Scott sent this to me a few days ago and I finally got a chance to watch it tonight. I did enjoy it and am guilty of taking my laptop and phone everywhere I go because most meetings aren’t productive so I disagree with those two rules. Nicole Steinbeck says: “Meetings can be a huge productivity & time suck. So what if you took out all of the stupid, wasteful stuff and left only the useful parts?” Below is a summary of her talk by Scott Berkun (but as he reminds us, all credit goes to Nicole).
Schedule a 22 minute meeting – Who decided meetings should be 30 or 60 minutes? What data is this based on? None. 30 and 60 minute meetings leave no time to get between meetings, and assumes, on average, people need an hour to sort things out. Certainly not all meetings can be run in 22 minutes, but many can, so we’d all be better off if the default time were small, not large.
Have a goal based agenda – Having an agenda at all would be a plus in most meetings. Writing it on the whiteboard, earns double pluses, since then everyone has a constant reminder of what the meeting is supposed to achieve.
Send required readings 3 days beforehand – The burden is on the organizer to make this small enough that people actually do it. Never ever allow a meeting to be “lets all read the documents together and penalize anyone diligent enough to do their homework”. (note: I think 24 hours is plenty).
Start on time – How often does this happen? Almost never. Part of the problem is Outlook and all schedule programs don’t have space between meetings. By 2pm there is a day’s worth of meeting time debt. 22 minutes ensures plenty of travel/buffer time between meetings.
Stand up – Reminds everyone the goal isn’t to elaborate or be supplemental (See Scrum standing meetings). Make your point, make your requests, or keep quiet. If there is a disagreement, say so, but handle resolving it outside of the meeting.
No laptops, but presenters and note takes. If you’re promised 22 minutes, and it’s all good stuff, you don’t need a secondary thing to be doing while you pretend to be listening. One person taking notes, and one person presenting if necessary.
No phones, no exceptions – see above.
Focus! Note off topic comments. If you have an agenda, someone has to police it and this burden is on whoever called the meeting. Tangents are ok, provided they are short. The meeting organizer has to table tangents and arguments that go too far from the agenda.
Send notes ASAP – With 22 minutes, there should be time, post meeting, for the organizer to send out notes and action items before the next meeting begins.
On May 24th, “The Lazarus Effect” by director Lance Bangs and executive producer Spike Jonze premieres on HBO, YouTube, and Channel 4 (UK). By taking the ARV medicine – 2 life-saving pills that cost around 40 cents a day – in as few as 40 days, the medicine can help bring people back to life. Aids has killed more than 20 million people in Africa. In 2002 only 50,000 people had access to the medication due to its high cost. Today, thanks to reduced costs and increased access, more than 3 million people in Africa are now receiving treatment. Still, 3,800 people die every day in sub-Saharan Africa from AIDS. “The Lazarus Effect” film shows that this needn’t be the case. Source: http://www.joinred.com/
I attended a coaching workshop on Friday and I especially liked a portion of the workshop that talked about outcomes of various management styles. When we started white boarding we brainstormed the outcome of what happens when a manager tells, advises, and directs.
We came up with the following list for when managers direct/tells/advises:
Compliance
Little ownership
Zombies
Submissiveness
Employees who want to be told what to do
We next discussed the outcome of what happens when management listens and came up with another list:
Employees that are self motivated
Employee that come up with creative solutions
Employees who have increased performance
Employees who show ownership
Now after reviewing the outcomes above, can you guess which response Jeremy came up with? If you guessed zombies you’re a winner. I really said it and I really mean it and the purpose of this post is to discuss what I mean about the “zombie effect” in the workplace. Wikipedia defines a zombie as “a creature that appears in books and popular culture typically as a reanimated dead or a mindless human being”. The scary thing is you are likely working with zombies and you may not even know it. Zombies that become infected with the zombie virus don’t bite a victim who then suddenly becomes infected. Instead, I’d argue that employees become zombies over the course of weeks, months, and even years. When it comes to the zombie effect, ignore everything you’ve seen in comics or movies.
