Our Meetings Sucked! Your Meetings May Suck Too! Another Article About Meetings Not Sucking.

Don't underestimate the importance of arguing, yelling, and throwing staplers at each other.

Our meetings used to be bad. Real bad. We would sit around, glide over the financials. Chase a rabbit. Follow some goats. Sit next to some sheep. Go fishing for a while. It was random ass as random ass gets. No structure, no conflict, no point.

Here's what I've learned over the last year...

If you run meetings that suck, they don't have to. You can easily make them not suck. Having meetings that don't suck is SO SUPER IMPORTANT!!!!!! It's important for the direction of the company. It's important for your leadership team. It's important for your sanity!

Sanity? Huh? What the crap do you mean?

Good meetings have conflict. Lot's and lots of conflict. You need to argue, you need to yell at each other, you need to let out those frustrations and throw a stapler, crush a stupid flip chart, or toss a chair.

Letting out steam helps you stay sane.

You know what's not sane? Biting your tongue. Not saying what you truly believe. Office politics. Passive aggression.

That stuff stays in your system, it boils, and boils - dude, you're passionate. You're smart. You need to be heard!

You need badass meetings in your life - for your sanity. You can make them badass immediately. It's not hard. I can assure you if we can do it, you can do it.

If you sit in meetings that suck, its okay. There is hope. Just go to the person who holds the meeting every week, tell them their meeting sucks. No seriously, just tell them, nicely of course. Hand them Lencioni's book, Death by Meeting. They will love you for it. If they are close minded, don't like constructive criticism, and blow you off - then go get a new job. Find a leader that is open to some damn criticism. My goodness, we all need to improve.

Patrick Lencioni and Gino Wickman (Traction) both understand the importance of badass meetings.

I just got done reading Death By Meeting, and we've been doing EOS and running these badass Level 10 Meetings now for a year. Here's what I've learned. Helped us tremendously.

