The meeting you’ll enjoy

Think about the last meeting you attended. Was it really necessary? Did you leave feeling frustrated, drained or wondering why it couldn't have been an email? Meetings are supposed to drive progress, but too often they feel like an endless cycle of loss productivity. You are not alone. 83% of employees spend up to third of their work week in meetings, and nearly 40% of this time is considered unproductive. The impact goes beyond wasted time and money. Employee Moral is also negatively affected. 45% of employees feel overhand by the number of meetings, and believe this is a waste of their time and talent. These facts emphasize the critical need for change in the way meetings are conducted within organizations. But let's be honest, these figures are not new for many. Why is change so slow? How to find the right levers? This is what we are talking about today. In this podcast, we explore actionable tips and insights to help you transform your meetings from time-listing obligations into powerful tools for collaboration and success. Welcome to Change That Works, podcasted by ICG about change, leadership and innovation that takes you behind the scenes. Today's host will be Pets Elidio Erdi. Hello, my guest for today is Julia Ahats, who is a passionate consultant for over 12 years. She studied innovation management, supports her clients on the topics of innovation, change and leadership. She has a special passion, or we might call it mission, for educating companies in how to make meetings more efficient. Also within ICG, she is well known for not wasting anything unproductive meetings and always raising her voice when she fears that the meetings are not going well. She has a four years old daughter and she's taking care of her work-life balance now, of course. Hello, Julia. Thank you for having me. Actually, I have to say my four-year-old daughter is taking care of my work-life balance and forcing me. It's less myself doing so. But yes, I have it in my focus. And you are managing it quite well. And let's start the discussion with the meetings, then I have a very innovative thought. Yes. What happened if we would cancel all our meetings because we are disliking them so much and it's wasting so much of our time? Why not stop all the meetings? Oh, that's a good thought. Actually, you're not the first one having that. I was just recently asked by a project team. Could we just do it without meetings? Which was a bit crazy because the project team consisted of five different organizations in five different countries that have never met before. And they wanted to do the project without meetings just because they were so annoyed about their meeting rhythms. Only without doesn't work. So since it doesn't work, let's talk about how to make them productive so that we feel good after every meeting. This is at least my, how do you set mission to give everyone a good feeling during meetings and after meetings? Okay, I understand now that people need to interact in a way to make the organization work. So let's be a bit less radical. Still, we have the situations that meetings are not always going well and wasting some time. So what would be the first thoughts on how to approach these meetings with a value creation aspect? I think there are two levels to talk about. One is the organizational level. So what is the meeting culture? How many meetings in general? What do you make to a meeting? That's one thing to think about and how to improve their, especially for example, if an organization has the feeling it's way too many meetings. We need to find a solution. And the other one is the smaller one, the tiny one, how to make every meeting productive. That's within a meeting or a workshop. Depending on where you want to start, but in both ways, the question for me is the same. I would always ask when people complain about a certain meeting or about meetings in general. Well, let's think about why do we have that meeting? What is the aim of that meeting? And do we even still need that meeting if people have the feeling it doesn't bring any value? And if people say, well, the goal that we had when setting up the meeting is not achieved yet, then we work on making it more productive. And sometimes even people say it's not important anymore. We achieved our goal and we were just meeting because it was in our calendar. Happens from time to time. Are you talking about the goal of the organization or the goal of the people who are participating in the meeting? I would say the goal of the meeting because there is always a reason why you set up a meeting, right? It might be it's a new project and we need to align on a project. So you make meetings to align on a project. Then the goal is to have a good alignment about a project. Another goal of certain meeting structures could be we want to feel more as a team. So we need to meet regularly to make that happen. Or it could be we need to break silos in our organization. So let's set up cross-divisional meetings to get to know each other better and to work more together. So there's always a goal behind the meeting. And if you don't know what's the goal behind the meeting, then that's a good sign that maybe you can even stop it. For me, it's quite interesting that so many types of goals can be for the meetings like learning about each other and knowing each other, better can be a goal in the meeting for a business-oriented organization. And