How to Create Meetings that Matter

The Small business show episode 369 for Wednesday, March 2, 2022. Greetings, folks and welcome to the Small Business show here at BusinessShow Co, where we are small businessing every week. Sponsors for this episode include hunterdouglas.com SBS where you can go get your free style Get Smarter design guide. We'll more in depth about that a little bit later in the episode. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And here in Lafayette, California, I am Shannon Jean. How are you, man?

I'm good. Yeah.

Good, good. Happy seventh anniversary. The show is officially seven years old now, right?

Yeah. As of February 19th, I believe we hit our. We hit number seven. Yeah.

Don't they call seven the age of reason? So when you start to learn how to reason things? So maybe we'll get better.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. Look, I'm not counting on it, but no guarantees. That's right. That's right.

That's right. Hey, I know we're doing this show today all about how to create meetings that matter, which I think is a really important topic.

Yes. But I wanted to. What a waste of time meetings can be.

Yes, they can. Yes, they can. And we're not having a meeting today. We're actually having a discussion.

Ah, okay.

Yeah. It's a difference. There's a difference. And. But before we start that, I wanted to share an experience that I had a couple of times in the last few months and get your take on it and ask a question, because I don't. It's kind of a sensitive topic.

I have no idea what you're about to ask me either. There is zero prep for this other than you told me. I have a sensitive topic and I'm not going to tell you anything else until we start recording. So there you go.

And I really have questions about this and I am really seeking the truth. I don't know what the truth is. So I want to preface that.

You're asking the wrong question.

I want to be. Yeah, yeah. Well, I don't know whether we're going to be able to find that truth today, actually.

Okay.

So I'd love some feedback from listeners and I want to just remind everyone that, you know, nuance is very important when we're having these discussions. So let me just share this.

There's no frigging way everybody's ever going to hear this. The way you've set it up, I'm definitely going to cut it from the show. But let's go. Let's see what happens.

Let's Go anyway. Let's go anyway. You could. I know I can't get fired, so it's okay.

Oh, it doesn't matter, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I've. I've had a couple of meetings in the. I'd say, last three months where people have asked me, hey, I know this friend or relative that wants to start a new business, buy a business. Would you mind having coffee with them and. And just. Just talk with them, hear them out, maybe give them some advice, your experience, that kind of stuff.

Right, sure.

Just very casual.

Basically, what we do on the show here.

Yeah, exactly. And I love doing that. As our listeners know, we talk about this every week. So twice in the last three months out of a few of these, I've had. I've had this statement made to me. Here comes the sensitive part. Two of these gentlemen said to me, the reason I want to. One of the reasons I want to start a company or buy a company is that I can no longer move up in the corporate channel because of certain requirements that are set in place by this large company I work for. And those are like diversity, equity and inclusion requirements.

Got it. Yep.

And it's a sensitive topic, and I don't know really much about it other than I love diversity of everything, you know.

Sure.

Gender, skin colors, beliefs, you know, all kinds of ideas, all that stuff. And so I asked them, and one of them said to me, yeah, and I've got a couple of young boys and I'm really worried about them, so I want to create this company that they could hopefully take over someday. And I was like, wow, it's the first time I had ever heard this. And I just wonder, is it just purely anecdotal? Is it their take on things? Or will we see more of these folks that feel like they can't climb the ladder or get higher? I guess in the, you know, I don't know anything about corporations, thankfully. Will, are those folks going to go out on their own more to. Because they feel they can't get any further in those companies.

That's interesting. So, I mean, like, I'll. I'll say it out loud. Yeah. No, I mean it. Like, I'm guessing that these are, you know, older white guys. Right. Like I said this to you. Yeah.

Probably, you know, not too older, not.

Too old, but white guys, 30s, 40s.

Yeah. White guys.

