0:01

Ted Audio Collective So

0:31

the topic of today is meetings. It's

0:33

like a great topic. Yeah, I was

0:35

trying to think of the worst meetings.

0:37

Oh, what a great question. That I

0:39

have ever been a part of. So

0:44

one is coming to me. This

0:46

was a company I worked

0:50

at early in my career, and things

0:52

were not going well. And

0:56

there were traces of the unwellness in

0:58

the meetings. Causality

1:03

we're going to try to establish

1:05

on this call, but definitely there

1:07

was correlation between bad meetings and

1:09

bad performance. But we all got

1:11

dragged in. It was

1:13

a young company. We were doing something really hard. And

1:17

it wasn't working. And we

1:19

all got dragged into the conference

1:21

room. All, I don't know, 20

1:23

of us at that stage.

1:27

And the head

1:30

of the company asked

1:33

in his opening line, What

1:35

are all the junior people in this company doing?

1:41

And I,

1:43

in my 20-something stupidity, thought

1:45

it would be a good

1:48

time to ask him

1:50

what all the senior people were

1:52

doing in the company. So

1:56

I, my, you could

1:58

start, you could start. clock on

2:01

how long I lasted. You

2:03

know, this, this reminds me

2:06

of the asking the question back. When

2:08

I would get in trouble, my father would

2:11

say he would use Francis as

2:13

my name. And otherwise, he called me

2:15

Franny. And he

2:18

at one point, didn't

2:20

appreciate something I was doing. And he

2:23

said, I don't know, he

2:25

would actually call me Francis Xavier. He's like, I don't want

2:27

to hear it Francis Xavier. And I

2:29

said, at the age of eight, then

2:32

let me not hear it from you. It

2:37

was exactly the same energy, which is why

2:39

this memory is being triggered. It was eight,

2:41

you're like, it was both eight, I just

2:44

happened to be chronologically eight. I

2:47

was 22, but it was the

2:49

eight year old baby. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah,

2:51

the company didn't make it. And

2:54

maybe there was a connection there that

2:56

the stakes of getting meetings right is

2:59

higher than we all realize. Welcome

3:04

to fixable. I'm Anne

3:06

Morris. I'm a company builder and leadership coach.

3:08

And I'm Francis Fry. I'm a professor at

3:11

the Harvard Business School. And I'm Anne's wife.

3:14

On this show, we believe that

3:16

meaningful change happens fast, anything is fixable.

3:18

And good solutions are often

3:20

just a single brave

3:23

conversation away. What

3:26

are we up to today, Anne? Francis,

3:28

we have a very special episode

3:30

today, we are bringing on our

3:33

first ever master fixer. So

3:36

this isn't someone who's looking for help from

3:38

us, but someone who's already earned some hard

3:40

won knowledge on a topic that they're going

3:43

to share. Our

3:45

master fixer today is Claire Hughes Johnson.

3:47

She's the former CEO of the financial

3:49

services company Stripe, where she's still involved

3:51

as an advisor and member of the

3:53

board. Claire helped to

3:55

build Stripe From a company with

3:58

just over 100 employees. To

4:01

an organization with more than fifty

4:03

thousand people on the payroll. And

4:05

before that she was at Google

4:07

where she was a big part

4:09

of their enormous growth as well.

4:12

She's also just written an amazing

4:14

book Scaling People Tactics for Management

4:16

and company building. And as you

4:18

can see, I'm doing right now.

4:20

I just like Arrest is the

4:22

first parade and Listeners Francis has

4:25

cradling the Bucs. It has all

4:27

of the answers, has all of

4:29

the answers. In it for he's

4:31

a strong words the France's So Claire's

4:33

going to talk to us now about

4:36

a topic which is very close to

4:38

both of our hearts and that is

4:40

how to run a great meeting Because

4:42

as we all know, this is actually

4:45

not easy to do. And

4:47

what Claire is is so beautifully

4:49

known for his he adds heroes sees

4:51

in companies when they're adding zeroes

4:53

to the number of employees and adding

4:56

zeroes to the revenues. Yeah so

4:58

it's striped were talking about

5:00

merely as missing have because

5:02

million and then we're measuring

5:04

and belzer ah the the

5:06

dollars coming and sell some

5:08

and and and Claire will

5:10

say that one of the

5:13

most critical things. That we

5:15

can do to facilitate that is

5:17

to run great meetings and are

5:19

so many of us that is

5:22

such an elusive. I

5:40

want to tell you about a podcast

5:42

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5:45

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5:47

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5:49

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5:51

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5:53

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5:58

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6:00

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6:02

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6:05

free to HBR's Women at Work,

6:07

wherever you get your podcasts. Claire,

6:10

welcome to Fixable. Thank you.