I’m an animal lover so know that no frogs were harmed in the making of the video (wait until the very end). Even though no frogs are harmed it is still a bit disturbing but if you know anything about me you know I like to help illustrate my point via multimedia examples. I’m a more of a visual learner and if you are too I think you will be equally fascinated by the video below of a frog in a pan of water. If you don’t have the heart to watch the video, you’re a better person than I am (I watched it). At the start of the video the frog sits calmly in a pan of room temperature water but the person performing the demonstration slowly turns up the gas burner beneath the pan. Because the temperature is slowly increased, the frog doesn’t notice the temperature increasing. Eventually the water starts to boil and the frog dies as a result. Organizations who do not listen of course aren’t going to say they don’t listen their employees but if they continually ignore the danger around them, eventually bad things happen.
Frog In A Pot
Now that we’ve seen what can happen to zombie employees you of course want to avoid them which begs the question: “how can you tell if you work with zombies, or worse, decide if you’re a zombie employee yourself?”
If you want to spot zombies in your organization, look for these common signs:
An employee who walks like someone three times their age into work and half their age walking out of work
An employee who answers every question you ask of them with “I don’t know”, “I’m not sure”
An employee who responds to an answer of why something is done a certain way with “I just work here”
An employee with eyes which are constantly glazed over
An employee who struggles with being punctual
When I said not listening to employees and always directing them produces zombie employees the response in the class was laughter. Why do you think they laughed? I’d argue they laughed because in today’s workplace we have become accustomed to calling things by their politically correct names. When that doesn’t occur it catches people off guard. Therefore, you likely haven’t heard of zombies in an organization, you may have heard terms like employees being unmotivated, disengaged, or even being under-performing. Corporations are big ships so change happens slowly. Very few employees/managers/leaders in an organization stop to ask themselves: “hey, is it getting hot in here, or is it just me?”. If organizations aren’t doing pulse checks an organization can start losing its focus and ultimately lose its employees and customers.
The zombie function is simple, the more you micromanage the employee, the less the employee will think for themselves. The theory says “the more you use your reins, the less they’ll use their brains.” If you’ve ever been micromanaged you know how it can feel to have someone constantly looking over your shoulder. Leaders who don’t trust their employees tend to constantly focus on where their employees are as opposed to the output they are producing.
Inc. Magazine has an article by John Case titled “The Open-Book Revolution” where he defines open book management as “a way of running a company which gets everyone to focus on helping the business make money.” Leaders often feel threatened when associates they manage think of better ideas than their own so they instead choose to make decisions in isolation. In doing so, leaders who choose to not get input and feedback are creating zombies. Additionally many leaders feel they know best so they don’t trust their employees to make decisions. Furthermore they micromanage them to make sure everything is done exactly as they would want it done. Don’t get me wrong, employees do need to be overseen and guided. I merely argue that few employees are given proper responsibility and training for that responsibility. They are also not set free and held accountable for what they were hired to do which is producing results (within an agreed upon timeframe). When the idea or decision is eventually communicated without involvement of others in the organization, what typically tends to happen is associates learn to stop questioning, stop thinking, stop caring. When they stop those behaviors they simply start doing as instructed. They become a zombie.
You can cure a zombie in the workplace by doing the following things:
Training
Coaching
Mentoring
Listening
Changing things or responding when needed.
Whenever possible of course be honest, be a good communicator, keep information you receive confidential, and conduct team building exercises. We know zombies can spread their disease to others and when it does we also know it can spread to customers so cure the problem within your organization before it is too late!
So now you know the warning signs, if you see one, or if you are one, get help or help yourself! Do you have any thoughts on zombies in the workplace?
For Tyler’s birthday Christina’s parents arranged for a San Ramon fire station tour for this morning. As you can see from the pictures and the videos he absolutely loved it but I don’t know if the adults or Tyler had more fun. You don’t realize how complex fire trucks are until you really get up close to them, or in our case we were lucky enough to sit inside of it.
It was a very busy day today but overall I think Tyler really enjoyed his 3rd birthday. Thanks to Christina for being the most kind person I’ve ever known and for helping to throw a great party for Tyler. Thanks to my parents for joining the festivities with us on Skype this evening, miss you and love you. I can certainly appreciate technology when it helps bring us closer even though we are far away. Thanks to Christina’s parents for joining us and helping us celebrate, you are both fantastic and we love you. Mike, Jenn, Evan, and Austin thanks for Tyler’s gifts and as you can see he clearly liked his recorder. Finally, thanks to Lana for bringing cupcakes to Tyler’s daycare this afternoon and sorry I couldn’t make it but I was tied up in a meeting. Being a single dad isn’t easy but thanks to everyone for helping to celebrate my favorite “Person” in the whole world. It is always great to know even though things didn’t work out as planned, Tyler is able to feel very loved and I really appreciate those who care about him.
