Leadership Code

Problem #3: Transition Problems

The cornerstone of an open door policy is unstructured time. Employees can talk to you about what they want to talk about. You really never know from one conversation to the next what the employee will bring up. Unlike 1:1 time which usually has an agenda, open door time does not. This unstructured quality makes it more difficult for the manager to manage the conversation and really challenges listening skills. Transitioning from focusing on a specific task to a more open listening stance is difficult at best. We train managers to be problem solvers and the open door policy works across the grain. Managers have a difficult time making the transition, instead bringing their problem solving focus to the open door conversation. Employees generally want the manager to listen, not problem solve and assign action items.

Problem #4: Unproductive Time

Managers that I talk to find the majority of open door time unproductive. While important issues do bubble to the surface, many employees use the time to vent, complain, or even gossip. Very little constructive and useful information is communicated and the open door policy can easily legitimize ineffective behavior. The situation puts the manager in a type of double bind. If you listen to negative behavior you reinforce or sanction it. If you challenge the behavior, employees see it as a violation of the policy.

Recommendations

One recommendation is to eliminate your open door policy and set aside a specific time each week where employees can bring in their issues. Just like a doctor or teacher who has weekly office hours you can set aside a time where you will be accessible outside of the normal communication channels. Generally, an hour a week is time enough to allow employees to raise their issues. You can always adjust the amount of time you allocate depending on your employees’ needs. This approach allows you to structure and control your engagement with employees so that you can consistently pull it off. Set some ground rules and expectations, and clearly communicate them to employees. Again, the key is to schedule it consistently and hold to the practice.

Another recommendation is to hold ongoing and revolving open forum meetings with small groups of employees to solicit their feedback on topics they want to discuss. This practice will demonstrate your accessibility and give you better control of your time.

Either one of these two recommendations is consistent with the fast pace of work and will help you to build and maintain credibility with employees.



The open door policy came into being when the empowerment movement was gaining momentum. It was designed to combat the rising tide of employee dissatisfaction and cynicism that resulted from waves of layoffs and corporate restructurings. Over time it became one of the sacred cows of management practice and was seen as one of the foundations of being an effective manager. Today, the vast majority of managers have some type of open door policy because they either think it is a good idea or it is expected of them.

Like many management practices that get adopted into popular practice, the open door policy has good intentions. The basic structure of an open door policy is that an employee can drop in on a manager and talk about whatever is on their mind. Managers demonstrate their accessibility to employees by being available whenever the employee wants to talk. By making time for employees and listening, leaders demonstrate that they value what employees have to say. What could be wrong with a policy that has such positive aspirations?

My fundamental problem with the open door policy is not with its intentions, but rather with its implementation and practice. I find that very few managers can successfully pull off an open door policy. The reality is that having an open door policy causes more problems than it is worth for a manager and can lead to an erosion of credibility with employees. There are four problems that plague the open door policy. I'll cover the first two in this post.

Problem #1: Not enough time

The open door policy came into practice and gained popularity when the time demands on managers were much less than today. The pace of work has become so great that many managers have difficulty accomplishing what is expected of them and end up practicing a sort of triage-what is most urgent or loud gets attention. Most managers simply don’t have the time flexibility in their daily schedule to make the open door policy work.

Imagine yourself in this situation. You are racing to meet a deadline and are really behind. An employee drops by to discuss something on their mind. You have an open door policy and feel the pressure to listen. You would like to put the employee off to another time but feel you can’t. So you allow the employee to talk but your mind is elsewhere on the deadlines and tasks that are piling up. Or, even worse, your frustration and impatience show through. The employee picks up on your emotions or distraction and leaves feeling dissatisfied and dismissed.