6:12

I'm thrilled to be joining you. We're

6:14

very excited because you are our first

6:17

master fixer that we are hosting on

6:19

the show. Wow. Is that

6:21

like you go from being an apprentice

6:23

to a journeyman to some kind of

6:25

a master? I love it. I got

6:28

promoted so rapidly in this organization. Thank

6:30

you. Well, you knew

6:32

management, so you got in there. All

6:34

right. Well, we're going to get into it

6:37

now. Today we're on a mission to fix

6:39

meetings, Frances. Before we dive in,

6:41

I do want to give

6:43

a little background on the current state

6:45

of meeting affairs so people understand how

6:47

big of an issue this really is.

6:51

The first thing to know is that

6:53

these days we are meeting more than

6:55

ever before. So according to

6:57

a study done by Microsoft, the

7:00

amount of time workers are spending in meetings

7:02

more than tripled between February 2020 and

7:05

February 2022. Another

7:10

study from the same year found that

7:12

it's gotten to the point where the

7:14

majority of Americans spend nearly a third

7:17

of their working hours in meetings. And

7:20

it's not like we had figured this

7:22

out pre-pandemic, even in

7:24

the before times meeting bloat

7:26

was costing companies dearly. In

7:29

2019, the management

7:31

consulting firm Corn Ferry did a survey and

7:34

found that 67%

7:36

of workers said excessive meetings

7:38

were distracting them from making

7:41

an impact at work. I

7:44

mean, that's like an astonishing statement.

7:46

That is your job when you

7:48

go to work is to have

7:50

an impact and meetings were

7:52

getting in the way. That same year, Doodle,

7:54

the meeting management tool, which I love, released

7:57

a report estimating that across the U.S.

8:00

UK, Germany, and Switzerland, pointless

8:02

meetings cost companies about half

8:04

a trillion dollars a year

8:06

combined. Half

8:09

a trillion dollars. What's astounding to me

8:11

is that we have never

8:13

met anyone who said, oh, good

8:15

meetings. And

8:17

so in every company, we knew it was a

8:19

problem, but I just never really thought to aggregate

8:22

it like this. The numbers

8:24

are astonishing. So,

8:26

Claire, let's get you in here. What

8:29

is your reaction to this astonishing

8:32

data? Yeah. You

8:34

know, you just made me think of, I remember I was

8:36

in a meeting at Google, which was probably the biggest meeting

8:38

I'd ever been in. We were in the biggest conference room

8:40

we have. I don't know how many people are in there,

8:43

60? I mean, it was a lot

8:45

of people. And as we walked out, the CFO at the

8:47

time of Google was in the meeting. And

8:49

I heard him turn to his colleague in front

8:51

of me and say, oh my

8:53

God, what that meeting cost? And

8:56

I never, and he

8:59

literally meant, I believe, the cost

9:01

of the compensation of the people

9:03

in that room. But I

9:06

think probably also the opportunity cost of their

9:08

time. And I've

9:10

never forgotten that moment because it was the first time

9:12

I actually started to think, should I do the math?

9:14

Like when I have a meeting, should I be looking

9:16

at like what we would build by the

9:18

hour and what we were

9:20

costing the company? And it is

9:23

a very important question to ask

9:25

yourself. Is the ROI actually positive

9:27

on the 30 or 45 or

9:29

60 minutes you just spent? And

9:31

unfortunately, and you're right, the answer

9:33

is often no. And

9:36

that is why meetings get a bad name. And

9:38

what else do you think is at stake, like

9:41

in addition to the literal

9:43

cost? Well, I mean,

9:45

I think the other thing is

9:48

people talk a lot about culture and

9:50

the challenge with really bad meetings

9:53

in a company is that is

9:55

eroding the culture because it

9:57

is one of the purest

9:59

expressions How we work and you

10:01

have a bunch of bad meetings happening,

10:04

especially if they're run by leaders in

10:06

the country, are meant to me. Leading.

10:09

At It creates a

10:11

assertive. Insidious,

10:15

Decline. Of standards. Ah,

10:17

so I think that's actually more

10:19

costly, frankly than how many billable

10:21

hours got wasted their are. Then

10:23

of course, the results. A bad

10:25

meeting is probably not resulting in

10:27

good outcomes. And so you're You're

10:29

not moving the needle on the

10:31

work you gotta get done. It

10:34

seems like a lot of companies now

10:36

are trying to deal with this problem

10:38

at a very blunt instruments like Know

10:40

Meeting Fridays. Are. Suing

10:43

Israel in the towel. Yeah, it sucks.