also actually preparing for this meeting, my thought was that for me, meetings are about how much I use my brain or how much I help to, if I'm facilitating the meeting, to have the participants using their brain. And I'm quite fear of success when I have the feeling that everybody is using their brain a lot and feel a bit more unsuccessful when it is not happening. And that's where it becomes interesting, because when you ask people, what does it mean for them to use their brain, you might get different answers. Some people really have the feeling I use my brain when I produce tangible outcomes. That's what they aim for. And if we don't have tangible outcomes and results after meeting, they are not happy. Other people say, I use my brain when I reflect about something and I learn something. That's a totally different outcome, right? If you do a lessons learned, for example, and you reflect together, or you just reflect how you work together in a sense of a retrospective, you didn't make any progress in a project, but the people who like to reflect and learn something, they have the perfect outcome. And others, they think with their hearts. So for them, a valuable meeting is when they felt connection between the people, they learned something about the needs of the people and they have the feeling they stabilized or strengthened the basis of collaboration by getting to know others more. That's kind of like heart, hand, and brain. The three that we sometimes call. And when we design a workshop or meeting, we try to have everything for everyone in there so that everybody sees a venue. But value is really, you can think differently about it. That's really fascinating for me that how many, I would say, definition of success or success criteria might a meeting have. And especially putting in a context of many companies that we are seeing that they are really result oriented. And I would say they have a dual culture. So they like to do and, you know, go with the tasks and sometimes the longer path is at the end shorter it seems like. Yeah, but maybe just a short anecdote there because we're working a lot with changes and transformations. And we're supporting an organization. They restructured a department and we're just trying now to make the people feel that change and feel safe again and get a feeling that everything is stabilized and really start making new connections and getting the work done in a different way. It was a workshop actually. And one day workshop for the whole management team. So also middle management was a large group. Many people. And we did the workshop without any content topics in there. And the organization is, as you said, super result outcome driven. And before that meeting, I got many, many requests in a sense. Do we really want to do that? Where is the progress that we're making with our projects? Where are the presentations that people bring about certain topics? And I was saying, well, out of a change perspective, when I listen to you guys and I see you guys, what you need right now is a step back and you need time for reflection and connecting with each other. They're doing in the projects is what you anyhow do in all your meetings that you have on the side and in your daily work. So we take the day for reflection. And some people had a really hard time letting me do that. And in the end, everyone was happy. That's luckily where our experience comes in. Where can we stretch it a bit and make people feel uncomfortable before a meeting. But maybe it brings the point that there are different outcomes and different occasions need, yeah, also different topics in a workshop. So what will be some real practical and very short kind of tips and tricks, how they could improve their meetings or what are the common mistakes you see? So good question. How many do you want to give me a figure? Because, you know, I can go on forever. Maybe a few that you think you are most important ones. Two, three, four. Two, three, four. Yeah. Okay. Let's start from the beginning. The first thing that I'm always saying is one of the most important tips. When you start a meeting, it doesn't matter how long it is. If it's a longer workshop, I, by the way, I don't distinguish between meetings and workshops. That's maybe important, because some people say, well, we're not talking about workshops where we really think about which methodology to use. And so ever we just talk about meetings. For me, when I have one hour with a group of people, I think of it as a one hour workshop. And I prepare which method brings us to the best success in the end. So I don't distinguish. It's for me just how much time do I have and how many people are in this call or in the room that I can work with. So that's maybe important to understand my thinking. And it doesn't matter how long it is. But in the first one or two minutes, what you should do is give orientation to people. And orientation is always why are we here? Who is in the room? And what are we going to do? So if you have a weekly call with your team, maybe you don't need to say why are we here? Because it's our weekly check-in call, of course, and you can leave it. But if it's a new meeting or if it's kind of like a not-so-regular meeting, you need to address it at the beginning. And then people always ask, like, why should I say who's in the call? But think of a situation. You're invited to a meeting where it's about discussing how