Posts Tagged ‘meetings’

Raising the energy level of your meetings

We usually assume that an agenda is something prepared for a meeting, but unless the goals of the meeting are quite clear, it is likely that we will not meet our agenda.

A meeting can be a form of successful collaboration, or it can be a mindless ritual that saps your energy and time. What makes the difference is clarity of purpose, and a commitment to work as effectively as possible within the time available.

To truly meet your agenda you need to understand your circumstances and your objectives, and not simply pile on a list of things to do. The essential ingredient which determines the success or failure of any meeting is communication.

A highly practical model to understand communication was developed by Roger J. Hamilton, the founder of Wealth Dynamics, and Asia’s leading Wealth Consultant. Roger makes the distinction that communication contains a spectrum of four energy levels: Exchange, Connect, Motivate, and Inspire. While meetings are organized with best intentions, ask yourself at what level are most corporate meetings conducted? How often have you attended a meeting at which information is exchanged in a strange volley of suggesting and then shooting down each new idea that is presented?

The idea generators focus on possibilities, and suggest new things to do, or new ways of doing things. The idea critics focus on reasons why those ideas would not work, and therefore should be abandoned. This is demotivating for both sides. Mere idea exchange is a form of corporate wheel spinning, because without achieving any traction, there can be no effective action.

People connect when they get the goals at a gut level. Something clicks when the ideas and actions presented make sense not only at a logical level, but also at an emotional and intuitive level. Still nothing changes until people take this connection and do something with it.

Although the energy improves when people at the meeting become motivated, problems occur when the motivation is not shared by other members of the team, or when it lasts only as long as the meeting, and is soon forgotten on returning to the daily grind.

The reason we aspire to inspire is that inspiration lights the fire of internal motivation, and leads to action that does not need to be driven from the outside. Inspiration is self-sustaining.

Improving your LUCK

O, Fortuna! Since Ancient Greece and before humankind have been interested in improving its fortune. And yet the Wheel of Fortune is often portrayed as something whimsical, to which you need a magical connection for it to shine on you. Las Vegas thrives on the theme of Luck be a Lady Tonight! And yet when you look closely at those who are considered lucky in love, in business, and in life, you see that there are elements at work over which we all have some control.

One of the tenets of Wealth Dynamics is that LUCK is no accident. It is constructed of four elements that are easy to remember, yet not so easy to practice.

LOCATION

Location is the mantra in retail sales as the secret to success, but location is extremely important to success in any endeavor in life. The mood of a place can kindle or kill your enthusiasm. The decor of a room can affect how well you learn and what you remember. Environment is very important, and fortunately we can often do something about it, even if it means changing your physical location. In Japanese it is called 場 (ba) and is the primary focus when people set about trying to make improvements.

UNDERSTANDING

Understanding starts with seeing, not just on the surface, but deep behind the obvious. The character for 観 (kan) depicts a stork silent but fully aware of any movement. We need awareness, and an openness to see with the eyes of understanding, rather than judging the situation with blind eyes.

CONNECTIONS

Rather than starting a meeting with what you want to say, find out what information, experience, and emotions you have in common that are connected to the meeting agenda. Make sure that everyone feels connected and involved at some level. The character for 縁 (en) means edge, interface, connection, or relationship. It is frequently used to highlight how you are connected to another person, often in a surprising or synchronistic way.

KNOWLEDGE

The lowest component in communication is data, which can be assembled to create knowledge. However, knowledge only becomes useful when it is transformed into experience and wisdom. People easily assume that they know something just having heard about it. Socrates said that the beginning of wisdom was the realization that you know next to nothing. There is always more to learn, if you have the qualities of humility and curiosity in the right blend. The character for 知 (chi) means knowledge, but knowing at a deeper level. When you have this kind of knowledge you earn peoples’ trust through your natural authority and authenticity. Knowledge must then transform into action.

