.  What if we changed that?  What if I walked into every meeting and committed that for the next 30 or 60 minutes that meeting and everyone who spoke would get my undivided attention?  No laptop.  No multitasking.  Undivided attention.  What would change if I literally hung on the speaker's every word and gave back to them meaningful, thoughtful responses every time? 

It would probably take a while for anyone to take notice - they would need to dig their noses out of their laptops first.  But I think that if we all did that, something dramatic would happen.  How would it change the context of meetings?  The care with which people scheduled and conducted them?

I know that for me it would.  If I knew that by calling a meeting, each and every person was going to commit that for the duration of the meeting they were going to do nothing else, that they would be giving me 110% of their undivided attention and mental energy - it would cause me to look at things differently.

Is this a good use of their time?  Are they going to be angry that I made them stop what they were doing to come and discuss this topic?  Would they even show up knowing that they couldn't do anything else and that this time would be lost forever?  I know that I would prepare a lot more for meetings to make sure that they were useful and effective.  And I'd probably keep them shorter and more focused - I wouldn't want to take any more time than I needed to.

I truly believe that if we banned laptops and blackberrys and cell phones (and yes, iPhones) from every meeting, we would find that we would have a lot fewer meetings and that those we had would be much more meaningful.  If we each committed to making a true investment of our time and energy by walking through the door, I believe that the very nature of each meeting would change for the better. 

I know that this is probably a pipe dream.  But wouldn't it be great if at your next meeting, everyone was really there?

The Power of Momentum

Whenever we talk about driving organizational or behavioral change, we talk about a lot of different tactics and strategies.  At CastlePointe, we employ an approach that includes four components: Awareness, Involvement, Education and Adoption.  Other approaches to organizational change have similar elements.  But it's important to remember that in all of these there is an underlying element that is critical to success: momentum.

Momentum has a little bit of a "consulting word" feel to it, so I want to tread lightly here.  But to me anyway, momentum is a way of saying that your effort starts moving under its own power - that it has an energy of its own.  If we look at our four components of change, they are all integral to creating this type of momentum.

It is important to recognize this because it is easy to start "going through the motions" while executing these four components and miss the point.  If you lose the energy, you will not be successful no matter how well you execute the steps.

During our consulting engagements, we often talk about exponential value.  Momentum is a lot of how it's created.  When people are engaged, motivated and excited, they start taking things to levels that were not even anticipated during planning.  It's these kinds of extraordinary efforts that create exponential value. 

Creating momentum first requires that you believe.  Your effort must be more than a project.  It must be a passion.  You must lead your team with energy and an earnest belief that what you are doing is critical to the success of the organization.  You must infuse that energy into your team and expect that they bring that energy into everything that they do. 

If you can lead with passion and spill that energy out to your team, you will create momentum that will carry your initiative wherever you want it to go.