10:45

That is a funny thing. Like I

10:48

think the medical analogy which I don't

10:50

know why this popped into my head

10:52

is like oh, you just cut the

10:54

tumor out like this software and I

10:57

that is not this kind of problem.

10:59

This is more like a weightlifting situation

11:01

is more like your weeks and noom,

11:03

the aunts who lives progressively heavier weights

11:06

to be stronger. you know, instead of

11:08

cutting. Off your arm he said the you

11:10

don't lift anyways I just. Find it soak is

11:12

you cannot run a company. I'm. Sorry I

11:14

haven't figured us without any media. I

11:16

don't think that's a does that really

11:19

helps humans work. So so yeah. I'm

11:21

always mystified by the we're just going

11:23

to get rid of some Do you

11:26

have a. A theory on

11:28

why this muscle is so

11:30

underdeveloped. I. Think it's

11:32

because people don't realize.

11:35

A good meeting takes work. And.

11:37

It's a skill. And the people. Involved

11:40

need to have skills. And

11:42

those skills need to be developed and then

11:44

they need to be honed. I'm just

11:46

like again weightlifting or a sport you need to

11:49

practice and you need to get feedback and you

11:51

need to get better. And I think

11:53

that people feel like a meeting is the

11:55

thing you. Put on a calendar and then

11:57

people show up and that's. that

12:00

it. It's just a

12:02

block of time to talk. And you're

12:04

just sitting there with this white space where no

12:06

one's really prepared. And that is, that

12:08

is a meeting, but it is not actually

12:10

what is the best use of that time.

12:13

Well, I want to get into everybody's role in

12:15

this comment, because we're going to get super tactical.

12:17

Great. But I want to get to the

12:20

kind of upside case for meetings.

12:23

You say in your book that

12:26

your secret power

12:28

is the

12:30

ability to run a repeatable operating system

12:33

for every team you manage, and

12:36

that it has the same components, clear

12:38

mission, stated goals, metrics that matter, similar

12:41

meeting structures, and

12:44

weekly and quarterly cadences. I feel

12:47

like there are so many people

12:49

and operators who would be surprised to

12:51

learn that on your short list of

12:54

superpowers, you're

12:56

including the word meeting. Yeah, I mean,

12:59

as I said, this is how you do the work. And

13:02

yes, there's a lot of work you can do by

13:04

reading asynchronously and commenting on documents

13:06

and sending emails for sure. But

13:09

in my experience, and in my

13:11

opinion, including my strengths as a

13:13

leader, the most work you

13:15

can get done, that's the highest impact will

13:17

be with other humans in real

13:19

time. And and I

13:22

called a meeting everyone. It's called

13:24

a meeting. Give us a

13:26

little texture Claire on what

13:28

a great meeting is. Like, how

13:32

do we know we've gotten it right? And then again, we're

13:34

going to figure out how to get there. But just tell

13:36

us where we're heading. First

13:39

of all, not every meeting I run is

13:41

perfection. And I just want to be clear,

13:43

so you're listening or laughing. But

13:45

I will tell you my lesson that I

13:47

learned repeatedly is the more that I prepare for

13:50

that meeting, the better the meetings are. And

13:54

the meeting type that I am famous for are

13:56

what I call off sites, but they're

13:59

often on site. But anyhow, Anyway, they're really when you pull

14:01

everybody out of the day to day and you stick

14:03

them in a room for half a day or a

14:05

whole day, the amount of time I spend preparing for

14:07

that time is very high. And

14:09

then the payoff is often quite high because

14:11

I've actually really thought about it. So the

14:14

number one thing is you've got to have

14:16

the preparation, which involves understanding

14:18

why are you meeting? What

14:20

are the objectives of this time? What are

14:22

we trying to accomplish? You need to think

14:24

about who needs to be there to meet

14:26

that objective. Often

14:28

we are confused about who needs to be

14:30

in the meeting and it starts to become

14:33

kind of a clown car of everybody who

14:35

can get into the room because it somehow

14:37

signifies something. And

14:39

then do people understand the agenda

14:43

of time? Like how are we going to spend

14:45

the time together? Because it's important

14:47

that they understand that because you'll hear

14:49

the expression someone has hijacked a meeting.

