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Thoughts on Making Decision-Making Meetings Better

May 11, 2010 » by Cali & Jody

We always appreciate a good idea for making meetings better. Harvard Business Review blogger Stever Robbins wrote a nice post recently about how to prepare for meeting that involve making decisions.

Robbins starts out with an all-too-familiar story about a meeting gone wrong, which he sums up with a few lines that sound like they’re from the Song of the Traditional Work Environment: “We were having a ball venting, but after an hour, we didn’t seem to have made much progress. We had, however, wasted an hour of everyone’s time.”

Then he breaks it down nicely:

Every decision-making conversation has three hidden conversations lurking just out of sight. One is about what we’re trying to accomplish by even bothering to make a decision. After all, we could just let things fall where they may. The second conversation is about the criteria we’ll use to make the decision. The last conversation is about finding and choosing between different options.

To break down Robbins’ statement even further we’d like to add the following:

One is about what we’re trying to accomplish by even bothering to make a decision

In other words, what’s the result? And not only what’s the result on the surface level (break room needs a new coffeemaker) but on a deeper level (as our workers would rather drink coffee than breathe air we need a coffeemaker that responds to their high demands). Also, the outcome for a decision may require exploring results on multiple levels, from the practical to the mystical. Talk about them ALL.

The second conversation is about the criteria we’ll use to make the decision

In a traditional work environment people can agree on an outcome, but once they move on to criteria they lose agreement. Egos, turf battles, policies, and “that’s how we’ve always done it” start to getting in the way. Bob’s the coffeemaker expert. Jenna’s department has always handled coffeemaker issues, so we need to defer to her people. Even when people can see the endpoint they chicken out on how to get there.

In a Results-Only Work Environment you’re always looking for more ways to talk about outcomes. How you decide is yet another one.

The last conversation is about finding and choosing between different options

One of the things that’s great about making decisions in a ROWE is that putting results first (and only) helps depersonalize the options. So instead of individuals getting into it over Coffeemaker X vs. Coffeemaker Y everyone can point to the agreed-upon results and talk about the pros and cons in the abstract. You discuss the result instead of arguing the person.

Finally, as Robbins points out, much of this work can happen outside of the actual meeting:

My first boss once said, “Never call a meeting to make a decision. Work with people one on one, and then call the meeting to let the group share and own the decision that’s been made.” It was great advice. Even if you can’t make the decision airtight before the meeting, you’ll save time in the long run by having short one-on-one conversations with team members to frame the discussion.

So try out these ideas the next time you’re faced with a decision-making meeting and let us know how it turns out.

  • http://www.kannaglassstudios.blogspot.com Jenn

    Regarding that last piece of advice about working with people one-on-one before having a meeting, I learned to prepare with people one-on-one the hard way…through having ineffective meetings.

    I eventually realized that by preparing a demo or sample, it created a concrete framework from which to start a conversation. Then I would have one-on-one conversations with selected individuals beforehand. By doing this I found 1) I could incorporate feedback and make it a group idea before the meeting, 2) prepare to address any concerns/objections; and having people involved before the meeting also enabled more people to address and overcome concerns. These pre-conversations made the actual meetings we had much more productive. Even though the meetings might still go for a full hour, we were making serious progress with action items as takeaways from the meeting.

    That quote about preparing ahead reminds me of a podcast I’ve been listening from a series called Manager-Tools. He calls it “Pre-Wiring a Meeting.” http://www.manager-tools.com/2007/11/how-to-prewire-a-meeting.