Problem #2: Inconsistency

You say you have an open door policy and it is part of your stated management philosophy. But sometimes when someone drops in you put them off to another time. Other times you drop what you are doing and turn all of your attention to the employee. Here is the problem with being inconsistent on the open door policy; it becomes an issue of credibility. Do you do what you say? Employees will test you and your commitment to anything you say. Employees are used to management saying one thing and doing another, and are quick to jump on the distrust bandwagon. Even one violation of a stated policy starts to erode credibility. Once you formally commit to a practice-you must follow it to the letter. This is what I call the 100% Rule. Don’t commit to something if you can’t practice it consistently.



When I survey people in organizations about problems they encounter, invariably in the top five is too many meetings. From many people’s perspective, the modern business meeting has evolved into an artificial life form that is a profound waste of time and company resources. Meetings have become a time to check your email, fall to sleep, check updates on FaceBook®, gossip, play games, or get hypnotized by a progression of PowerPoint® slides and mind numbing data.

Leaders are expected to run good meetings and ensure that the meetings in their organization are also run well. If meetings are seen negatively, why don’t leaders do more to improve them? In my experience, leaders don’t run meetings poorly on purpose. They may not have had a lot of positive meeting models to use as reference or they may be facing challenges that are complicated to address. 

Addressing meeting problems is often compounded by a much deeper issue, namely that meetings tend to be in synch with the organizational culture. They are an extension of the culture. While a leader has some impact on a work culture, the culture also possesses a life of its own. Often the leader has to combat the culture itself to try and make meetings more effective. People will generally comment about how bad meetings are but also communicate a sense of helplessness in changing them. In my experience, there are four different types of dysfunctional meeting cultures that leaders need to be prepared to address.

The Inclusion Culture

In this type of environment, belonging to a group and being included are important values of the work culture. The net result is that meeting membership is not managed and there are often people in the meeting that really don’t need to be there. The inclusion culture has a high frequency of social get-togethers and encourages interaction outside of work. Social importance is tied to being included. If you are not at a meeting you are viewed as being valued. An important function of meetings is about determining social standing. For example, are you in the inner circle or outside of it?

The Isolationist Culture

On the opposite side of the spectrum is the isolationist culture. In this type of culture, everyone is viewed as an individual and is expected to focus on their own work. Interpersonal contact and meetings are kept to a minimum, furthering the isolation of individuals. The problem in the isolationist culture is not too many meetings but the lack of them. This tendency leads to silos of information and lack of communication between organizations.

The Talk it to Death Culture

In the talk it to death culture the main problem is that meetings are not effective and issues are not resolved. This culture has propensities towards lack of accountability and an aversion to risk or action. Meetings often are marathons lasting hours and can end without clear next steps. Members leave with a great deal of frustration because nothing was accomplished.

The Activity Junkie Culture

In the activity junkie culture, everyone is extremely busy. Meetings revolve around assigning action items. Individuals always leave the meeting with more things on their plate. While the idea of action items is a good one, the problems with the junkie culture are that action items are not followed up on or there is a lack of prioritization. These cultures don’t prioritize enough so people become quickly overloaded and quality suffers. People are busy but they might not be working on the right things.

Reducing the sheer number of meetings and making them more effective is a challenge that leaders should think about tackling directly because of how much productivity is lost.

I have identified 18 common problems that contribute to a dysfunctional meeting culture and their solutions. Which ones are occurring in your organization?

Problem #1: Poor mechanics

The basics of good meeting practices are not followed. The purpose of the meeting is not clear. The expected outcome of the meeting is not clearly articulated. Minutes are not taken. Action items are not followed up on. Materials are not sent out ahead of time so people come into the meeting operating on different information.

Solutions: Institute basic meeting etiquette in all of your meetings. Help reinforce meeting basics to be followed in other meetings by participating and modeling the behaviors. Tie your participation to the practices being followed. Have attendees grade the meeting effectiveness and review these ratings on a regular basis.

Problem #2: The leader doesn’t effectively exercise his/her role.

