Make meetings matter
This post is a summary of the key messages in relation to more effective meetings in the TAI research paper on “Better decision-making: a toolkit”.
Meetings are a recurring feature of the workplace. Investment organisations are no exception. It is estimated that 15% of a typical organisation’s collective time today is spent in meetings[1].
Most of us in the investment industry would readily agree: our meetings are not run in the most productive way. Many meetings are underprepared. There are sometimes too many meeting participants. Some meetings are over-long, lacking direction and energy. The practice of chairing can also be improved.
How to better run meetings is one of the most discussed topics in management science and practice. The contribution of this article, expressed through the six ideas below, draws on the collective experience of Thinking Ahead Institute’s decision-making working group in meetings within the investment industry.
Idea #1 – the pre-meeting ask
Engagement can and, I would argue, should start before the meeting. Part of it is about getting the basic questions out of the way. More importantly, it is about preparing attendees so the actual meeting is run effectively and efficiently.
Netflix takes an innovative approach in its board meetings[2]. Pre-meeting communication comes in the form of a short, online memo that includes links to supporting analysis. In addition, the online memo allows board members to ask questions and provide comments within the document.
The result? The approach has been found to significantly enhance the board of directors’ ability to provide oversight to the operation of the company. The meetings are much shorter – only three to four hours compared to all day (or multiple days at many large corporations) – and focus on questions and discussion instead of presentation.
Idea #2 – ditch the data-dump, use narrative
Most of us all have been sent a 100-page PowerPoint deck prior to a meeting, full of charts and tables. Despite the high volume of data, there is typically a lack of coherent narrative which makes it difficult to discern a clear line of thinking.
Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, has a strong view on this matter. He reportedly bans the use of PowerPoint at Amazon[3]. He says: “Somebody for the meeting has prepared a six-page…narratively structured memo. It has real sentences, and topic sentences, and verbs, and nouns – it’s not just bullet points.” Research indeed supports that our brains process narratives and storytelling much better than data.
So if you would like a group to consider your excellent proposal, write a story.
Idea #3 – be agile
When the group is too large, the quality of conversation starts to decline: there is not enough time for everyone to participate; we become more guarded and less candid. There are all good reasons why we shouldn’t ask too many people to attend a meeting.
Steve Denning explains the concept of agility in his book “The Age of Agile”. Agile practitioners, says Denning, work in small, autonomous, cross-functional teams working in short cycles on relatively small tasks. This contrasts with the conventional bureaucratic, top-down setup of teams. There is frequent interaction between teams via meetings. As agile working relies on “the law of the small team”, it can help achieve an optimal number of meeting participants.
Idea #4 – give everyone a real voice
Not everyone is able to effectively contribute in a meeting[4]. Left to its own devices, meetings are often dominated by the most senior attendees and those who are naturally assertive.
To create an environment where all meeting participants are given equal opportunity to provide input, a key condition to harness the value of cognitive diversity, there needs to be a deliberate effort to include everyone.
For example, the chair can call on every participant, to impose a mechanistic equal turn-taking, albeit with a varying sequence each time around. Because body language aids understanding, use video conferencing, rather than audio conferencing, wherever possible.
Also give particular consideration to those in a relatively weak position. It could mean letting the minority who join the meeting via telephone speak first or coming to the most senior people last.
Idea #5 – separate social leader from content leader role
The chairperson plays a key role in the successful running of a meeting. The role of the chair is nicely described in an article by Antony Jay[5] that I highly recommend. The essence is that the chair’s role is to interpret and clarify and to move the discussion.
The chair therefore undertakes the role of “social leader” of the meeting. If the chair – often the most senior person in the meeting – has a strong argument to advocate (ie, acting as a content leader), best practice is to give up the chair role for that meeting. Our working group has experimented with the separation of social leader and content leader and found it to be helpful in avoiding the content leader’s voice coming to dominate. It does take a little time and practice to get used to, though.
Idea #6 – “parking lot” and daring to be unconventional
This idea is to address the issue of over-long meetings and a related problem that some meetings are lacking energy.
One of the main reasons some meetings become unnecessarily long is that the discussions are side-tracked. In these situations, the “parking lot” concept is a useful device for moving a discussion forward. For example, your team might love to explore new ideas and these important but out-of-scope ideas get thrown out during the discussion. You shouldn’t completely ignore them but shouldn’t let them hijack the agenda of the meeting either. Simply use a whiteboard to park (write down) the pending ideas, siphoning them into new channel and new time, and move on.
Of course some meetings are long because it is necessary in order to deal with a long list of important issues. Think Investment Committee meetings in asset owners. These meetings can be a draining experience, both mentally and physically. What can we do about it?
Question whether a meeting needs to be called at all. The most direct and effective way to reduce the wear and tear of meetings is to reduce the total number of meetings we collectively attend. Also, ask if a group is doing something that could better be done by others, ie, delegation.
Try unconventional practice. While not without its own problems, stand-up meetings do present a change to our daily routine[6], injecting some fresh energy into the meeting. If the meeting involves a small number of people, experimental psychology research[7] lends support to walking meetings, which are shown to increase creative thinking.
What make meetings in institutional investing different?
You might well point out that issues around meetings aren’t unique to the investment industry. Since the key decision makers in all industries are human, it is not surprising that we are dealing with similar challenges.
But I would argue that the environment we operate in is more volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous than most. There is less clear sight of what could possibly happen, let alone what will happen.
This might mean that the concept of “off topic” needs to be interpreted differently. Ideas and arguments, no matter how absurd they might initially appear, need to be given space to grow and become refined. We sometimes have to take risks in examining ideas and thoughts that are deemed completely off topic via a conventional lens because no-one can say with certainty what is “on topic”.
There is no magic bullet to making meetings a breeze. But I have outlined some sensible incremental and practical approaches that investment organisations can adopt to make meetings less draining and more effective. I hope you find a few of them worth considering.
[1] “Big Mind: how collective intelligence can change our world”, Geoff Mulgan, 2018
[2] “How Netflix Redesigned Board Meetings”, David Larcker and Brian Tayan, Harvard Business Review, 2018
[3] Jeff Bezos Knows How to Run a Meeting. Here’s How He Does It,” Justin Bariso, 2018
[4] “Run Meetings That Are Fair to Introverts, Women, and Remote Workers”, Renee Cullinan, Harvard Business Review, April 2016
[5] “How to run a meeting”, Antony Jay, Harvard Business Review, 1976
[6] “Stand-Up Meetings Don’t Work for Everybody”, Bob Frisch, Harvard Business Review, 2016
[7] “Give Your Ideas Some Legs: The Positive Effect of Walking on Creative Thinking”, Marily Oppezzo and Daniel Schwartz, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2014