we use AI in the future in an organization. So across the visional topic, maybe many people are invited and you enter the room and you see three colleagues where you are really sure why they are sitting here because they have AI experience. And then you see a person in the room where you have no clue why this person is here because he doesn't have anything to do with the topic. If it's not addressed right at the beginning, how this group came together, then you will be thinking the whole time in the meeting, why is this person here? And that is occupying you, right? And that makes you not think and work and use your brain correctly, but you're just wondering why is that person here? And I've really experienced it by myself. And I've seen people like always looking to others again. And it's just one sentence at the beginning, saying like, I was thinking, we should brainstorm about the topic in this round. Those are the experts. And this person has a super interesting background in that field from previous maybe work or job. And this why he should bring in some kind of like aspects. So just naming who's here and why and when are the breaks? Because if you don't address it, then if it's a longer meeting, then people will think the whole time, oh my god, when is the break? Is that early enough for me to have a call or I need to do something? And at some point, the people will ask. I would just jump back a little bit. They said that who is participating in the meeting? And is it a good idea to clarify the rules in this meeting? Because I've had an experience a few weeks ago that we had a meeting with a client, and carefully specified that who are invited to the meeting and what will be the rules. And at the beginning of the meeting, we realized that there are four more people from a department that we wouldn't want to invite. And this created some kind of, you know, confusion in the team. Yes, yes. Look, it creates confusion. So I understand what you're talking about, but from this I did use that probably it's a good idea sometimes to clarify that, okay, your role in this meeting is. Yes. Yes. Yeah. For example, people also need to know, will I get maybe tasks out of a meeting? Or am I just here as a feedback giver? For example, centrals need to be clarified because otherwise when you start talking about actions, a few people might be like, whoa, what does that mean when we talk your actions, will I maybe get an action? I might not like that. Instead of being in the conversation and doing something practical. So try to give as much orientation as possible. But if you do it right, it takes one minute of the time of the meeting. So it's not a lot, but it brings a lot of value. Second tip. I just wanted to reflect on that. It sounds like some kind of mental tune in is going over this so that the people are mentally like what came into my mind when you are switching and multitasking between tasks, you always need a few seconds or some minutes sometimes to really get into that task that you are in. So it's the same with the meetings. Yes. It sounds like. Exactly. That was actually just what I wanted to say next. So that's the perfect bridge. So after people of orientation reserve some time for the people to tune in because we all know our calendars, right? So if you're a manager or leader in an organization, most probably you run from meeting to meeting. You have no breaks in between. There are many jokes that I hear from time to time Stephen. I'm like, there's no lunch break. I don't eat the whole day. This is why I get chubby because I eat everything in the evening. So there are lots of jokes going around. So we really run from meeting to meeting. What one of my clients told me that she was actually missing her walk on the corridor. Yes. You know, after COVID times and she said that she's missing is so much. Yes. I think so. And the problem is, what's happening? We can bring ourselves physically in a next meeting, but maybe mentally we're not there yet because if we had a tough meeting before and there's no time to tune into an next group or next topic, then we will think about the last meeting also in the next meeting. And that makes you as a person unproductive in that next meeting, basically. So when you're facilitating this meeting, give the people a few minutes to dive into the topic. This is what we call a check-in. The check-in is there, that people connect with each other in the room. Maybe by asking just one question. It could be the one I said before, like, what needs to happen in this meeting so that you go out happy? What does it make with you? It makes you think about this meeting. It makes you tune into the topic. If you don't do it and if you say, hello, welcome. You know, we're all here to talk about AI. Here's our first keynote speaker. Here he comes with the input. Then the people didn't have anything to do yet with the topic. They're just in a listening mode. And they might be thinking about another topic while a person is already speaking about your topic. This is what you want to avoid. I was studying brain science lately. And what I've learned from that is we are not thinking when we want to think, but when we are thinking mostly in an unconscious way. So it's like when we sit down and okay, I will figure out something. It is not happening that time, but it is happening at the time when you are going for a walk with your dog. That's what I wanted to connect