Episode Transcript
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0:00
Twenty years ago, I was invited
0:02
to the big meeting. Every
0:05
week on Mondays at
0:08
JPMorgan Chase, there was a meeting
0:10
of the team that
0:12
was responsible for one-third of
0:14
the bank's profits. This
0:16
meeting consisted of 42 people sitting
0:21
around a long table, 20 on
0:23
a side, one at the head and
0:25
one at the foot, surrounded
0:28
by 30 other people sitting
0:30
in the second row. That
0:33
meeting cost the bank more than $50,000
0:35
an hour. And
0:38
as far as I know, they're still having
0:40
it. Konnichiwa, it's
0:43
Nick in Fukuoka, Japan, and this
0:45
is a special archived episode of
0:47
Akimbo. I got this
0:49
question from a reader and
0:54
decided to do an entire episode of
0:57
Akimbo about it. It explains why
0:59
I don't go to meetings and how I avoid
1:01
going to meetings. Here we go. Hey,
1:04
Seth, this is Thomas from Ireland, a proud
1:06
Golden Ice. And I have a question
1:08
about meetings. You said previously that you
1:10
save a ton of time daily by not attending meetings.
1:13
And I was wondering, could you tell us how you
1:15
work without meetings? For example, what do you do when
1:17
you need multiple people to discuss something at the same
1:19
time? Also, do you have
1:21
any tips for how to stop attending meetings
1:23
in the meeting-centric culture? Meetings
1:26
are a culture, a specific culture,
1:28
a specific act that
1:31
industrialized organizations engage in
1:33
on a regular basis.
1:36
Meetings are expensive, meetings are
1:38
debilitating, and most people who
1:41
go to meetings for a living will
1:43
tell you it's one of the worst
1:45
parts of their job. Why
1:47
would something like this persist for
1:50
so long? One of
1:52
the most famous paintings in the world, something
1:54
that's been painted over and over again by
1:56
many artists, is a
1:58
painting of a meeting. the Last
2:01
Supper. Meetings are
2:03
central to many spiritual
2:05
and religious observances, but
2:08
we're talking about a very specific sort
2:10
of meeting right now, the
2:12
meeting that you might have gone to just
2:14
before you listened to this, or the one
2:16
that you have scheduled later in the day.
2:19
This is the meeting that might happen on a
2:21
regular basis. This is the
2:23
meeting where you recognize all the people
2:26
who are there. This is
2:28
the meeting that takes place in person. This
2:30
is the meeting that starts
2:32
on the half hour and ends
2:35
on the half hour. This is the meeting
2:38
where not very much gets done. There
2:40
are, of course, a whole slew of other
2:43
sorts of meetings, one-on-one meetings,
2:45
which I would rather call
2:47
conversations, brainstorming meetings that match
2:49
a specific format. But I'm
2:51
talking about the general meeting,
2:53
the all hands-on meeting, the update meeting,
2:55
the meeting where we go around the
2:58
room and everyone chimes in, the meeting
3:00
where the people in the back row
3:03
are demonstrating that they belong in the back row
3:05
and taking notes, and the people
3:07
in the front are speaking up, the
3:09
meeting where people talk to hear themselves talk, the
3:12
meeting where many people don't talk so
3:14
they don't have to risk hearing themselves
3:17
talk. If you know what
3:19
I'm talking about, you're familiar with
3:21
this sort of meeting. This sort of
3:23
meeting is probably costing the world economy
3:25
a trillion dollars
3:27
a year, not
3:29
just in the lost time, in the
3:31
hourly wage multiplied by the number of
3:34
people, but in
3:36
the deadening effect, in
3:38
the idea that it is pushing us to
3:40
phone it in. But now, of
3:42
course, we live in a world where we don't have
3:44
to do this because we can just hop on a
3:47
Zoom call, and yet, and
3:50
yet they persist. We live in
3:52
a world where we don't have to start the meeting at half
3:54
past the hour. Outlook will let
3:56
us start it at any time we want,
3:59
and yet we do it. the way we've
4:01
always done it. Why is this?
