By John R. Childress
Chair, Cultural Transformation – President, N2Growth Europe, N2Growth
“If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be “meetings” ~Dave Barry
Everywhere I go I hear complaints about Business Review Meetings. Whether they are held monthly, quarterly or some other cadence, the comments from participants tend to be the same.
- “What a waste of time.”
- “Now I’ve lost another day of work.”
- “I flew to the East Coast for this? At least they had a decent movie on the flight.”
- “I prepared for three days and they cut my time short.”
- “Lots of talk but no decisions, just another request for more data.”
- “I’m not really interested in what problems the other Directors have; I’ve got my own problems.”
- “The same three guys take up all the air time. Like a broken record every meeting.”
Another common complaint about Business Review Meetings is that nearly always the time gets hijacked with discussions on day-to-day operating or tactical issues, especially when we have a room full of engineers turned managers; they quickly dive down into trying to fix the problem right then.
I had the opportunity to sit with Lewis Booth, former CFO of Ford Motor Company, who along with the senior executive team, led the successful turnaround and global repositioning of Ford.
You probably know Ford was the only one of the Big Three US auto makers to refuse government bailout money, so they need to be efficient and effective in everything they do to save time and money. And their weekly (yes, you heard me right) 2 1/2 hour senior executive meetings are not only efficient and effective, but productive and strangely motivating as well.
One of the reasons for the effectiveness of these meetings is the discipline instilled in the group as a result of good leadership from Alan Mulally, a standard set agenda, clear and inviolate groundrules, and standard templates for all information updates.
Here are some of the groundrules that Ford senior team follows:
- Identify the problem, don’t try to solve it during the meeting
- If you can help someone else solve a problem, talk to them after the meeting, not in the meeting
- Absolutely no “pot shots” or “poking fun” at anyone, inside the room or out. (Alan Mulally is very serious about this groundrule as he understands deeply that respect for the individual and trust are the foundations of an effective team).
- Start and end each meeting with a review of the vision and mission (One Team – One Plan – One Goal)
- The Ford senior team has a list of “expected behaviors” (how we agree to behave and lead) and these are reviewed at the start of every meeting
- At least one “appreciation event” each meeting (someone won an award or public recognition, a 25-year service anniversary, etc.)
- Everyone attends, either in person or via Webex (I have a client where one of the senior team members refuses to travel to another location for their quarterly meeting – think about the hidden agenda)
- They go through nearly 300 slides in just over 2 hours as they review the entire business, but the trick is a common format and all new information is in blue, so they only need to focus on the blue material, not go over each slide in detail
- Each global region gets 10 min. to present their charts and each “Skill Center” gets 5 minutes. They truly are efficient!
- They then use the exact same slides for their next level reviews, so everyone in management knows the same basic information in the same format.
Transparency of information, a commitment to solve problems as a team and help each other, and the fact that bonuses are based on how the company performs (not how their individual operations perform) help keep this senior team highly focused and effective.
How effective are your business review meetings? It might be time for a rethink!
Thoughts? Experiences?
Follow me on Twitter @bizjrchildress
