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Hack:
Avoid shark-infested waters to survive meeting hell in an entrenched bureaucracy

By Chris Grams - Community Guide at New Kind

July 13, 2010 at 1:49pm

meetings

meeting hell

sharks

design thinking

coordinating activities

operations

Moonshots

Increase trust, reduce fear

De-politicize decision-making

Summary

Most people avoid swimming in shark-infested waters. Why? Because that’s where sharks have the upper hand. If you work in an entrenched bureaucracy and are trying to survive, most meetings might as well be shark-infested waters where bureaucrats have the upper hand. Here's a hack to help you avoid becoming bureaucratic chum!

Problem

Most people, unless they are thrill-seekers, avoid swimming in shark-infested waters. Why? Because that’s where sharks have the upper hand. On land, I could run circles around a great white shark, but in the ocean, I’m chum.

If you work in an entrenched bureaucracy and are just trying to survive, don’t be chum. Avoid swimming in bureaucrat-infested waters.

Where are bureaucrats most dangerous?

Meetings.

In meetings, bureaucrats are as dangerous as sharks in water.

Solution

Just like sharks out of water, if you can get bureaucrats out of their element, they are much less dangerous.

Bureaucrats love “weekly checkpoint and status meetings,” for example. If you are forced to attend these types of meetings, consider whether it would be appropriate to recommend some changes to the meeting structure.

One example: I’m a huge fan of Basecamp, which is a simple, collaborative system that makes it easy for everyone to be updated all of the time, reducing the need for in-person checkpoints. Conversations can be asynchronous, so they tend to progress more quickly and don’t have forced beginnings and endings like meetings do. Could you do your updates through a system like this as an alternative to weekly meetings?

If you must do the meetings, you may be able to still make the waters less friendly to the bureaucrats. Design thinking

offers some great techniques for managing conversations so they stay productive and helping people build on the ideas of others rather than tearing them down.

I do not believe meetings are evil, and I do not believe bureaucrats are evil, but I do believe bureaucrats in status meetings are as dangerous as sharks in water.

So if you want to stay safe, change the way your meetings are structured to make them less comfortable for bureaucrats!

Practical Impact

I've seen two possible outcomes when bureaucrats are forced out of their element:

1) They wither because they don't know how to survive outside of meetings. It is amazing how after years of spending all of your corporate days in meetings you actually forget how to do real work.

2) (and this is beautiful to witness) They evolve. They learn to be a part of productive meetings. They collaborate with people outside of meetings. They become active contributors, solving problems and exploring opportunities.

There are few greater rewards than watching a former bureaucrat become a productive member of your corporate society.

First Steps

Act locally. Start with one meeting that you run as a checkpoint or status meeting and move it online to Basecamp or similar tool. Or try doing your checkpoint meeting as a "standing meeting" of 10 minutes or less where no one can sit down until the meeting is over.

When people start seeing your success eliminating status meetings, they may even begin to try it on their own!

Credits

Over the years, I've learn a lot about how to run productive meetings from the good folks at IDEO. I've also learned from one of the masters, my colleague and business partner David Burney here at New Kind. Finally, my experiences over the past 10 years collaborating with smart people doing things the open source way at Red Hat provided great inspriation.

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July 23, 2010 at 1:21am

Bill Proudfit

Cognitive Edge teaches a suite of ways to facilitate interaction outside of the traditional meeting hell. They run 2 day workshops around the world and then you are part of the CE network. It's a worthwhile 2 days.