Yeah. Yeah. No, Okay. I mean it. Like, it certainly makes sense that in today's world, I mean, very clearly, there's less of a priority put on hiring white men because there's plenty of white men, right? And so it's like, we want to make it more diverse in this company, in this section of our company, in the, you know, this particular rank of our company, whatever it is. And so if we can find someone that is equally skilled, that doesn't look like everybody else that's here. Yeah, let's bring them in. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, you know, it's interesting. My son goes to Reed College and he is in computer science, and they are having problems hiring people in computer science over the last year and a half. No great surprise, right? Like, we've had that conversation, and they were able to hire one person last year, but it was yet another white guy, and that was, in many of the circles there, seen as a failure now. I mean, it filled a position that absolutely needed to be filled. So as someone who is spending an ungodly sum of money to have my son learn computer science from the people that Reid picks to teach him computer science, having, you know, warm, educated bodies fill those roles, that's critical. That's sort of the important thing. So I don't see what they did last year as a failure, though. I completely understand why in a perfect world you'd want to hire people and make it, you know, diversity can. It can only help. It's awesome, right? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You know, great people with different experiences.

Of diversity, socioeconomic backgrounds, diversity of thought, everything.

It's one of the better. It's one of the things I've loved about playing music is that I am naturally exposed to people that. Well, maybe a better way to say it is. There is no common, necessarily common, you know, socioeconomic background that everyone comes from. When. When you assemble in a rehearsal room or on a stage, it's, can you play?

Ah, yeah, that's right.

Right. Like that. That's it. And. And it. Like I've showed up at rehearsals and it's. It's weird, you know, I mean, I have to think about this retroactively because I don't show up thinking, well, it's going to be weird if not everybody there is a white guy like me, right? Like, that's never crossed my mind. But. But in retrospect, looking back at it, you know, there's. There's ever any time I show up for a rehearsal if. I mean, if it's, you know, I'm being brought in new to the scenario, unless I know who's going to be there, I have zero expectations about someone's gender or, you know, how. How much money they make or what Color their skin is or what color their eyes are or any of that. It's I can they play. And usually it's I. My trust is in the person who organized it. And, you know, I either know that they are good at getting people who can play or they aren't. And that really is my barometer of whether or not I want to do the gig is do I trust that you're going to assemble people who can play? That's it. Yeah, that's it. Right. You know, and I go ahead.

I'm sorry.

No. And I love that about. And it took me a long time to even realize that that was the case. But, you know, with everything else, you know, where my kids go to school and I mean, my kids go to public school, went to public school, now they go to private school because they're in college. And, you know, it's a whole different thing. But my kids went to public school. But, you know, the area we live in, it's all fairly homogenized and all that stuff. And. And it. But that's. That was not the case where I grew up. Like, I was. There were more white people in my high school than any other, you know, ethnic group, but we were not the majority.

I see.

Okay. Right. And that seemed normal to me because obviously it's what I grew up with. That is not the case where we currently live, you know, or anything like that. But. And that perhaps is the reason that I realized at one point, it's probably 10 years ago, like, wow, I really appreciate this about music. Is there is.

That is a great thing.

The only thing that matters is can you play and can you show up for the gigs? Like, you gotta be reliable, be accountable. Got to be accountable, reliable and somewhat personable. Like, you got to be able to get along with people. Otherwise it's just not going to last. But one gig, you can be a jackass as long as you play, it's all good. Yeah, that's it. Yeah.

So I don't.

It's the only barometer that mattered.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's just interesting to me in the sense that if one person mentioned it to me, I'd be like, oh, that's okay. That's your take on it or whatever.

Sure.

But hearing it a second time in a few month period, I was like, well, I wonder if this is, you know, trending or is there some other thing I don't understand? So I'm always looking for. I'm always looking to be educated. I say here on the show, I always learn the most. It's one of the reasons I do the show, to meet new people, to listen to your input, to listen to our. Our listeners, all that kind of stuff. So.

Feedback. I don't have show. Yeah.

And I don't have anything else to say about it other than I just thought it was interesting and I wanted to share it. You know, put whatever nuance on it, ask that question, and I would love to hear our listeners take on it. Feedbackusinessshow.co like you said.

Yeah, no, it's an interesting topic. I've certainly heard commentary about it. I can't imagine any of us haven't, but I've never heard that commentary the only way I can. And it's a fascinating twist on how things have been. It's not lost on me. But it's interesting that, you know, the, The. The old white guys in the room. And I realize I'm. I'm very much, you know, generalizing. Here are the ones that are saying. Now are the ones that are saying, well, the only way I can get ahead of my company is. Is by, you know, taking. Taking my destiny into my own hands. In the past, that, that might have been reserved for exactly the people that. Yeah, yeah, right.

Or they couldn't even get the job.