1. Have Meetings!! In my first job we literally never had meetings. Never. We were super young and had no clue. But there was lack of direction, clarity, and communication among the leadership team and it filtered all the way down throughout the company. This was an extremely successful business that completely fell apart. The reason - division at the top of the company. We didn't have a structure in place that enabled us to air out our differences on the direction of the company. Don't make the same mistake we did - have meetings. Yes, they are that important. If you are not having regular meetings with your leadership team - then start having them now. Yes they may suck - but just having them is the very first step.
2. Not all meetings are the same! There is a huge difference between tactical weekly meetings and monthly / quarterly strategic meetings! The context is huge. Lencioni compares meetings to sitcoms and movies. They are all different. There is a huge difference between - Curb Your Enthusiasm, Breaking Bad, and Saving Private Ryan. Different context. Different audiences. What are you expecting when you walk in the door? Set the tone before hand by differentiating between the different kinds of meetings. Sitting down to watch Curb is completely different than sitting down to watch SPR. There are tactical weekly meetings and you can execute quickly on these decisions. There are high level strategy meetings that will take damn near half the day or even DAYS. Execution on this stuff may take the entire year sometimes. Don't try and tackle something in 30 minutes that you know needs 4 hours.
3. There needs to be structure within your weekly tactical meetings. You are looking for a cadence within your tactical meetings. Much like a heartbeat or flow. We dove into EOS head first, and the structure of Gino Wickman's Level 10 Meetings are very similar to Lencioni's Weekly Tactical Guide. The major point here - be very intentional. Everything is measured by the minute. Just keep remembering that tactical is different than strategy. Lencioni divides the sections like this; lighting round, key metrics review, tactical agenda items, potential strategic topics, decisions / actions, and cascading messages. Just remember that every minute should be designed. Of course there will be some strategy stuff that comes up - but the point is that this meeting literally doesn't have the time that is needed to dive deep into those issues. Remember that and throw it on the potential strategic topics list - dive into it when you really do have time. Sometimes it may be so important that you need to call a special strategy meeting and that's fine!
4. " Bad meetings at the executive level usually indicate a huge gap between performance and potential." We have all been in bad meetings. They are boring. There is zero passion. The issues talked about are never important. It's like dude, we just lost $100,000 and we are talking about our dress code policy on shoes???? I remember back when I ran our awful meetings. There was SUCH a disconnect between what was actually going on in the company and the discussion at hand. Look at who is in the room - you've got some awesome talent - use this time to tackle big time high level stuff! If you can improve your meetings, you can improve your performance. Seriously, when our meetings improved, we improved. Our bottom line improved. Top line improved. Just understand the significance and what is possible if done right. Walk into those meetings with the same passion as when you walk into your biggest customer.
5. "Not only can you, but you are EXPECTED to provide input." Straight up. You need to be heard. No matter what you think- staying quiet and not getting stuff off your chest is AWFUL. You don't know how bad this drags you down. It us unacceptable to just sit there and nod your head. Don't you dare do it. Say it. Just say it. Have the confidence - you are smart and your input is badly needed. There are no dumb comments. There is no such thing as a dumb question. You absolutely must provide input! Dude, we need your help to make this company great! That first job I was telling you about - if we had just met and aired it out, it would have been a completely different company. In the end, I would have gotten behind pretty much any direction the company wanted to go. Because we never met and I was never able to provide input - my passion turned to frustration, which eventually turned to anger, which eventually caused me to quit.
6. The leader is always mining for conflict and looking for places where people have different opinions but aren't putting them out there! Conflict is good I swear. I know at first it sounds crazy. Our old meetings were void of any conflict. We tiptoed around the really important stuff because we were afraid someone may get their feelings hurt. In doing this, we were tiptoeing around the most important issues in the company! It's our job as a leadership team to tackle these things head on! We have to set the example for the rest of the company. Healthy, ideological conflict is good. No personal attacks. But when its healthy, there's nothing better. Now, the leader, she always needs to be looking for people that are holding back. Looking for different opinions. Prod, poke, force people to put it out there. Let's get it all on the table and duke it out. This is where the fun really starts! Dude, I love you to death but your're wrong - here's why! The leader has to encourage this conflict. And like Lencioni says, even encourage the team during the middle of the argument - "what your doing right now is good, don't hold back - for the sake of the company!"
7. Consensus is a horrible thing! It's literally impossible for 6-12 smart people to unanimously agree 100% on complex stuff! This is just a great reminder. You are smart. The person next to you is smart. Your passionate and you all have different thoughts, ideas, and opinions on complex stuff. Dude, your not gonna all agree. Not gonna happen. It's literally impossible. Don't be worried when there is conflict, be worried when there is consensus!
8. The leader makes the call. Someone's gotta eventually make the decision. You're not gonna all agree. Ideas and opinions are thrown around, and when everything is on the table and everything has been discussed, the leader has to make the call. This person is ultimately held accountable. Go ahead and make the final call. The worst thing the leader can do is NOT make a decision. Make a call and move on!
9. Once the decision is made - everyone agrees. This is a hard one. This is why it is absolutely vital to get everything off your chest. Get your opinion out there. Let everyone know exactly what you think. People are pretty reasonable - as long as they know everyone has heard them out. Remember my first job I told you about? I would have been down with pretty much any direction the company wanted to go, I just wanted to be heard! Once you throw out your opinion and debate it, you feel a whole hell of a lot better about the decision because its been thought through. Maybe your idea wasn't the the exact solution, but it was considered, and it had something to do with the groups final decision. You helped a ton because you brought a different perspective, and that's huge! The point is - when you walk out of that room, you all agree on the decision made. Understand that your idea was vital to the final decision, even if it wasn't the ultimate one.

Meetings don't have to suck. Ours did . Now they don't. It took one year. Are they perfect? Heck no! But they are a whole heck of a lot more fun than they used to be. And we get stuff done. We argue. There is conflict. Everyone is heard. Real emotions! Decisions are made. A few staplers died.

Most importantly, our team is closer than ever.