This relates to a failure of the leader to do what they are supposed to do. They don’t keep conversations on track, don’t avoid rat holes, don’t check to see that people are actively engaged, and don’t close discussions at the appropriate time and move on to action. The leader may also not be clear on whether they are leading or participating which contributes to confusion among attendees on how to respond or treat the leader.

Solutions: Make clear to the leader your expectations of their role. Many leaders have not received good training on meeting management and are doing what they have observed in other meetings. Give them concrete and specific feedback on how to improve the meeting. Ask them to send clear signals when they move between the roles of leader versus participant.

Problem #3: The leader tries to do everything

Managing a meeting means juggling several very distinct activities. If the leader is trying to do all it him/herself, there will always be something that doesn’t get done.

Solutions: Distribute important meeting functions among attendees. You can assign certain roles such as note taker and time manager to encourage participation

Problem #4: No test or criteria established for creating a meeting

As a consequence, anyone can create a meeting about anything. There is no gate keeping. This is what I call the meeting reflex. When a problem is encountered the first impulse is to call a meeting. Lack of discipline in this area can lead to an explosion of meetings.

Solutions: Publish criteria for the establishment of any meeting (i.e., requires a group action, can only be 30 minutes long). Set up a meeting approval process and/or approval body that all proposed meetings must go through to be ratified. Have people submit their proposed meetings for approval. You can also limit meetings to certain days, have meeting free days, or set a maximum limit of meetings per week.

Problem #5: Meetings are a substitute for others things that are broken

Unclear or overlapping roles, broken processes, or lack of accountability can all contribute to meeting overload. Instead of fixing the core problem, we take the easy way around and set up a meeting. We learn to navigate around the bumps in the road.

Solutions: Ask these simple questions to try and identify the real problem. Are there problems between roles and responsibilities? Are we dealing with a broken process such as decision-making? Are people willing to take ownership and responsibility? Set up a work group or team to start tackling the real issue once it is identified.

Problem #6: Control not exercised over membership

People are in the meeting who really don’t need to be there while others who should be present are not. As a consequence, things don’t get resolved and more meetings are scheduled. A related problem is that the membership keeps expanding until the meeting becomes unwieldy and difficult to manage. A meeting beyond a certain size will evolve into just an information exchange.

Solutions: Scrutinize the invitee list. Uninvite attendees who shouldn’t be there. Ask attendees to justify their presence or why they should attend. Invite people who need to be there and clearly explain why. Keep the membership small when possible. An effective working meeting size is 6-10 people. Beyond that range, plan to have meetings that are more communication focused.

Problem #7: Meetings have bad PR.

“Any meeting is a waste of time. Can’t I just go do my work”? In this situation meetings have acquired a bad reputation and are framed as a necessary evil rather than an important mechanism for getting things done. People begrudgingly attend them, don’t attend, or have low expectations. All meetings are seen in a negative light.

Solutions: Start a positive PR campaign about the benefits of well-run meetings (i.e., better communication and alignment). Solicit people’s thoughts on how to make meetings better rather than just their complaints. Measure meeting performance and report the results.

Problem #8: Lack of Choice

Meeting attendance refusal is not sanctioned or there is no legitimate way for someone to opt out of a meeting. Meetings are defined as mandatory. As a consequence, people feel coerced and resent being there. They can demonstrate passive aggressive behavior

Solutions: No one likes to feel forced. While some mandatory meetings are unavoidable, keep them to a minimum. In the meetings, try to give people as many choices as possible. For example, you could ask them to vote if they’d like to adjourn early once the work is completed. Add other rewarding activities to the meeting. Food, entertainment, games, and networking time help change the environment.

Problem #9: Lack of planning for disagreement

People show up at meetings with different viewpoints, perspectives, and needs. When it is time for a decision or closure, it is not surprising that many meetings get bogged down when disagreement raises its head. Often, the leader is caught by surprise when this happens and may not know what to do. They may try to force a decision, downplay the disagreement, or let the meeting end without closure.