Or they say it might not have.

Even loan or, you know, a mortgage, or they couldn't move into certain neighborhoods. I absolutely get that and respect that.

Part of our history. It's terrible. It's not a part of our history I'm proud of.

Yeah, of course not. Of course not. And a part of our history that I personally was not involved in because I was just a little kid. But it's important to address those things and to, you know, how do you give all this, you know, give these opportunities to folks that people that maybe otherwise wouldn't have had it without. I don't know if there's a way to do it without isolating out another, you know, demographic. I. I don't know. It's really a fascinating discussion.

It's a hard balance. I mean, it is. It would be easy for me to say, well, let's take what I've learned from my, you know, musical experiences and just apply that and pick whatever the person is that's going to do the job and ask them, you know, can you play right? The. The equivalent of can you play right? You know, can you. Can you do the job? But, like, if that. That's not likely to solve this problem. I was having this conversation with a friend of mine, and I'll attribute her. I hope I don't put the wrong words. I hope I don't attribute the wrong words to her. It's Allison Sheridan who does a, does a podcast called no silicast@podfeet.com and she is a retired now engineer and as you might have guessed from the way I described her, also female. Right. So. And the fact that she's retired probably also tells you that she came up at a time when that wasn't all.

That to be an engineer.

Yeah.

For, for a woman.

Yeah. And so she time. And she did very well at Raytheon. I mean, had a illustrious career, all of that stuff. She's very sensitive to this sort of thing, as you might imagine. And at times it comes out as her mission to help further women engineers and women in STEM in general. And she said something to me recently, and this is the part I hope I don't get wrong. And I say recently, in the last three or four years where she said I would. My reaction naturally would be to rail against the companies that wind up not hiring women to fill their STEM roles, she said. But as I did more research, especially in recent years, things have changed. There are less women going to school for and interested in those STEM roles, she says. So it's hard for me to now fault companies for not hiring women, female engineers.

It's for her for looking. Yeah, deeper.

Deeper. Right. But she also said now, of course, this, this furthers the problem because if, if young girls don't see people who appear to be similar to them, AKA other women in this case, you know, if they don't see them in those roles, they are far less likely to take the path of putting themselves in those roles and getting the education.

That, That's a really good point.

So it's a tough. I don't. That's the, that's the part of this that's like, well, simply asking someone, can you play? Doesn't solve the problem. Right.

Well, that's that nuance that I was trying to. Looking for and I'm talking about, because the same could be said of positions in corporate where, hey, you know, we want to show, you know, young, you know, young black kids, you know, African Americans or Hispanic kids, look, this is the path. You move up, you're successful, you're accountable, and look at, you can achieve and, you know, become a senior vice president or of whatever, whatever and do these positions. So I get that that has real value and maybe there's just pain there, there's going to be some pain to go around while that.

Yeah, change is messy. I don't know. Yeah, it is messy. It's always messy. Right. And you have. There have to be the trendsetters. Right? I mean, if. If there's a new trend that's going to be set, there need to be those people that do that. And there are. There are and have been, but there just needs to be more of them. And. And perhaps what we're, you know, we're not gonna. We're not here to solve this problem.

No, no, no.

It's much bigger than us. But, you know, at least in. In my enterprises and things that I do, being aware that this problem exists and being sensitive to it, like, okay, if you encounter one of those people who is the trendsetter and also is right for your organization, well, now you can be part of that. Right. You know, and that's not a terrible thing. So. Yeah, it's interesting. I. Yeah, it is interesting. Yeah, it's fascinating. I'm glad you brought it up. And I don't think I'm going to delete it. I think I'm going to keep.

That's awesome. That's good. I can get another year on the small business.

Our contract is renewed. Yeah. This is a 5050 venture, so, you know, we. We're accountable to be so fast. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

But. But, yeah, but I'm. So thank you for. For listening to me and educating me a bit and then bringing out some of that nuance, and I think it's great, and it's one of the reasons why I'm here.

Yeah, same. No, this is great. I'm glad you brought that up. That's a. It's gonna. I. I'm. I'm about to leave on vacation for a week, and you're gonna. This is definitely gonna be one of those things that swims around in my head now, and that's a good thing. So. Yeah. Cool. It's good.

Perfect.