I post a lot of information to this site and wanted to take a moment to say I really appreciate those who take a moment out of their busy day to give back by leaving a comment on any of my posts. I get a fair amount of traffic, nothing like an “A-List” blogger, but decent. That isn’t to say I’m satisfied with what has been done to date. I’ll admit it, I can get frustrated when I put time and energy into something and get criticized for it, and almost as frustrated when those who come to consume the content don’t give back.
I was recently involved in a social media discussion with a handful of individuals and I’m writing this in an attempt to change the perception of the world that bloggers are egocentric, among a few other stereotypes. The person I was discussing social media with informed me they don’t blog and I was also informed the person didn’t have a Facebook account. I told the person they should because “sharing is caring” to which I was told “blogging is egocentric” and people who have blogs “think their thoughts and ideas are the best”. Finally I was told those who blog “only care about themselves”. I told the person blogging is about sharing and was told “no it is telling”. In the following paragraphs it is my intention to “share” my thoughts on the conversation and as always I want to open this topic up to you to so the conversation can be continued.
Let’s first discuss the idea that “blogging is egocentric”. In my opinion people who have the time and expertise to communicate their thoughts and ideas on a social platform (including blogs) should absolutely do so which allows the entire world to potentially benefit. I’ve been thinking about it and at first I thought people who do not share their thoughts and ideas for all to benefit are egocentric but after thinking about it further I believe it is their right to withhold information. People who have blogs do want attention, but don’t we all? We want to be heard and we want to share what we think. We want to share what we find interesting and that is what I have tried to do with my blog.
I next want to discuss the portion of the discussion where I was told “blogging is telling” rather than sharing which is what I believe. I’ve written several thousand posts on this blog and have unfortunately only received a few hundred comments. It is my full intention that whatever is posted is in many instances an opinion and although I’d like to think my opinion is always correct, I understand it may not always be the opinion shared with others reading the post. However, that is what makes a blog a fantastic communication platform. Blogs give communicators the ability to put a thought, idea, video, article, communication etc out for the world to comment on and my posts are no exception. I share my thoughts, ideas, and content I find compelling in the hopes that others will benefit from them and if they have time (which for some reason few do), provide their own thoughts and ideas.
When I get a new comment on one of my posts, I literally feel like Kip Drordy from the now infamous South Park episode. I normally don’t watch South Park but I heard it was going to be about Facebook and I have to tell you it was hilarious (in a Junior High sort of way I remind you). For those who didn’t watch it the episode, it was about a kid named Kip who had no friends on Facebook. Stan decided to become friends with Kip who freaked out upon learning Stan cared enough to friend Stan up. Kip took his laptop to the movies, he told Stan (via Facebook) what he ate for dinner, and much more only for Stan to later unfriend Kip at the end of the episode. The next time you think about not commenting on one of my posts, just think back to that South Park episode and remember how happy I will be after receiving your comment.
Blogging sometimes reminds me of being an ant in the movie A Bug’s Life. The ants slave away by harvesting their crops only to have the grasshoppers come in and take their food. Take all you want from my blog but as they say in buffet lines, eat all you take. Every once in a while if you want to leave a tip just know it is appreciated. OK enough said on that.
Finally, if you don’t have a blog or Facebook account just know for whatever it is worth that I completely respect that. It won’t however stop me from trying to compel you to share your thoughts and ideas with the world however that may be…just share! Of course doing so opens you up to scrutiny but we only have a very brief time on this planet for us to learn from one another. Social media and blogging tools have empowered a new generation to share expertise like no other time in the history of the planet. Tell the world your ideas and let everyone benefit from what you have to offer. Just whatever you do, don’t criticize those who are giving. It is always better to give than receive but every once in a while give back!
I went to Yosemite yesterday with Christina and her family, or maybe they went with me? Any how, we all went to Yosemite yesterday and the weather was beautiful. I’ve been fighting a cold I got from Tyler but got through the day pretty well despite a nagging cough and fire hydrant nose. On the shuttle ride back from Yosemite Falls everyone on the bus saw a black beer but for some reason I couldn’t see it along one of the rivers. We did see lots of deer, birds, and oh yes even a squirrel or two which I managed to get a few shots of. We rented bikes which ended up being a great way to see a lot of territory in just a few hours. Got home around midnight last night so I think after church today it will be a nice day to relax and get healthy again.