to this. It sounds like that this tune in is somehow, you know, helping to have that walk with the dog while your brain can think a bit ahead. Yeah. And prepare your ideas through the meetings. That would be the perfect version. And we could say now, well, if you're doing exactly that brain storming for the last meeting in the next meeting, then you're productive by yourself, but not maybe not for the meeting, that is just happening. Yeah. So the walk with the dog would be perfect. Maybe just using two or three minutes for a quick check in is the smaller version of it. Yeah, actually, it's the smaller version of walk with the dog. But why I started to think about this because I've seen a lot of meetings lately, where some people instantly jumped in the meeting and instantly started to talk about topics. And I had the feeling after some time that we are hearing a recording from a, I don't know, CD or a DVD. So it's not really creating new ideas, but repeating the same patterns and going around around and loops. Yeah. And that's the perfect bridge to my next tip. There's also brain science. I'm not too much into science, but this one I remembered that we as humans are only able to focus for seven minutes. That might have already changed due to social media and became shorter, I don't know, lived for years back. It was maximum seven minutes. This is why the TED talks, you might be familiar with, they are all seven minutes long normally. And now you can question when somebody brings an input in your meetings, how long are those inputs normally? Sometimes we have requests, well, I would like to speak now 30 minutes about the controlling of the last year, while 30 minutes of focus on figures might be a bit hard. So this is something you can think about and very often I hear them, well, but I have to talk that much. I can't make it shorter. And then I'm always asking, well, do you need the people to listen to you? And then they always say, yes. And they think, well, they stop after seven minutes. So we need to change something. And the outcome is that not you need to be shorter and squeeze everything into seven minutes, because sometimes that doesn't work. But the ideas, after seven minutes, you make some kind of break and interruption. That could be that you ask a question to the people, that you ask them to reflect on something. You know, there are great tools you can use, mentee, meter, poles, or something else, or you could just ask, do you think that or that that make hand signs? Or you can just randomly pause a bit and say, like, are you listening anymore? It's just about any kind of disturbance that makes people focus again. People need to have the feeling some reaction is needed from them in order to focus again. And then you can continue speaking. So there was a nice learning for some people. I have a very nice story on that. I've just realized that these are connected that, you know, I'm working a lot in the field of OPEX and lean production and things like that. And there was a guy called Tai Chi, who was a founder, practically, of the lean production system. And what he did, actually, as a leader, he told his colleagues, that guys, whatever you report, you are going to give to me, I'm going to read only the first page of it. That was a rule in the organization. And it sounds a bit radical. But after some time, the people started to, you know, learn how to put all the most important information on one page. And it was a huge improvement for the company at the end. Yes, fully agree. And I know I'm saying to people some topics you can't squeeze to seven minutes. But actually, I think you can. It's just too radical for some to hear. We'll try to do it with the breaks now. But it's always have short inputs. And then a lot of time for a good reflection and a good dialogue. And there comes my, I would say last tip maybe, or maybe I can come up with a few more. But think of how to get the reactions and capture reactions of people. So how to do the feedback rounds, for example, because what I see in meetings so many times is just a random ping pong between a few people. We all know the drill. Some people are introvert, some people are extrovert. They're always the same people talking. And they're always the same people then arguing left or right. And there are some very, very easy mechanisms how to change that. And we have our Swiss knife or Swiss tool. Maybe this is something where we can give our audience and also workbook sharing that it's a method called open our words just about structuring how we will talk. So the first tip is when you ask a question, give everyone a minute to think about their answer before anyone answers. Because you know what our brain does? When our brain hears a first thought or a first idea of somebody, our brain stops thinking about what we think and we just evaluate what the other person said. And we want to think do we like that or do we not like that? I'm working a lot with the field of innovation and when it comes to brainstorming, it's super important to find mechanisms that everyone brings their ideas on the table and the judging happens a bit later. And if everyone thinks first silently by themselves and then you go in an exchange, you win so much. And that's one minute silence. And then depending on how big the group is either sharing already in a round, you know, one person starts the next, the next, the next, everyone has a say. So not