Hey, I. I want to have our conversation about how the right way to have meetings and whether you should even have meetings at all. The next thing that I would like to do is talk about our sponsor. If that works for you.

Yeah, that sounds great, man. Let's do it.

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Congratulations.

No, no, no, no, no, no, I did not. I. I opted out. Yeah. And the reason was. And I've said this a couple times, I've probably said. I know I've said it on this show, but it's relevant to this. You know, our town council meets, I think, twice a month or something like that.

Okay.

And I've attended some of these meetings when there is an. Of import to me, and they drive me crazy because they go on endlessly. And it's mostly people that it appears to me. And I don't mean to be. I'm gonna be disrespectful, and I apologize for that. I don't mean to minimize the fact that these people are effectively donating their time for the greater good of our town. I appreciate. I do really appreciate that. And, and I would love it if I. And I have helped out. I have participated in our town government in different ways. Not on the town council, but I've. I've volunteered as part of committees and things like that over time. I definitely appreciate it. But these meetings, it would drive me crazy. And so anytime somebody says to me, you should join town council, the first thing I tell him is, you will elect me and you will rue the day that you did. So you think you want me on town council and I will be 100% transparent with what my intentions are for town council, and you will know that and you will cast your vote for me. And then when you see me implement these things that I've said, you will hate me because it's going to completely derail how our town council works. And the thing that would be absolutely mandatory for me, absolute, like, deal breaker. I will not show up at a single meeting until this one thing is instituted. And again, I would run on this so no one's surprised. I'm not looking to bait and switch anyone is. There must be a hard end time set for every meeting. And the reason for that is. Okay, well, there you go. The reason for that is that I want. I know that when you have a deadline, decisions get made, right? You look at the agenda, you get it done. So that would be my. My mandatory deal breaker. Once a hard end time is set, I will come and show up for the meeting. The next thing I will try to do. But this isn't necessarily a deal breaker, but it's really important is I want to get rid of the tables and the chairs in the room. I don't want people on my list, also on your list. Okay. I don't want people sitting around, you know, proselytizing and listening to themselves. I want them focused on the agenda, focused finishing the job. You know, results, not process. And then we gtfo, we get out of there for the night. Like, we get the business done and we go. And without tables and chairs in the room, we're far more incentivized to focus on the matter at hand. So these are the things I say, and I mean these. I think it's crazy. I don't think our town council would ever actually work with these policies in place. But I know that meetings that I run do, and things are efficient. Now, of course, people that you know, people know this when they come to work for me. So this isn't some great surprise. It doesn't work for everybody, though. And so I'm focused on efficiency. I like everyone to remember that if you spend an hour in a meeting with five people, you've spent five hours of time.

Yeah, that's crazy.

So anyway, I'm prattling on here to introduce us to this topic, but I think it's an important one.

Yeah, it's valuable. I think there is a distinction between private business meetings and public meetings that I don't know much about. But I know that there's Lots of that stuff. But I think one of the things you mentioned in your lead up to that is, and it's the first thing on my list, is really asking yourself, do we need to have a meeting? Can we have a slack conversation? Can we make a phone call? Quick call? Can we text? Can we, you know, whatever you're using. Asana, whatever. You know.

Yeah. Whatever your. Your water cooler is. Yeah, exactly.

Can you. Can you have that, quote, meeting through that other, you know, avenue to save everybody time and if you love. Yeah. We need to get together. I don't like regularly scheduled meetings. Maybe that's why I don't like public meetings either. Because it's like, oh, we're meeting here on this date whether we have something to talk about or not. Or not like that.

Yeah, yeah.

And not like that. And so I think once you've identified that, yes, we do need to have a meeting, then you need to say really clearly. You need to state what is the purpose. And I read a quote from a guy named Christopher Frank. He was a VP at American Express. I have no idea other than that who he is.

Sure.

But he always would ask, what exactly are we meeting about? And he would require everyone to be able to answer that question with five words or less. And if you could not, he wouldn't meet. When you can tell me in five words or less why we're meeting. Let's schedule the meeting, which I thought was kind of an interesting way to do it. Right. And really to focus in on what you're trying to achieve and then turn that into a very clear agenda.

Right. So everybody knows. Make the answer to that question the foundation then of your agenda. Yep.

And you can then break it out into little pieces. Okay. We're. This is our, you know, purpose here.