Download a Mandala Chart which summarizes these ideas with questions that will help you in Improving Your LUCK.

These words go deeper than their superficial meanings, and when you can combine them you get the magic winning hand! Your LUCK will naturally improve, and your meetings will meet the agenda with action and results.

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Tagged as: active garage, Flexible Focus, japan, Leadership, luck, management, mandala charts, manga, meeting agenda, meetings, Time for a change, william reed

Last year, in November, I posted 12 posts on QUALITY in the form of QUALITYtweets, on Active Garage. It didn’t quite seem right to stop just there… when there is so much still left to say about QUALITY!

Here are the first twelve posts, in case you would like to go back and take a look:

1. Quality #1: Quality is a long term differentiator
2. Quality #2: Cure Precedes Prevention
3. Quality #3: Great People + Good Processes = Great Quality
4. Quality #4: Simplifying Processes
5. Quality #5: Customers are your “Quality Partners”
6. Quality #6: Knowing what needs improvement
7. Quality #7: Productivity and Quality
8. Quality #8: Best Practices are Contextual
9. Quality #9: Quality of Relationship and Communication
10. Quality #10: Inspection can be a waste if…
11. Quality #11: Driving Change Through Leadership
12. Quality #12: Middle Management and Quality Culture

#QUALITYtweet Make every review meeting a learning

experience by reviewing the product

and process, not people.

We create, we review and we make it better. Reviews are an integral part of product/service quality improvement. The core purpose of any review process is to “make things better” by re-examining the work product and find out anomalies or areas of improvements that the creator of the work product was not able to find.

Establishing a good review process in an organization requires management commitment and investment, but for returns that it generates, the effort is totally worth it. In software world, a lot of emphasis is given to formal inspections, but they work best when a formal process marries with a set of common sense rules. Here they go:

1) Reviewing early

Reviews in early phase of product development means that findings are less costly to resolve. The later defects are found, more expensive it gets to resolve those defects.

2) Staying positive

The art of review is to report negative findings (problems) without losing the positive undertone of communication. Negative or destructive criticism will only make the process more burdensome. Stay positive and keep the process lightweight.

3) Keeping review records

When a lot of time is spent on reviewing, it makes sense to track the findings to closure. Recording the finding helps you to effectively track the closure and trends.

4) Reviewing process, not the person

Always question the process and not the person. Human beings are bound to make mistakes, which is why reviews are required. So accept that mistakes will happen. How can we have a more effective process so that these mistakes are not repeated? That is the critical question.

Imagine that Bob is the reviewer of John’s work product and consider the following conversations:

Bob: “John, I reviewed the code of invoices module developed by you. Again this time, you have not implemented the architecture correctly. You committed the same mistakes that were also found in the registration module earlier.”

OR

Bob: “John, I reviewed the code of invoices module developed by you and your team. We have found some anomalies in the architecture implementation. I just wanted to know if the team had undergone the workshop on our standard architecture. If not, we should invite our systems architect to take a small workshop on system architecture so that the team has better clarity on how it can be best implemented.”

Two conversations with a totally different outlook. The first conversation tries to blame the producer where as the second conversation tries to assess the process and take corrective actions.

5) Training and more training

Reviewers can make huge mistakes if they are not trained. If you don’t invest in training your review teams, you cannot expect them to do it right, the first time.

6) Reviewing iteratively

Review often. During the course of product building, product needs may change. New ideas may be implemented. Keep review process constant amidst all these changes. Discipline is the key.

7) Reviewing the process of reviewing

Are we reviewing it right? Are we reviewing the right things? Periodically, assess the results and the benefits of having a review process. Assess how reviews helped improve product quality. In process assessment, also identify if people are heavily relying on reviews. It that is the case, it is a bad sign.

Success of any process depends on 2 E’s – Efficient and Enjoyable. Same holds true for your review processes. Review is a control mechanism, and hence the focus on getting it right the first time is still very important. A good review is just an internal quality gate that ensures that internal customers (reviewers) are happy with the final product. If your internal customers are happy, your external customers will be happy too!