just random ping-pong. Or if you have many people, you do small group discussions in between. That's higher, it's kind of like the quality of meeting so much and it's such an easy tip. Yes, but I imagine that it requires maybe a bit more preparation than what we usually do before meeting or now. No, I would say it needs a bit of experience. So that method, you don't need any material or anything. You just remember and the easy say is one, two, all. So when you ask a question, one means everyone thinks individually, two means maybe do a couple discussion between so pairs, discussing their thoughts and then all means everyone says something. You don't need preparation, you just need to remember it. And that could be my second meeting rule on a flip chart or poster in meeting rooms. So first evaluate every meeting and second, use the one two all method if you want to discuss something. That makes sense. And I'm going back to brain science and what I've learned there is when we are doing something like drawing, writing, manipulating something with our hand. So actually when we are doing something, it helps us to think, is it somehow connected to this rule or how would you incorporate this into meetings? I would say that always helps. So well, of course, we are facilitators, so we have posted with us all the time, even in our handbags as women we have posted. Some organizations also have them, but it's sheets of paper or laptops are also fine. You know, I'm really, I'm not that strict with that no laptops rule, but when I see that people start using laptops in situations in the meetings where they shouldn't do, then I address it. But sometimes if I don't have posted anything to write, I say, okay, use your phone, make a short list or use your laptop to write your thoughts down. So writing your thoughts down helps a lot to structure. And were you personally defeating that you're not forgetting anything? Yeah, I was also asking this question because I participated a lot of meetings where we were discussing for an hour and at the end, we went out of the room and you know, everything was told, but nothing was put down. Well, yes, that's another topic. Like, have a good documentation and it really helps because if people document their ideas already, you have less to do in the end as facilitator of writing everything down because it's already somewhere documented. But thinking about a great documentation right from the beginning is of course super, super helpful and important, yeah. I would go back to emotions a bit because I understood that tuning in and getting on an emotionally good condition at the beginning of the meeting is quite important. But what is happening when the meeting is getting to the end point? Yeah, there was the next thing, but also the next thing, which is a pain in the ass. Is it an next point on your flip chart that you would recommend to have? It's a hard one because collecting next steps is never funny, unfortunately, it's never funny. So I try to force myself to do it not at the end, but in the moment where we talk about something like have already somewhere a space where write down, what is the next step to topics? So that it's in the end more, look back, what did we write down already as next steps? Is anything missing? But we have one colleague is close to retirement already. His real passion was next steps. And I've been in one workshop with him in Amsterdam where we used two hours for the next steps at the end of a one day workshop or it was two day workshop today. The two hours next steps, it sacked out all the energy of the room. You could feel it like people were super nervous. They like how do you call it when they make all kinds of movements? They just want to get out because it's so bad. But half a year after the workshop, we got a call and the manager said that was the most important thing and they had never had so much impact out of a workshop. And without those two hours it would have never worked. Okay. But it feels painful. But that was for me the learning how important it is. I just tried to make it less painful for the participants because it's always for me as well. Painful. Yeah. But closing always content-wise and emotion-wise. It sounds like they created a yearly plan and it went successfully. Yes. Yes. Something like that. So thank you for sharing these tips. But I was thinking that these tips and tricks and what you put on your flip chart, at least in an imagined way, they are really nice bits and pieces. But I was thinking that if you would like to change in an organizational level. Yes. It is not just about one meeting but all the meetings inside the organization and all the managers and leaders who are organizing and facilitating meetings and their colleagues. So it sounds for me a bit more complex. Yes. And it's good that you come back to that point. I think it's one thing thinking about a single meeting, how to make it better. But on the organization level is really, how is our meeting culture? For what do we use meetings? And how do we deal with that? And the bad answer is, if you have the feeling you have too many meetings, make a meeting to discuss that. Unfortunately, you need to really sit down and think about why are we in that situation? Where are our meetings helpful? Where are they unproductive? And try to find a solution. I just I'm working with an organization who is exactly in that situation. And there is a good