Had the CEO attacked the symptoms by only announcing fixes from on high (say, blanket restrictions on the number of meetings allowed, or introducing meeting-free blackout days-both actions we have seen frustrated leaders take), the problems would have continued. Together, these intertwined factors encouraged leaders to escalate decisions up the chain of command, as the growth committee had done. Edmondson, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth, first edition, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2019. 1 To better understand how psychological safety operates in the workplace, see Amy C. Moreover, the team lacked the psychological safety to take interpersonal risks and thus feared making the “wrong” decision. For example, poor clarity around decision rights encouraged wide-ranging discussions but not decisions, and over time this behavior became a habit in meetings-a habit that exacerbated a general lack of accountability among some executives. While the company went on to remedy the situation and successfully streamline where decisions about growth priorities were made, the issues the CEO and top team had to confront went well beyond eliminating redundant meetings. General lack of accountability among some executives. Poor clarity around decision rights encouraged wide-ranging discussions but not decisions, and over time this behavior became a habit in meetings-a habit that exacerbated a The meeting was, in effect, not only redundant but also confusing to managers further down in the organization about what decisions were being made and where. Moreover, the range of subjects the growth committee covered had widened considerably beyond its original remit. Why the disconnect? Left unexamined, the growth-committee meeting had evolved over several years into a discussion forum and holding pen for topics to be decided by the executive committee. Meanwhile, the company’s executive committee (which included several of the growth-committee members, along with the CEO) also met routinely to cover the same ground-and was making the decisions. Start by examining your recurring meetings, as these are a fertile place for otherwise useful and timely decision topics to mutate in unproductive ways.Ĭonsider the case of the healthcare company that held a recurring “growth committee” meeting that in principle should have been making decisions about strategic partnerships, M&A, and new lines of business but in practice rarely did. Removing superfluous meetings is perhaps the single biggest gift to an executive’s productivity. Besides improving the quality and speed of your team’s decisions and helping you make better use of your time, we hope the exercise helps you shed light on the underlying organizational dynamics and mind-sets that may be seeding dysfunction in the first place. Try this exercise: take out your phone, open your calendar, and review today’s remaining meetings against the three questions below to see if you can spot any of the interrelated “fatal flaws” that most commonly sabotage meeting effectiveness. The state of management thinking on this topic will continue to evolve-and you’ll want to evolve with it. Renee Cullinan, “ Run meetings that are fair to introverts, women, and remote workers,” Harvard Business Review, April 29, 2016, hbr.orgįinally, curate your own list and share it with your team.Dan Lovallo and Olivier Sibony, “ Taking the bias out of meetings,” McKinsey Quarterly, April 2010.Hansen, “ How to have a good debate in a meeting,” Harvard Business Review, January 10, 2018, hbr.org When it comes to decision making in meetings, seek a practical grounding in areas such as spurring productive debate in meetings, slaying cognitive biases in them, and designing meetings for routinely overlooked groups. Weiss, “ Untangling your organization’s decision making,” McKinsey Quarterly, June 2017 Aaron De Smet, Gerald Lackey, and Leigh M.Dan Lovallo and Olivier Sibony, “ The case for behavioral strategy,” McKinsey Quarterly, March 2010.Chip Heath and Olivier Sibony, “ Making great decisions,” McKinsey Quarterly, April 2013.We also recommend sampling a range of views on the principles of decision making itself-for instance, how behavioral economics affects decision making, as well as how categorizing decisions can help business leaders manage and improve them. The difficulties associated with decision making have long been of keen management interest, and any tour of the decision-making landscape should include Daniel Kahneman’s seminal book, Thinking Fast and Slow (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013), which explores the pervasive role that cognitive biases play in human thinking and behavior.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |