MODERN BUSINESS
Meeting madness: From
frustration to freedom
in 90 days
By Graham Winter
I
s there a feature of your
company’s meetings that
frustrates you the most? Perhaps
you’ll find it amongst this list
compiled at an offsite by 150
leaders in one of Australia’s largest
infrastructure companies:
• Poorly organised
• Confused – lack purpose
• Back-to-back
• Go for too long
• Veer off topic
• People do emails
• No outcomes
When presented with this list, the
facilitator of the offsite asked a
provocative question:
‘Do you control these meetings or
do they control you?’
Fortunately the CEO was attending,
and he encouraged a robust
conversation amongst his people.
This led to a 90 day ‘think one team’
project to transform the meeting
culture in the business. If some of
those top seven frustrations are
alive and well in your meetings, then
the lessons from those 90 days,
particularly the three root causes,
might be equally relevant for you.
48 ModernBusiness
February 2016
1
Lack of Accountability
Most high performing teams
operate to the simple and
powerful principle of ‘One person
accountable, multiple people
responsible’. This means that
every important task has a single
owner and they are responsible
to engage colleagues to achieve
the o ]