So what’s stopping us?
So what’s stopping us from holding and participating in good meetings? After all, we pretty much know what we should do, right?
This is such an important question. In my certificate program in facilitation at Georgetown, we’ve been talking about the difference between technical problems and adaptive challenges. Technical problems can be solved by experts, while adaptive challenges require new learning. Ron Heifetz from Harvard’s Kennedy School created this framework, which he calls adaptive leadership. In an interview with NPR in 2013 (that also covers an extraordinary moment between Turkey and Greece), he says, “The dominant view of leadership is that the leader has the vision and the rest is a sales problem. I think that notion of leadership is bankrupt.” Later he adds, “the people are the problem and the people are the solution. And leadership then is about mobilizing and engaging the people with the problem rather than trying to anesthetize them so you can go off and solve it on your own.” Ouch.
In my previous entry, Beyond the smarty pants contest: top five things I’ve learned about meetings so far, I offered some technical solutions to make meetings better. I’ve heard from some colleagues that they’re applying these simple ideas, and they like the results. There are a million-billion ways to hold good meetings and make sure that they firmly rooted in our meeting ecosystems. The tricky part is to decide it’s worth the effort — and the risk — to shake things up. That is, we have to work on our “immunity to change.” We’re often committed to maintaining the status quo in ways we might not realize.
In my class, we did the exercise laid out in “The Real Reason People Won’t Change”, a classic from the Harvard Business Review. I found it really illuminating. I’m going to go through it again, now, from the persona of a composite State Department character who is totally up for holding better meetings but, you know, just doesn’t have time to think about it. She’s already in (mostly bad, sometimes horrible, but occasionally really cool) meetings from around 8:30–6:00, and she receives about 200 emails a day. Plus she has her actual work to do.
Maybe this will resonate with you and maybe it won’t. I know we’re not one-size-fits-all people. Still, it could give you a little nudge to try this process yourself. I’ll set it up as a dialog.
To what are you committed? I am committed to making efficient use of my time and the time of my colleagues.
What are you doing, or not doing, that is keeping your stated commitment from being fully realized? I am not taking the time to think about meetings before they happen because I am moving too fast. I have to prioritize, and the issues I cover are really important.
What are your competing commitments? I am committed to my own competence, and I am committed to the traditions of the very special place I work. Thomas Jefferson was the first Secretary of State, after all. If I fuss around with meetings, I might be seen as un-serious about policy, and I might mess up in front of my colleagues. I really know to run a meeting the way I already run it. Okay, I admit it: it’s safer and easier to perpetuate a mediocre practice.
What big assumptions are you making? I see I have created all sorts of false dichotomies for myself. Obviously I can be committed to working on achieving our foreign policy goals and also hold meetings that are, uh, generative. And my team knows me and trusts me. I can work with them on creating better meetings. It’s not really about me twisting in the wind.
Helpful? Off-base? Please let me know.