Yeah.

Broken it down based on what everybody says. We're all on the same page. And now we're going to. Here's the agenda based on that. And then with that agenda, keeping it in front of everybody, very important. Whether you have it up on a whiteboard, on a slide, whatever, you're. That way you're there to work within the agenda and nothing else. Right. This is what we're here for. And to keep everybody on track so you can get to that decent end time that we're gonna talk more about.

But that's brilliant. Christopher Frank is still a VP at American Express. He's been there 13 years. I found him on LinkedIn and I have followed him on LinkedIn. So I recommend we all do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then another thing I always love to do, because I found, especially if you're working or having meetings, and my background's always with technicians, and they may not be the most vocal or engineers, that maybe they didn't speak up quite as much, is I would try to stack the deck before the meeting once we had this agenda and I knew what our purpose was. And, you know, I also identified who needed to be at the meeting. No spectators. Everybody has to be there for a reason. Is I would ask those people to bring a question related to this agenda to the meeting before the meeting, right? I just go up to them and say, hey, would you mind. You know, do you have any questions about this agenda? And if they said no, maybe I would help prompt them and suggest. Would you mind asking. I'd like, you know, I wouldn't mind talking about this. Would you ask a question about this topic? Because that way I could go around and say, hey, do you have, you know, anybody want to say anything? Instead of just hearing crickets, Each person at that needed to be at that meeting would have something to say, which really helps everybody else. And they may not. They don't even have to know that I met, you know, casually walked by each of them and asked them to bring up this topic at the meeting.

Right? Yeah. I learned that when I was teaching that class at UNH last semester. One of the cause, I said, man, you know, trying to get these people to engage is nuts. But as soon as I did call on someone that was, you know, seemingly very reserved, you know, not the type of person to just be outspoken, as soon as I called on them and asked a specific question, they had an answer that probably went on five minutes, and it was like, holy crap. Not only can you think that that wasn't a surprise, but you can articulate your thoughts. That's am. And I mentioned that to another professor, and they're like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You have to start every class or at some point in each class, like, make a list of all the people that are there and check them off when. When they speak. And if they haven't spoken, oh, yeah, go to them and. And prompt them. I like your idea of preparing people with a class. It was a little easier to. To know that people were prepared. So it wasn't. I mean, yes, I was calling them on them out of the blue, but, like, I knew that they had. They had something to say. I didn't know exactly what they had to say, but, you know, like, the deck was stacked, right? So it was pre Stacked. And that's all you need is. Yeah. Knowing and then leveraging that stacked deck, like calling on those people and pointing at them and saying, hey, you have a thing. Tell me your thing. And you know, you're the host. Right. It's, yeah, right.

And if you are the host or part of your job is to build trust and safety.

Yeah, right.

People are not going to speak up unless they trust. They have some kind of trust that they're not going to lose credibility and that it's a safe place to bring up things and topics. And, you know, that may be uncomfortable. And so you need to build that and ask, having somebody bring a question. Often you'll say, hey, you know, do you have something, you know about this? Most people will say, well, yeah, I'm not sure about that. And I would say, great, could you please bring that up at the meeting? I'll make sure, you know, you have an opportunity, but if they don't, you kind of help them out.

That's great. Smart.

Yeah. So the, the other thing I, I think it's important is that agenda that you've developed, you know, with maybe by yourself or with a couple of other people, is you share that agenda before you get to the meeting. So everybody knows what's going on and you know how you're going to do it. And, you know, I, I, I have mixed feelings about these, these next two recommendations. First is no phones in the meeting. And I get that one to the distraction part. But the other one is consider not allowing any or not having people bring computers either. And it fosters conversation. Now, I know in this day and age it's a little different. I read a study about how it's so much more effective to take notes by hand for comprehension, even though I hate doing that.

No, it's definitely better. Like, there's no question I am with you. I'd much rather do them on a device where I don't have to, then convert them to convert it something else.

Yeah. So maybe we're getting closer to the point, you know, you can snap pictures of it and keep it in your notes or something like that. But I thought, you know, that's definitely something worth considering because you want that engagement, you want people, or maybe you ask someone to be like the secretary, so to speak. Like when you have a public meeting, you have someone, that's the notebook, the person going to take the notes that he can, he or she can distribute them to everyone after the meeting.

