Daniel Pink describes the empty chair method, where organizations place a chair at meetings to represent the absent customer, forcing teams to consider their perspective on every decision. He uses the same technique at his desk while writing, asking what the reader would think to cut clutter and stay focused on what matters.
Hi everyone, welcome to another Pinkcast. Today I want to tell you an idea about how to make your meetings more effective, but you can actually use this idea to improve your own individual work. Now, I heard about this idea from the folks at Amazon.com, although some people have told me that it originated with the old Sears Roebuck company. In any event, here's what some of these organizations do. Whenever they have a meeting, be it of the software Coders or the marketing people or the operations people, whoever. At every meeting, they keep a chair around the table empty. One empty chair. And that empty chair is there to represent the most important person in the room who's not in the room: the customer. Now, this is a really cool technique for keeping yourself attuned. When that empty chair is there, everybody at the meeting has to reckon with What would the customer think of what we're doing? Whether it's your pricing policy, whether it's your delivery policy, whether it's even your own internal HR policy. Keeps you focused on this: what would the customer think of what we're doing? It's a really, really interesting attunement technique, as I mentioned, but I also think it can help us at the individual level. And I've used this myself. I use an empty chair when I write. It's not that empty chair you see over there, it's this empty chair right here. Which I keep on my desk. And I use this, especially when I'm struggling, which is most of the time. When I'm trying to write something, I think, okay, would this make sense to somebody reading it? What would a reader think of this? Do I really need this quotation, or is it really padding? What would a reader think of this? And it ends up being a way to really discipline myself, stay focused on what matters. So, if you're struggling in your writing, or if you want to improve your meetings, Give it a try. Pull up a chair. Thanks for watching The Pinkcast.