4:03
Okay, so a bunch of reasons. Try
4:05
to remember a typical big company office in
4:08
1965. Here's the way it
4:10
would work. A vice president, usually a
4:12
guy, would want to contact
4:14
and discuss something with another vice
4:16
president. This other vice president might
4:18
have an office 30 feet away.
4:22
The first executive would
4:24
call his secretary into his office
4:26
and dictate a memo. The secretary
4:28
would type the memo, hand
4:31
it to the inter-office delivery
4:33
person who would bring it three desks
4:35
down and give it to
4:37
the secretary of the other executive who
4:39
would then bring it into his office
4:43
and the memo would be complete.
4:46
This idea of dueling memos,
4:49
a slow moving cover
4:51
your ass, papered over system for
4:53
who said what when was
4:56
at the heart of how
4:58
big companies got or didn't get
5:00
things done. So you could
5:02
shake things up if you were Robert
5:04
McNamara or Mike Bloomberg. You could have
5:06
a bullpen. You could create a meeting
5:08
culture where people come together face to
5:10
face and speak their mind. Part of
5:12
it is an exchange of
5:15
pheromones. Being able to see
5:17
and smell and engage with someone right in
5:19
front of you. This can't
5:22
be underestimated. Mirror
5:24
neurons are belief that we
5:26
can judge other people. The
5:28
thought of eye contact, our
5:30
perception of how people dress or sit,
5:33
the idea of close talkers or interrupters,
5:35
people who can bring power into the
5:37
room. All of these things,
5:39
these very human things, things
5:42
that go back millions of years,
5:45
come to the fore in an in-person
5:47
meeting and they lead
5:49
to displays of power. Who
5:52
gets to sit where? Who comes
5:54
to the meeting first? Back when
5:56
I worked at Spinnaker in the early 80s, we
5:59
regularly had meetings. with seven or eight
6:01
MBAs all coming to the same meeting.
6:04
And what we discovered pretty soon is
6:07
that it was understood that the
6:09
person who came last was the
6:11
busiest, was the most important, was
6:14
the person who couldn't possibly drag
6:16
themselves away from what they'd been doing to come to the
6:18
meeting on time. And so, you
6:20
guessed it, people came later and
6:23
later. And it wasn't until the chairman of
6:25
the company, Bill, put a big bowl on the
6:27
table and said, this person in has
6:30
to put a $20 bill in the charity bowl
6:32
that the problem was solved. This
6:35
power display then
6:37
reflects back to the idea of fealty, of
6:40
bowing to power. That
6:42
if you are going to get on a plane, fly
6:45
across the country and sit in
6:47
a windowless conference room for an
6:49
hour because your boss
6:51
asked you to, you're
6:53
not doing it because an exchange of
6:55
information is about to occur other
6:58
than information about who's in charge. Because
7:01
back to the executive with the secretary, if
7:03
all you wanted to do was give
7:05
me information, you could have
7:08
sent me an email. Too
7:10
many meetings are simply recitations.
7:14
Recitations don't belong in a real
7:16
time environment where we are using
7:18
up our most precious asset. That
7:21
leads to fear, the fear of
7:23
missing out, the fear of speaking
7:25
up, the fear of saying something dumb,
7:27
the fear of being voted down. We've
7:30
all heard the stories of the
7:32
board meeting where suddenly the CEO
7:34
is asked to leave the room and
7:37
then the board votes to remove him or her.
7:40
These almost never happen, but
7:43
the idea that we're going to go
7:45
to the meeting unprepared can
7:47
lead to decades of nightmares. This
7:50
rehearsed in school, showing
7:52
up for the exam and going to the
7:54
wrong room, showing up for the exam being
7:57
unprepared, going to the meeting and
7:59
being called on. when you're not
8:01
ready to produce the answer.
8:04
Well, why exactly do we need to produce
8:06
the answer in real time? It's not a
8:09
game show that in fact
8:11
when we go asynchronous, not
8:13
all at once, but when we have
8:15
it ready using a
8:17
system like Slack, it's
8:20
easy to show that we could be
8:22
more productive if we want to be.
8:25
But that leads to the next idea, safety.
