Fix Meetings to Flatten the Hierarchy

Many companies waited until remote work was forced on them to start experimenting, so it isn’t surprising that challenges come with the benefits. Flexible work can be shaped more effectively in the future, since it’s here to stay in some form. So how can it be improved? 

For the past ten years, Model Meetings parent company, Science House has been training cohorts within our client companies to be half investigative journalist and half entrepreneur. We have trained hundreds of individuals to conduct interviews across their organizations and report the findings back to Science House anonymously (we know the name of the interviewer but not their interviewee) on a monthly basis. Our database is massive, and the patterns from our findings across industries are clear. We can tell you almost every problem your company is likely to face from the first day your CEO mentions a “digital transformation” on an earnings call, for example. We can tell you where to watch for trap doors no matter how good a merger or acquisition looks on paper. We can tell you what happens when leaders think culture is the word “innovation” painted on a wall but bureaucratic clutter and apathy stand in the way of creating and implementing ideas. It was this work in large part that led us to create Model Meetings. 

Harvard Business Review interviewed and surveyed senior leaders at five global businesses spanning manufacturing to consumer-facing sectors, to find out what are their biggest challenges in managing in the hybrid mode. Their observations align with problems we have seen. Here we will put a few of them in context and make recommendations based on our experience across industries. 

Body Language

HBR respondents noted the difficulty of not being able to read body language in meetings as clearly as they can in person. The important question to ask is: what is it that body language does to influence the relationship of the group to the group’s goal? This sounds like a simple question that minimizes the importance of a critical social cue, but it’s really the opposite. If body language is the most critical way people reveal their thoughts and feelings, you might not have enough clear communication and role clarity. 

Role Clarity

Those interviewed for the HBR piece revealed “the virtual world does not treat roles and tasks equally.” CEOs often say that they are “quite satisfied with how effective their team has been in a virtual format. Yet, second- to third-level executives, such as the VPs and country leads just below the global executive team, are more skeptical.”

In general, most CEOs don’t really know what’s happening when it comes to execution any more than the average individual contributor can fully understand the executive decision-making process. This was true before remote work became the norm, and it’s true now. Science House created Model Meetings to close the gap between strategy and execution. It doesn't help much to make unproductive meetings slightly shorter so you could make it to your next unproductive meeting on time and if you’re lucky take a break in between. Our goal is to improve the essence of how a company does business for better results and less stress. This starts with role clarity, which is one of the most pervasive challenges we see in Sense & Adapt month after month, year after year, company after company. This is especially true in organizations attempting to shift to a more agile approach when it comes to development of software or the business. New ways of working demand new levels of clarity, and it’s an ongoing process of assessment, like tuning the strings of an instrument before you play.  

Flattening the Hierarchy

“Many executives said that in a hybrid setting, their organizations have been moving further towards a flatter hierarchy,” according to HBR. “Most have also been seeking to boost the empowerment of employees, who need to make more and quicker connections across geographies and business units during Covid-19. Executives noted that collaboration across business units has helped foster innovation; some even said that best practice sharing among industry players has increased.”

Science House clients often state a desire for a flatter hierarchy, but it’s painful to put into practice because the org chart is the org chart and someone has to make decisions. From a Model Meetings perspective, it’s about making better decisions. The flatter the org, the better the decisions. Model Meetings is not a linear system. It’s a flywheel that starts with learning to generate knowledge, innovation to generate ideas, commitment to generate sound decisions and alignment to produce a plan infused with all of these steps. And the plan doesn’t remain fixed. Priorities shift, emergencies shatter the status quo, new awareness wakes people up. Customer needs evolve. 

One answer to all of these problems is to improve the way we encounter each other and our work. Those encounters have a name: meetings. Model powerful meetings from the top and you will achieve more role and process clarity and a flatter, more functional organization.