reason why the meetings exploded in the last year because they really said we need to grow together as a team. It's a department in a bigger organization where every team has their own teams than again, but they should go together as one team. Silos need to break down. So there are many meetings that were set up to get to know each other better, to align between topics. But it became just too much. And people don't have any time anymore. And now it's really the task to sit down and evaluate what makes sense and what doesn't make sense. And the problem is there's always emotion. You know, you can't just say, "Oh, that meeting that we regularly have, that doesn't bring any value, we get rid of it." Because there is a person who organized it in the first place, it's maybe in charge. And when you just tell that person, it's not valuable what you're doing there, you're really doing something that is not good in the end. So you need to carefully consider and think about how to deal with that. You don't want to hurt people's emotions because it makes them something with them in their work life. I can really relate to this topic because thinking about what we are doing in meetings, I would like to put it in a bit of a broader perspective because quite often I see companies are always doing doing, doing and not thinking about what they are doing or not thinking enough about what they are doing. Yes. As a consultant, a huge portion of my work is to trying to stop the clients and, okay, discuss what you are doing. So just forget about this topic, just forget about this project, forget about this operational situation, just think about what you are doing. And put it down on a sheet of paper or whatever and there are always very big learnings from that. Somehow, I have the feeling that companies fear that this is not where you are doing because in these meetings, we are not producing anything, you know, no product will be done. Yes. Maybe a second level when evaluating the meetings is not just the meeting itself, but also the circle of people who are in because sometimes a meeting gets unproductive because it's just not the right circle of people anymore. In organizations, there's always some kind of power juggling coming in and people have the feeling I need to be in that meeting, just to be in that meeting. But the bigger the meetings get, the more unproductive they get. So that's again something where you need to be careful, but if you don't tackle it, you're losing a lot of productivity. So taking your time, evaluating it, and then talk to the people and try to change step by step. And I'm a big fan of making little steps to improve. I know you need to have a big plan, but then not complaining that you are not there, but taking some little improvements and step by step, meeting by meeting kind of like shaping the culture again. And like you said about the CEO before that had the rule just to read the first page, I think it's super important that top management, things of their principles, what's important for them, and then really holds through. And such principles could be we really evaluate regularly if our meetings are the right meetings and if the right people are in the right meetings. So if you start doing that and that becomes repetitive and you talk about that, then it gets less emotional for the people, then it doesn't feel like they want me to be kicked out of a meeting. But it's okay, this is our meeting culture. This is what we do. So we evaluate it regularly. So it takes some time. It's a cultural topic, I would say. It's called meeting culture. So with small consistent steps, you can change this. And I really like the idea of small changes because I think when companies are thinking about changing something quite often, I see that they are dreaming too big. And forget that when you are climbing a mountain, you need small steps for that also. That giant leaps. Okay, I think that's quite an interesting input. And thank you for your insights and energy. And I think this meeting went very well. But we still have time for reflectionals. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. So how do you think? What do I think? Well, I really liked the topic, luckily, as you gave me for this meeting. I think we managed to cover a lot of topics. I liked it a lot. What I would improve for the next time, I think our starting was a bit rough. So I think we improved over time in the meeting. So maybe a learning could be to have the next time five minutes tune in on talking to each other and then starting with the real topic or so that would have helped me maybe. But otherwise, I would be happy to come again. Thank you very much. And I have the same feeling on that. Maybe instead of five minutes, I would add another five or 10s or 15. Yes. Thank you very much. I think we had a great fight together, connected. And I get the chance to reflect and learn a lot. So for me, the success, criteria, all field. Perfect. And if you'd like to hear more, and I'm talking to our listeners, reach out for us. Please visit integratedconsulting.eu or look for the context in the description. And also, we are going to include some nice workbooks that you can use and learn from if you would like to improve your meetings further. Thank you for listening to today's episode. Change that work seeks to inspire a different way to transform organizations. Let's tune in again for our next episode. (upbeat music)