8:29
Because it's safer to go to
8:31
a meeting and wait for someone
8:33
else to take the responsibility. It's
8:35
safer to go to a meeting and then
8:38
punt it to the next meeting. That
8:40
one of the challenges that Slack brings to
8:42
the organization is if you write it, you
8:45
wrote it, there it is
8:47
with your name on it and everyone knows. In
8:50
a meeting there's plenty of room for deniability.
8:52
Well, that's not what I really said. In
8:55
a meeting there aren't accurate
8:57
notes of how it all went down. And
9:00
so something that could be solved in
9:02
five minutes, there are some quick backs
9:04
and fourths via email or
9:06
even a phone call, but
9:08
particularly something like Slack, isn't
9:11
even solved in an hour of a meeting. But
9:13
we're in a rhythm. And the
9:16
rhythm is this is when the meeting
9:18
happens. This is how the meeting goes.
9:21
And if the new boss showed up and said,
9:23
this 45 minute meeting is now going to be
9:25
an eight minute meeting, she could
9:27
make the meeting work in eight minutes. But
9:30
to do that, she would make people
9:32
uncomfortable because we are comfortable
9:35
with the rhythm of the meetings that
9:37
we say we hate because
9:39
it's safe in there, safer
9:42
than it would be doing something on our own.
9:46
And then commitment signaling. Commitment signaling is
9:48
part of fealty, but commitment signaling means
9:51
I dragged myself out of bed to
9:53
get here to this meeting or I
9:55
dragged myself away from my office where
9:58
I was actually doing productive work to
10:00
be at this meeting. And
10:02
these commitments in real
10:04
time combined with the
10:06
idea that we're exchanging pheromones, combined
10:09
with power display, combined with fealty,
10:11
combined with our almost Jungian connection
10:14
to the Last Supper, all of
10:16
it adds up to the in-person
10:18
meeting is super special. Rans
10:21
and Repose wrote a blog post a couple weeks ago
10:24
about how to do meetings when
10:26
two or three or four of the people in the
10:28
meeting are coming in via video
10:31
call. And his answer
10:33
was get to the meeting early, set
10:35
things up in advance, make sure
10:38
that you are welcoming
10:40
these people, these remote workers.
10:43
I don't think he went nearly far enough. What
10:46
happens if you have a meeting for eight people,
10:48
three of whom are coming in by
10:50
Zoom call? If everyone
10:54
comes in by Zoom call, if everyone
10:57
stays in their cube or their
10:59
office, one computer, one person, and
11:01
they're all on the
11:03
same footing. Now we're back to
11:05
what we were started with. We are
11:08
back to the idea that faces
11:10
on the screen are communicating
11:12
to one another on equal
11:14
footing. And in that environment, what
11:16
you will discover is that some people will default
11:19
to not speaking up. Some
11:21
people will speak more than their share. What
11:23
you will see in that setting is that some
11:26
people will work hard to make sure
11:28
that the lighting is good, that they're
11:30
using a microphone, that they're looking at
11:32
the screen, that they're not eating while
11:34
the meeting is going on, that they
11:37
are fully and emotionally present. And
11:39
some people look like they're
11:42
sitting at home watching a
11:44
football game, eating peanuts with
11:46
the lights streaming in behind them.
11:48
They have checked out. Meetings
11:52
give us insight as
11:54
to who's up and who's down, who's
11:57
being honored, and who's being
11:59
disrespected. We live in
12:01
a meetings culture. It is very
12:03
hard to change it even if
12:06
you're the boss. My
12:08
friend Toby, who is the boss, who
12:10
also knows a lot about how to program computers,
12:13
did something for his company that had
12:15
thousands of employees. One weekend,
12:18
he went in and wrote a
12:20
script for their company-wide Google Calendar.
12:23
What he did was he
12:25
canceled every single regular meeting
12:27
that was on the calendar.
12:30
And then he sent an email to everyone in the organization.
12:33
He said, I just gave you
12:35
back four hours of your life every week.
