How to make every you meeting you have an absolutely joy – all you need is a Mote
Meeting? Joy? The two words don’t sit easily together for any of us. And imagine being in the shoes of chief executives like Bob Dudley, facing down shareholder opprobrium in that most formal of meetings, the AGM. At least these happen only once year. If only that were the case for the many other meetings that have taken over our lives. It is estimated that just the wasted time in UK business meetings costs £50bn a year – more than the defence budget.
Sadly, meetings are the way the modern business world has chosen to work together. But they are deeply flawed. For most of us there are far too many meetings, there are too many people in those meetings, and they frequently run back to back. Crucially, they are wasteful of the most important currencies in any organisation: time and money.
And what is less well understood is the damage they do to the quality of our lives. Ask anyone, “are you busy?”, and it’s odds on the reply will be “yes, very busy”, with a furrowing of the brow. It is estimated that senior managers and executives spend 550 hours a year in meetings – nearly four complete working months.
I believe that we all need to understand the extent of the problem, why things go wrong, and what we can do about the situation. It is important to help both companies and individuals become much more professional meeting organisers and participants.
So convinced am I that the way we do meetings now is a disaster that I set out to design a new meeting system. I call this “super meeting” a Mote. A Mote is a turbocharged meeting dedicated to driving a project or making a decision. It’s a new kind of dynamic meeting specifically designed to help organisations make changes quickly, solve problems, realise opportunities, bring projects to fruition and enable successful decisions.
For those wanting to reclaim their working lives, the Mote provides a new way of getting together in organisations – particularly when there are decisions to be made. It doesn’t just fiddle around the edges of the meeting, it redefines it. A Mote depends on five principles.
1. Gameplan
Too often, there is little or no planning before meetings. Careful preparation must precede the Mote. Ideas and plans need to come before meetings, not out of them.
2. Small agile team
Small meetings are far more effective than big ones. Motes start small with no more than four people. They are led by a leader (not a chairman), and managed by a new breed of meeting professional, called a navigator, who facilitates the meeting.
3. Stepladder
The leader and navigator should invite experts to join, and crucially allow them to leave once their contribution has been made. They are also responsible for keeping stakeholders who are not present in the loop.
4. Performance
The leader of the Mote must emphasise the importance of collaboration, and take on responsibility for outcomes, focusing the team on those outcomes, and delivery.
5. Empathy
A Mote is guided by the philosophy of collaboration over confrontation. It is about being a team, not shouting down opposing views. Showing consideration will ensure efficiency and productivity in decision-making.