Solutions: Anticipate disagreement. Whenever you get two people in the room you will get different viewpoints. Solicit viewpoints ahead of time so that you can get a sense of where people stand. Send out a brief communication before the meeting outlining the positions, pros and cons, the need for the decision, and ask people to send you any other feedback they would like to be included. Ask people to come prepared to make and support a decision, and why the decision needs to be made at the meeting. Set up the agenda to allow for additional discussion and how the decision will be made (i.e., majority, consensus etc.). Manage the meeting by raising the differences first then moving on options and tradeoffs. Keep people on track and employ the method for making the decision when the time is right.

Problem #10: Too much focus on info sharing vs. decision making

With so much information to share, we use meetings as a default way to get a critical mass of people together and make sure they all have the same information. The sheer amount of information we deal with encourages our use of meetings as an information conduit. Unfortunately, these types of meetings engage people in a sequential manner. People’s attention moves in and out depending on whether or not the information is relevant to them. At any point in time there will be people checked out and some people checked in.

Solutions: There are many better ways to share information than meetings. SharePoint sites, wikis, blogs, or even web pages can be used to distribute information in an effective and efficient manner. Use them whenever possible.

Part 1 of this article has been published on Ezinearticles. Here is the link

Problem #11: Blended agendas

People set up agendas that blend too many different types of activity. One good example of this problem I see with some regularity is when strategic and operational activities are part of the same agenda. These types of activity require very different types of thinking and pacing, and people often have a difficult time shifting from one mode to the other.

Solutions: Try to break up meetings into different types and have the agendas be consistent. If you are having a longer meeting, break up the meeting into different segments and allow for transition time. For example, when holding a strategy-focused meeting, organize the agenda around break out time, time for brainstorming and open ended discussion. You might focus only on a few points or issues to get people thinking creatively. This type of meeting is very different from an operations review where you are basically reviewing results and problems.

Problem: #12: Unrealistic agendas

In this scenario, people set up agendas that try to accomplish too much. The actual amount of time required to do something is not calculated accurately and represents wishful thinking. The results are unfinished agendas and meetings that chronically run over the scheduled time.

Solutions: Solicit multiple viewpoints from attendees before the meeting to get estimates of time needed per issue. Be sure to recognize that different activities require different pacing. Scheduling a brainstorming activity in a project review time frame won’t work. Manage the allotted time slots aggressively. Identify people who consistently run over time and coach them on how to manage their time more effectively. If you work with a team over time you should be able to get a sense of the team’s pacing. Set the agenda to their pace, not yours. Finally, you can cut the proposed agenda in half. No one will complain about getting out early.

Problem #13: Lack of awareness around the true cost of a meeting

If attendees are fellow employees, their actual cost often gets taken for granted. We just don’t think about our co-workers in terms of cost. We also labor under some false assumptions about what the actual employee hourly cost is which contributes to inefficient use of time. The result is that companies are wasting millions of dollars a year on unproductive meetings.

Solutions: As a rule of thumb, most industries can expect that for mid-level managers on up, adding 100% of their salary more accurately reflects the true cost of an employee (Doerr, 12/09). Based on that assumption, a $100,000 per year employee total costs are roughly $200,000 per year or roughly $96.00 per hour (52 weeks times 40 hours per week = 2,080 hours per year. If you have 10 people in this salary range in a two hour long meeting, you have just spent $1,920 worth of employee time. You can tighten up the meeting discipline in your organization by utilizing a cost calculator to measure the true cost of a meeting. Then evaluate whether or not the agenda justifies its ROI. If the calculation is not a good investment, either cancel the meeting or improve the agenda to increase its return.

Problem #14: Attendee bad behavior

Not coming prepared, expecting to be educated in the meeting, being disruptive, or expecting to being entertained are all forms of attendee bad behavior. Managing a meeting is made much more difficult when these types of behavior are present.