Yeah, right.

There was one article I read where, and again, I have Kind of mixed feeling about this too. But was record or transcribe the meetings to be more efficient, so no one would have to take notes. But I think people kind of freak out if you're recording the meeting. I know I would. I'd be like, why are you recording this?

Yeah, because then you're in performance mode. I mean, that's like having spectators, right?

It is, it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I like the idea of having someone and I don't have this in my notes, but as we talk it through and I learn more here, having a person that's, hey, would you mind taking notes? It can be really effective, especially when we get down to talking about action items and stuff.

Yes, yes. Somebody definitely needs to be capturing action items and putting them into again, whatever. You know, if it's asana, if it's. Whatever your system is. But capturing. I find meetings. I had a meeting last night about migrating our Mac ec. One of the other podcasts I do was part of the Mac Observer. We're migrating it out and so we knew some big picture stuff that needed to happen to, you know, essentially take this section of this website and move it to its own website. It's a pretty big thing to do and make sure we get it right. And we're finally at the 90% mark, right? So it's like, okay, now we need to. We were just having a talk about where are we on this? Where, you know, where, where do we need to go? And it's like, okay, what's the day that we're going to do the move? Okay, great. So we put that. I put that on the thing. I said, what do we need to do between now and then? And. And that was actually I was capturing into two sections of just a document. One was if it needed to be a timed thing, and that went on the schedule. Document again, backed out by when the deadline is right. So it would have to therefore happen before the deadline. I know I'm saying obvious things, but that's what this is all about. It's obvious in the moment. Three days later you're like, oh, what are we talking? It seems so obvious in the moment. You know, that's what. That's what you're capturing. And then it was the to do's like. And some nitpicky things came up and it was like, great, let's put those on the list. Who's gonna take it? Right? Because if you put it on the list and it's not assigned to anyone, it is assigned to no one, right? That's the thing. Yeah. And so as we went through and it was like, okay, you do that. Okay, I'll take this part. That makes sense, you know, and. And then it was like, okay, we have a plan. Is that everything? I guarantee you one of us or more will find something that we missed. Great. No problem. Put it on the list. You know, that's okay. Yeah. But capturing those things and turning them into action items and then they're on your to do list. So it's like, oh, sweet, I know what to do. I don't have to guess. I'll go through and I can check them off. And now they're on my to did list. I feel really good today. Yeah.

Come full circle. I like it.

They come full circle. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. And just like your comment, I firmly believed that the meetings need to start on time, whether everybody's there or not, and they need to end on time. I really think that a 15 to 30 minute window for a meeting is plenty of time. If you do these steps in advance, we're talking about here. And I think that's ideal. I think after 30 minutes, man, people start to glaze over. I love it. You mentioned standing up. I think that's terrific. If you're all together. I think even going for a walk is phenomenal. You can walk and talk and it just changes the whole dynamic of people's input and they tend to open up a little bit more. I think it's terrific if you've got energy going.

I find I can go for 60 minutes, but it has to be. If you're at the 30 minute mark and no one is engaged, then the meeting should end.

So it's more like reading the room to be.

You read the room, it's like, yeah, are we getting stuff done? Has this meeting turned from just a meeting into something more? Okay, well, let's just keep going, like take the momentum. But yeah, read the room.

For sure. I like that.

I want to highlight one of the things you said. A meeting starts on time no matter who is there. If you wait five minutes to start every one of your meetings, you have trained people that a 3:00 clock meeting does not start until 3:05.

Yeah.

And that's on you. So if you don't start on time, you are. The first lesson of the meeting is that all future meetings can start late. I always joke about it. I say, hey, it's three o'.

Clock.

Not everybody's here. Why don't we take a vote and see how, you know, see if we Want to start? And everybody raises their hand. It's like, oh, it was unanimous. We all wanted to start on time. You know, of course, the people that weren't there didn't get to vote. That's the joke. But, you know, it's a nice way of sending the message that we're going to start these things on time. And I love it. I mean, kind of in like a condescending jackass way, but I love it when someone walks into a meeting, especially if it's somebody that. That, you know, feels like they are a part of whatever's happening. And they walk in, you know, five, 10 minutes late, and no one, like, the flow is already going and no one stops to catch them up. No.

Yeah.

No.

Yeah.