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Tagged as: active garage, customers, efficient, enjoyable, investment, iterative, learning, management, meetings, people, process, product, qaspire, Quality Tweets, records, reviews, service, software, tanmay vora, training

Have you noticed how people come out of meetings and they question if someone that they were meeting with understood them or was telling the truth? I hear this often after meetings around negotiation when trying to find common ground or negotiating the way forward on projects. Our “bullshit” senses are triggered when we notice an inconsistency between what is spoken and what is done.

In business today people seem to be busier than ever before. With technology so many more interactions take place on a daily basis than at a lifetime ago. People find themselves in many situations daily where people are making requests and offers to them. Due thought is not always given to each request and the committed response is often based on a mood or a perceived ‘right’ answer just to move on to the next interaction. What people are not doing is thinking about the consequences of these spoken answers. How much time, effort and trust it costs each time the requester and recipient leave with different interpretations and then perform inconsistently with each others’ expectations.

Michel de Montaigne wrote over 400 years ago –

‘The true mirror of our discourse is the course of our lives.’

What we really believe and think at the time is truly expressed in the actions we perform afterward. The good news from this is that humans have been consistent at this for well over 400 years so we can count on it continuing into the future and it will be worth our efforts to improve our skills in this regard, as it will greatly increase the efficiency with which we can execute projects and negotiate agreements aligned with both parties concerns.

Recently I was in a conversation where a client was very dissatisfied about a particular product delivery and they wanted to quit the development project. The supplier also liked the idea of quitting as the fixed price scope had crept out of sight and costs were at three times anticipated with an open punch list still to be contended with. As both parties were about to close and agree to walk away the supplier mentioned that they could have the components uninstalled in an hour, to which the client suddenly gasped out “why do you want to do that?”. While this startled the supplier it quickly became apparent that the spoken commitment by the client was very different from the actions that would have taken place had the conversation ended before the suppliers declaration of action.

This conversation ended well because the supplier declared the consequential action of the request, which avoided what would have been a very tense, and likely costly situation had the supplier just acted as he thought he had agreed.

Here are 5 tips to try in future engagements to build trust, coordination and efficiency:

• Listen more – the more people speak the more consistent they will speak in terms of their true concerns
• Repeat the request – when making a request ask the person you have made the request to, to tell you what they heard and/or what actions they plan to take.
• Ask more questions – about the importance, value, action to be taken from the counterparts perspective
• Always make an assessment of the moods – lookout for moods of resigned, despair, indifference, overwhelmed
• Check-in informally – truths are often revealed in different settings and surroundings

There is a lot of posturing and politics in the marketplace, but one thing you can be certain of is that people act for what they truly care about. You don’t see people doing anything they do not care for. So always listen for the action.

Tagged as: Action, actions, active garage, Commitments, Communication, effective coordination, listening, meetings, negotiation, possibilities, Project Management, watching, webinars

When I look back over all the important lessons that I have learned during and related to my career, some of the most important came before my career even started.

First, some background:

I had the distinct advantage of being an engineering intern at a large aerospace firm while I was a sophomore in college. It allowed me a unique viewpoint in that I was surrounded by exciting technology and incredibly accomplished people (and I knew I couldn’t be laid off, which was a plus). I viewed this time as an opportunity to learn about careers in advance of starting my own. The world was bright and full of possibilities. I soaked up as much as I could about the profession, about corporate America, and about careers in general.

It was during this time that I experienced one of the most important lessons that I have ever learned – to check one’s ego at the door.

One afternoon I was asked to join an engineering review meeting. The purpose of the meeting was to review the progress and share ideas for improvement of the 8 major components that comprised the device we were making. Each component was represented by the lead engineer. In addition, there was a project manager and myself. The 10 of us entered a conference room at 2:00PM for a 2 hour meeting.

