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The Dreaded Business Meeting

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Are you fed up of attending meetings that achieve little or nothing?

What irritates you most about meetings?

Is it eager colleagues who answer their mobile phone when it rings, or tired employees who drift off during a presentation? If you notice these disturbances in your office, you’re not alone.

A recent study (Opinion Research USA) found that disorganised, rambling meetings topped the list of meeting annoyances at 27 percent.

Employees who interrupt their peers and try to dominate conversation during the meeting followed at 17 percent.

Interestingly, while mobile phone interruptions came in at 16 percent, frustrations over people checking BlackBerries only measured about 5 percent. Other pet irritations include people falling asleep in meetings, lack of refreshments and meetings without bathroom breaks.

I am surprised that late starts to meetings don’t feature in the survey – and even more surprised that meetings that over-run aren’t also higher up the list. Perhaps it is just that thing shave got so bad in this respect that people no longer notice or care? I was recently working with a medium sized organisation with a middle management team of about 20. It was obvious to me that the culture was to expect meetings to start late and end even later. People would drift in at the meeting start time and then make a cup of tea – or go on the mobile. When a meeting finally convened, typically at least 10 minutes after the planned start time a couple of stragglers would usually still arrive late.

I asked what might happen if at the very next meeting the Chief Exec ran, were she to start on time – regardless of who was in the room – and after the meeting gave every latecomer personal feedback about her expectations of timely start to meetings. The first person to respond said ‘I would think she was a bit of a plonker!’

There was a silence and then someone else said ‘Well I suppose it would be quite professional’.

In my book – not only would it be very professional – but also within a few days the entire culture of the organisation could be changed with respect to meetings.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog.html?id=178074

Working Effectively in a Performance Management Framework

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Frontline police called on the Government to reverse the target-driven culture that has forced them to make “ludicrous” decisions such as arresting a child for throwing cream buns.

The Police Federation annual conference in Blackpool will debate whether judging officers purely on how many arrests, cautions or on-the-spot fines they can deliver is making a mockery of the criminal justice system.

A not untypical story of modern life – but are ‘targets’ really the problem?

Would dropping targets help?

Or do we choose to blame the targets – when it is really poor management in a target driven organisation that is to blame?

How can managers prevent this type of gaming the system and ensure that support progress rather than act as a catalyst to stupidity?

What would you have done as the Officer in Charge – when you saw that arrest on the record books?

What would you have done before hand to ensure that the officer would have thought twice before adding this to their ‘portfolio of success’.

Happy to put up a small prize for the most useful response!

Why Feedback Does Not Work

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People often tell me that when they give feedback it just does not work the way they hope. Either the feedback is ignored, or it causes a while load of justifications, excuses and rationales leading to a heated debate and a deterioration in the relationship.

There are several reasons why feedback might not have the desired affect and cause more problems than it cures. By far the most common reason for feedback failure is that the relationship is not right. We only accept and act on feedback when it comes from someone we trust and respect.  Giving feedback to someone who does not trust and respect you is not only a waste of breathe – it is likely to make the situation, certainly your relationship, worse.

Before you can give effective feedback, you have to earn the right (and this is not about just being the boss).  As well as trust and respect it is important that the receiver of the feedback knows that your motivation for offering feedback is that you want them to suceed in doing a great job.  They have to know that you are not putting them down or playing power games – you are sincerely trying to help them do things well.

So the next time you have an opportunity to give feedback – ask yourself – does this person trust and respect me enough to value my feedback?

Secondly ask yourself whether your motivation to give feedback is to help them to get better at their job?

If the answer to either of these questions is no, then you are better off keeping the feedback to yourself.  Instead find a way to work on your relationship so that in future your  feedback will be welcomed and acted upon.

Why Managers not Leaders?

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I am often asked why I chose to set up a Progressive Managers’ Network. Surely a Progressive Leaders’ Network would be more appealing.

Well that maybe so – but the focus of this network is fiercely practical – and I want it to appeal to people who want to get things done. In my experience talking about ‘leadership’ attracts people who are strong thinkers and communicators – but not always doers.

And so much leadership theory is overly complicated – while this network is about doing the basics exceptionally well and then building from there. Too much leadership training fails to be effective because the basics of good management – especially the interpersonal stuff – are not in place.

But finally I just love good management. Done well it is a fine and noble profession. A good manager can be an even more powerful force for good than a good teacher or mentor. It is just sad that so few people can point to the experience of working with a really good manager.

Making Values Live

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I helped to manage the production of a conference in Hull called Making Values Live – featuring the work of Mathew Smerdon and Geraldine Blake from Community Links. At the conference they provided an introduction to their report – Living Values: A report encouraging boldness in the third sector

The value-driven ethos of third-sector organisations is often cited as their distinguishing feature. But is this really the case?

The third sector has no monopoly on ‘values’. But are certain values more prevalent in the third sector than either the public or private sector? I have worked in all three sectors and from this personal experience – I doubt it.

Excellent organisations exist in all sectors. And excellent organisations always have strong values – a consistent set of values that runs through all of their work and helps to recruit, retain, and inspire talented people. The challenge is how to build an excellent passion and vision led organisation – regardless of its legal structure or the sectoral label it attracts.

The conference raised some further interesting questions – perhaps the main one for me being:

Is working explicitly with values worthwhile – or does it lead to hours of navel gazing with little real performance gain?

Can you work directly with something as abstract and ‘slippery’ as values?

How can you make the concepts involved more concrete and action oriented?

The best managers focus on working with behaviours, actions and results. Things that they can directly observe rather than infer. They then give affirmative feedback when these reinforce and express organisational values – or give adjusting feedback when they undermine them. This keeps the process of working with values very practical and action oriented.

In my experience though few managers give regular and rigorous feedback and many of those that do feel uncomfortable referring explicitly to values.