No, we just go. And if you want to get caught up, I mean, there's times when you can't do that. Like, if the person is, you know, if the next conversation is predicated on this one, then it's like, okay, well, let me catch you up. But I. I always make a big deal out of. Let me catch you up here because you're late. You know, we've already had this conversation, so here's where we are. Whatever decisions might have been made in these first seven minutes, they're done. You know, we're moving.

I like it.

Yeah.

I read another tip recently that I thought is really powerful to keep things moving forward and time limits is don't do status updates in the meetings. Share that information before the meeting, because you can share that in Slack or Asana or email, whatever you're using. But update the team or the people that need those updates before your meeting. It may preclude having to meet, or you may be able to have a quick meeting in the hallway. You know, I love that meet in the hallway concept where you just walk them by. Oh, yeah. Hey, what's going on? Da da, da, da. We just had a meeting. You know, I think that's great. And I'm going to try to do that more because I like that. Definitely recall, you know, doing status updates. And, you know, I'm a huge fan of casual meetings. One of the best things and I've talked about here on the show before is, you know, I used to barbecue for our team at Tech Restore on, you know, on Fridays. And I'd get out.

For those of you in the. In the south, he used to grill.

Grill. That's right. We call it a grill or a cookout. A cookout.

Cookout. There you go. Yeah, yeah.

My. My daughter's boyfriend from Pennsylvania. And he's like, well, this is, you know, barbecue's a cookout. So I would cook at the cookout and make, you know, kind of breaks the ice. I'm making stuff for everybody. And we'd sit down and I just start asking questions. You know, hey, what's going on? What are you doing this weekend? But I would get to some questions I would like to ask about what's going on in the warehouse or what's going on in the, you know, in this department. And I just found that the flow of conversation was just really open and, you know, it wasn't formal sit down, I feel, you know, and people were just open. And people that never had spoken up in a meeting unless I'd asked them and given them a question beforehand, they just were just more, you know, after I put a big thing of ribs on their plate, they were more apt to answer my question. So try. We had a lot of success with it. I loved it.

Ribs on the plate and a beer in their hand. Things changed.

There you go. Yeah, and it comes back to that. Building trust and safety. Because people want to know that if they speak up and they tell you, like, I definitely have had a problem in my management career of letting optimism sometimes overshadow negative things or problem solving.

Yeah, for sure.

So I have to hold back my optimism, my sunny disposition, if you will, and let that. And so when you're just hanging out, I just found that people are just more real and more willing to talk to you and helps build. Build trust and saving safety. So those are some tips. I have a couple more quick little things.

Yeah, no, this is. I like this. You're. That your point about not letting optimism keep you from solving problems. I mean, there's challenging. Yeah, but. But there's like, there's two extremes here, right? You can obsess, you can admire the problem. Right. To steal a phrase from one of our previous episodes. Or you can ignore the problem. And generally speaking, neither one of those is the right thing. There are times when one of those is. But generally speaking, you want to acknowledge the problem because, you know, I find it super easy to just sweep the problem under the rug and keep trucking forward. Right. Because so many times momentum and optimism can, Can. Can win the day. However, I always feel so much better when we stop and say, hey, I have a problem. You know, let's talk about this. And. And then you're actually fixing things as opposed to just letting momentum win the day, you know, I like it. Yeah.

Good to recognize it.

It is Good to recognize it. And I, it's funny because I'll, you know, I'll have some issue and it's like, wow, I could make this go away, but I should tell somebody about it before I make it go away, you know, and, and it almost always is solved more efficiently or in a better way or in a more permanent way when it's actually addressed. So. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's good. Yeah.

And, you know, so when you're, we talked about ending the meeting and how to get, you know, get to that point, but when you get to that point, you need to be talking about what action items are needed to accomplish the purpose of the meeting. Right, totally. And, and Apple uses this, this acronym, which I like, is. They call it a Director Directly Responsible Individual, a dri. And every task is assigned a DRI and a timeline before the meeting is ended. So you have this, let's say you have a 30 minute hard stop, you know, 20 minutes come down and you've identified some things that need to be done. You're going to assign DRIs and what's the dates and this kind of thing. And then you go, and that's kind of your, to your point where you're making these notes on the timeline. Someone has to be assigned to that. That becomes the directly responsible individual. I thought that was kind of cool and that, you know, then you can get updates. Okay, I'll update you in Slack. I'll update this. These are the roadblocks I hit. Here's how I, you know, went through.