What ensued was a lesson that I still reference today.

The engineer of component #1 stood up, gave his progress report, and stated some of the challenges he was experiencing and how he planned to solve them. The other 7 engineering leads then suggested alternative solutions and constructive criticism (and the suggestions were quite good). Upon each suggestion, however, the lead engineer of component #1 immediately shook his head and responded that his solution was superior and that there was no need to consider alternatives. The other 7 engineers became agitated that their views were not being fully considered. But the engineer of component #1 concluded his presentation and sat down. Following his presentation, the lead engineer of component #2 stood up, gave his progress report, and stated the challenges that he was experiencing. Again, the other 7 engineering leads gave suggestions and alternative solutions, but they were similarly dismissed by the lead engineer of component #2. Again, the other 7 engineering leads became agitated that their solutions were not being considered. The lead engineers of remaining 6 components, in turn, gave their presentations, listened to the suggestions and criticisms, and dismissed them. And in each case, the 7 other engineers were agitated that their views were not being considered.

In all, the “2 hour” meeting took 6 hours to complete, primarily due to the length of time that each engineer took to refute the proposed suggestions. In each case, the lead engineer expended immense effort to prove that his ideas were superior to all the others. And in each case, the other 7 engineers expended immense effort to prove that their alternative solutions were worth merit. But in each case, the engineers were willing to provide criticism but not receive it… or one could also assess that each engineer was capable of talking, but none was capable of listening!

As an intern, I found myself amused and chuckling quietly to myself. If this had been a graded exercise for one of my engineering laboratory classes, we all would have failed because while we would have succeeded in communicating ideas, we would have failed in sharing and accepting ideas for improvement. What I didn’t immediately understand was that if I, a sophomore in college, could perceive the problem, why couldn’t the lead engineers? What was the specific problem that was preventing them from learning from one another?

What was the source of the problem?

And then it struck me!

It was not about the problem or the best solution anymore… it had become all about the egos! Each engineer had committed the same mistake of allowing their ego to interfere with the exploration of a better solution. Their egos were preventing the learning process from occurring.

It became clear to me, at that point, that the key to a successful meeting (and career) is checking your ego at the door so that your mind is open to other possibilities. Leave your ego outside the conference room (or office building).

I am so glad that I learned that lesson during that day. At each stage of my career following that meeting, I have allowed for the possibility that – “for every solution I have conceived, there may be a better one.”

The biggest takeaway for me:

I have recalled this lesson time and again and it has helped me to NOT avoid criticism. In fact, I have learned to seek criticism and feedback, whether it be good or bad, at all times. For if I reach the point where I think my solutions are the best to the exclusion of all other possibilities, then I have reached the point where I can no longer learn. And if I cannot learn, then I cannot progress as a person.

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Michael Markey has 16 years of engineering and software experience in various areas including aerospace, military, and commercial sectors. He currently leads a team of consultants that specialize in access control and commercialization of online content.

Tagged as: constructive feedback, consulting, consulting best practices, effective meetings, ego, engineering, engineers, feedback, groups, leaders, learning, manager, meetings, presentations, Project Management, project meetings, projects, review, teams

I just got back from a 3 day conference where I met some of the most accomplished individuals in the business world. Many of them were successful entrepreneurs who had started companies, failed time and again… and then succeeded. Many were leaders in executive roles in their organizations. The conference had a few break out sessions which were led by some of them. I couldn’t help but notice how they moved around and conducted themselves. Here are some of their actions and what they meant to me:

Imagine the increase in productivity in whatever you do, if all the meetings and sessions were run with these fundamental tenets in mind, regardless of if you were a participant or the leader.

Imagine the ROI!

…I’ll leave you with that thought to reflect upon!

Tagged as: actionable, active garage, executives, http://activegarage.com, leaders, Leadership, management, managing, meetings, Produce, Productivity, Return on Investment, ROI