Solutions: Evaluate how these behaviors have come to be tolerated. Determine what you are doing that may be contributing to the behavior (i.e., not distributing information ahead of time so that people can review it) and change it. Bring it to the attention of the individual displaying the behavior that they are demonstrating ineffective behavior during the actual meeting or immediately afterwards. Give them clear feedback on how you want to see their behavior change. Attach consequences to the behavior to encourage ownership and positive participation.

Problem #15: Discipline degrades over time

What was once a well organized meeting gets sloppier over time. People start taking short cuts and meeting discipline gets worse. Meeting fatigue sets in and the leader has a harder time getting people to attend. People increasingly question the purpose of the meeting.

Solutions: This is a clear example of a meeting that needs to be revitalized or stopped. If the issue that drove the initial formation of the meeting is still active, look at refreshing the membership to get new perspectives. Look at transferring the leadership of the meeting to someone else. Holding periodic meeting check up audits to get feedback from participants about the meetings purpose, how it is conducted, and how to make it better will help the meeting maintain its momentum.

Problem #16: Meetings take on a life of their own

We are good at starting meetings but not ending them. They become a habit and their charter can creep into other areas outside of the original scope. New members replace original members and still the meeting chugs along. At some point it becomes difficult to remember who started the meeting and what it was supposed to do. As a consequence, meetings pile up like weight on dogsled, eventually decreasing productivity to a dangerous level.

Solutions: I have found that two basic meeting disciplines are useful in combating this problem. First, institute a rule that basically says that for any meeting that is started another needs to be ended. This will force people to be more discriminating about the meetings they start and will put pressure on existing meetings to be useful. The second rule is that every meeting needs to have an end/evaluation date. Don’t let meetings be open ended, instead set a closure date at the very beginning. Manage the meeting to that date. A meeting can always be reinstated if there is demand for it. For meetings that are truly ongoing or mandated (i.e., safety, management reviews) establish an evaluation date where the overall effectiveness of the meeting is assessed. Be sure to evaluate the meetings at least yearly.

Problem #17: Lack of continuity between meetings

Meetings are seen as isolated events that are not connected to the flow of work. Conversations do not occur about meeting themes between meetings.

Solutions: Meetings should be seen as part of an overall conversation about an issue, not as the only place where discussions about the issue take place. As you manage the meeting think about activities and actions you can encourage members to engage in between the meetings. Assign actions, create homework, set up informal gatherings with subsets of the membership, and post communications about meeting activities as they are completed. Encourage members to interact directly to solve issues rather than waiting for the meeting to solve them.

Problem #18: No transit time allowed between meetings

When back to back meetings get scheduled there is often no time allowed for getting to your next meeting on time. The problem snowballs as the day progresses and you get progressively later. Meetings towards the end of the day end up having the worst attendance problem as a result. In part this is a problem due to scheduling software (i.e., Outlook®), that only allows things to be scheduled on the hour or half hour.

Solutions: One very simple way of dealing with this problem is to set all meetings to a 50 minute hour cycle. This allows for transit and transition time.

The ultimate goal for a leader to have regarding meetings is that they are seen as useful, productive, and engaging. By making sure people see that their time is respected and valued, and tangible results occur, the leader creates an environment where people want to attend meetings, not dread them.



Check out the new services.

• Accelerated Mentoring: designed to help individuals who need to work quickly on a specific isssue.
• Leadership Development Systems: building on my Emerging Leader System and Leadership Everywhere Framework, I can quickly develop a leadership development system for small to mid-size companies that is customized and cost effective.

Working on the outline for my book (working title: Cracking the Code: How to be successul in any organization). Target publish date mid summer. Let me know what you'd like to see in it.

Wrapping up my article for publication: Too Many Meetings: How to get out of the vicious cycle. Should be out later this week or next.

Also wrapping up the first video of a ten part series titled Job Security in the New Normal. The video focuses on how to build advocates for your work. It will be posted on my sister site www.careerrazor.com