Yeah, right. Yeah. It doesn't mean that you're the only one that is, you know, going to work on solving the problem. You're just, you're the, it's your responsibility to tell someone if you can't solve it yourself. Yeah.

What resources you need.

What do you need?

Yeah, I need to. Oh, you may even need more training to get it done. Or you may need to hire an outside consultant or a designer or an engineer, a programmer. That's all within the scope of being a dri. But you are just going to oversee that this task is going to get done. Maybe it has to have a budget, maybe it's longer term, but you're, you know, you're the champion for that.

Yeah, you're it. You're not the ori. You're not the only responsible individual. You are the directly responsible individual. It's your, this is your rodeo. Go make it happen and let us know what you need. Yeah. Yeah.

That's good stuff. So, you know, I'm Not a fan of meetings in general, but when you have, you know, when you use some of these tactics, they can be very productive. Your team often likes to get together, especially if you're remote. I like how Dave, you know, you've pulled your group together and have zoom meetings just to touch base with everybody. I think that's fantastic.

Yeah, like to me, especially over the last two years, but it's been true throughout because we've always been remote. But, you know, the, the time. I would rather be super efficient about the work part and then relax the, you know, the drive for efficiency and turn it into a social thing. If people really do need that, you know, the community and the camaraderie of the workplace. Because when you're remote, that doesn't happen accidentally. There is no water cooler that people are just going to bump into each other at. So you, you kind of have to. And I, you know, at Mac observer especially, you know, we, we would have a stand up. We called it a stand up, but we didn't stand up unless one of us was at our standing desk. But, you know, we had a stand up meeting every day at, at noon Eastern, which sort of coordinated all the various time zones that we, you know, that we had on the team. And it was, it was just to talk about and hash out topics for the day, talk through what might be happening and how to approach it and how to cover it and make sure that everybody had their questions answered. And we had a. There would be, on any given day, there might be seven people at this thing. So we had gotten 15 minutes was like the max that we would let this go because otherwise it was spending everyone's time which might turn into wasting everyone's time. And when Covid hit, it became instantly obvious that we had to relax that limitation. Most days we still were in that 10 to 20 minute range of a meeting, but there were some days where it was obvious one or more of us needed to just be with people. And you know, because we had a lot of people that were on the team that were living alone. And so it's like, you know, okay, if it goes 45 minutes once a week, you know what, that's okay. Turns out we all don't really have anything else to do, you know, so that's great.

I think that's a good thing to recognize is there is a social aspect to getting people together, especially if you're working remotely. And that should be factored into all this stuff we're talking about.

Yeah, and we even made it, we were explicit about it. You know, Brian and I, at first, for the first few days we were like, let's not be so militant about ending the meeting. Let's just sort of let it happen organically. And then I could see the staff starting to freak out at that 20 minute mark. Like, whoa, we've gone long. It's like, oh, right. They don't know what they don't know. So let's, let's be explicit about this. Hey, if somebody needs to go, go. You know, it's fine. You're not mandated to be here, you know, for this longer portion of it. But also if you need to be here, let's be here for each other when we can. And, and everybody really appreciate. I mean it was a. Yeah, it was a great, really great thing. It's. Honestly, it is, it is the thing I miss the most about having sold that company.

Yeah.

Is is interesting getting together with that team? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I still can talk to them. Like, it's not like we're not allowed to talk to each other, but it's, we're not. It's not part of our day anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, it's great. Well, I enjoy talking about this. I enjoyed, you know, I always enjoy covering these different topics. If you've got some tips that we missed, how you make your meetings really rock Feedback, Business Show Co or go to business show co LinkedIn and go to our LinkedIn mastermind group that we have up there and post your tips. We'd love to share them with everybody else.

Yeah, good stuff. This is a. These are two good topics today, man. This is. I liked. Is good. What's that?

Seven years.

Seven years. I know, it's good. Thanks for hanging out with us, folks. Thanks for listening. Thanks for sending in your feedback. We love to hear from you and feedback@businessshow.co. check out our sponsor, of course, hunterdouglas.com SBS and keep living that charmed life. We'll see you next week.