12:38
If that meeting that got canceled is
12:40
important, feel free to figure
12:42
out how to replace it with something with
12:44
more alacrity, with more agility that's going to
12:46
get the job done. If you really need
12:48
to have the meeting, go ahead and
12:50
put it back on the calendar. But for the rest of
12:52
us, we just got the
12:55
freedom to produce more, which
12:58
means that we also have
13:00
the responsibility to
13:03
do something with that time that just
13:05
got freed up. So
13:08
culture, culture is every corner of our
13:10
lives, everywhere we look. But
13:13
too often, we've ignored the culture
13:15
of meetings. And I don't think
13:17
you have to be Toby to change it. Figure
13:20
out a way to upend the
13:22
worst meeting of your week, to
13:25
replace it, to cancel it, to adjust it, to
13:28
figure out the answer to a simple question.
13:31
What exactly is this meeting for?
13:34
If you can answer that question, then
13:37
you've got a shot at making things
13:39
better. And if you can't
13:41
answer that question, don't
13:43
go to the meeting. Thanks
13:47
for listening. We'll see you next time.
13:50
Hey Seth, it's Maria. Hey Seth, my
13:52
name's Kyle. Greetings Seth. This is Steven
13:54
out in Madison, Wisconsin. Hi Seth, Alicia
13:56
from Charleston here. Hi Seth, this is
13:58
Anupa. Hi, this is Caitlin. selling
16:00
something about tomorrow. And
16:02
so when the world is even more chaotic
16:05
than usual, it's harder to
16:07
get people to plan ahead. It's
16:09
harder to get people to stick to
16:12
their schedule to focus on their habits
16:14
and their goals, which means
16:16
that disruptions happen. And
16:18
the second half of it is leverage,
16:21
that because of the stock
16:23
market, because of low interest rates, because
16:25
of banks, because of financial maneuvering, more
16:28
and more organizations are highly leveraged.
16:32
Why? Here's a simple example from real estate. If you
16:34
buy a house with cash and it goes up 10%
16:37
and you sell it six months from now, you make
16:39
10% on your money. If
16:41
you buy that same house by putting 10% down
16:45
and yet the bank to put up the 90% and the
16:49
price goes up 10%, instead of making
16:51
10%, you double
16:53
your money because
16:55
you use debt to make the
16:58
transaction work, which means you're taking a bigger
17:00
risk, but your return goes way up. And
17:03
more and more, we are seeing
17:05
businesses and organizations extending themselves, hoping
17:08
that that growth, that leverage, that
17:11
increase in staff or assets will
17:14
pay back many times over. And
17:16
one of the problems with a disruption like we are facing
17:19
now is it puts huge
17:21
pressure on organizations, big
17:24
and small, particularly small,
17:26
who were used to, who were expecting
17:29
tomorrow's returns to be what yesterday's were,
17:31
but a little bigger, to have to
17:33
weather an interruption. So
17:36
what to do about it? Well, the
17:38
first one is to sit with
17:40
it and realize stress isn't going
17:42
to help, that what we
17:44
need to do is see
17:46
the people that we serve, because
17:49
they are stressed. They
17:51
are in a tough spot and
17:53
they want to move
17:55
forward. The economy is
17:58
huge. It's bigger than it's ever
18:00
been. There are 7 billion human
18:02
beings active in this economy, all
18:04
connected all around the world. Somewhere,
18:08
somebody needs help. They might not need what
18:10
they needed a month ago or six months
18:12
ago. And that's the advantage
18:14
a small company has. Because
18:16
A, you can actually see your customers.
18:19
You know them by name. You
18:21
can see the entire list and understand it.
18:24
And B, unlike a giant
18:26
organization, you can shift. You
18:28
can shift the way you speak to people.
18:31
You can shift what you offer people. And
18:33
that's why we went into small business in the first place,
18:36
to be part of a community, to
18:38
help complete the circle. And
18:40
so there's the opportunity. The opportunity
18:42
is to figure out how to
18:44
create enough slack in your system
18:47
that you're not completely stressed
18:49
out about missing payroll. And
18:52
at the very same time, figure
18:54
out what your audience, the people who
18:56
already trust you, actually
18:58
need and give them
19:01
that. Day by day,
19:03
we will recover. Day by
19:05
day, things will get better. And
19:07
they will get better faster if we
19:09
take a deep breath and get back to
19:12
first principles, which is helping people get
19:14
what they want and what they need. Here's
19:17
to good health for everyone who's listening. Go
19:19
make your ruckus. Thanks.
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