14:52

I think if someone has hijacked a meeting, maybe

14:55

5% of the time that's their fault a

14:57

little bit. But most of the time it's

14:59

because they did not know the purpose of

15:01

the meeting or how the time was

15:04

meant to be spent and then they just made their own

15:06

decision and I don't blame them. I

15:08

love that reframing. If you put material in front of a

15:11

group of people, they're going to talk

15:13

about what comes to mind in the

15:15

absence of guidelines. Yeah, they're going to talk about

15:17

what they would like to talk about. And which

15:19

will be the materials digested

15:22

in many, many different ways. So

15:24

yeah, you want to have why are we meeting the

15:26

agenda, which we were just talking about. How are we going to

15:28

spend the time? So everyone's expectations

15:31

are set. And then the limit,

15:33

meaning we are going to end. And

15:35

are you putting this down on paper beforehand?

15:37

Are you briefing everyone when we come into

15:40

the meeting? Is this on a

15:42

piece of paper labeled agenda?

15:45

Is it loaded up in your head so

15:47

that you can skillfully manage? Oh, no, no,

15:49

there's always an agenda. No, one of my

15:51

biggest lessons earlier in

15:53

my career, which is you learn you have

15:55

to manage different people differently and you learn

15:57

there are different work styles and preferences. And

16:00

I am someone who's very comfortable with ambiguity

16:03

and I'm comfortable being told with about 30

16:05

seconds notice. Hey, this thing is about

16:07

to happen. Francis, this is how

16:09

Francis takes advantage of me sometimes. I'm like, all

16:11

right, I'll just roll with it. But

16:14

I had some people on my teams who

16:17

I noticed just didn't really perform

16:20

optimally. And I went and I

16:22

kind of was curious. And I said, tell me what's going

16:24

on or how could that have gone better? And I was

16:26

like, I'm going to do this. And I said, well, what's

16:28

going on? And

16:30

I was like, well, what happened? Often in a meeting,

16:33

by the way. And they would say to me, I

16:35

just, I didn't get any material ahead of time. And

16:38

I need to think because

16:40

they're often introverts, right?

16:42

So extroverts talk to think and

16:45

introverts think to talk. But they're also

16:47

introverted team members by not giving them

16:49

any thinking time prior to having to talk. And

16:52

so what did they do? They just did not talk. And

16:54

I don't blame them because I didn't give them an

16:56

agenda. I didn't give them the pre read. They were

16:58

in the moment having to react. And

17:01

that is not comfortable for certain

17:03

people's brains. Well, let's go

17:05

to let's go to an adjacent topic, which is broadly

17:09

running an inclusive meeting. And so we're going to be

17:11

a range of people in the room with different needs,

17:13

different perspective, different levels, different life

17:15

experiences, different relationships to the problem

17:18

and whatever else is on the

17:20

agenda. How do you make

17:22

sure that you are honoring those different

17:25

needs and getting all

17:27

of the voices that need to be

17:29

weighing in on the conversation

17:31

to be active? So

17:35

I think it's actually a pretty Jedi level

17:37

thing to have designed

17:39

architected the whole meeting and then

17:42

to facilitate it and be a

17:44

participant, especially if there's a

17:46

very important decision. And by the way, when I do

17:48

the whole all of it at once, which I have done,

17:50

I am exhausted and I'm

17:52

pretty high energy extrovert. I am exhausted

17:54

because I have done seven roles at

17:56

once. I've been taking notes, running the

17:59

meeting, making decisions. facilitating, making

18:01

sure I'm inclusive like that is a

18:03

lot to ask of one human. And

18:05

so I'm really a big believer in

18:07

being clear about not only is everyone's

18:09

role in the meeting to be engaged

18:11

and to participate in meeting the objective

18:13

and they should be there because they

18:16

helped meet the objective, but there can

18:18

be roles. There can be a note

18:20

taker. There can also be a facilitator

18:22

or something that I've heard called a process

18:24

person. And this is

18:26

a long winded answer and to your question, which is

18:29

I've seen it be actually pretty effective. And again,

18:31

you have to publicly state this to

18:33

give the person air cover, which is

18:35

to say I've asked Sarah to just

18:37

really help observe the meeting, make

18:40

sure that we're sticking to our

18:42

objective and also to

18:44

observe participation and

18:46

to pause the meeting

18:48

and invite if there's been people we've not

18:51

heard from or people that she's

18:53

noticed are trying to participate who are

18:55

not seeming like they're going to the air

18:57

time. And you give this

18:59

person permission to say, hey, we haven't heard

19:02

from Anne yet. Anne

19:04

did you have an opinion on this decision we're

19:06

making? Are you good? Like

19:08

not put Anne on the spot, but

19:11

just make sure that everyone has had

19:13

an opportunity to participate. It's a beautiful

19:15

way to do it in the times

19:17

when I haven't divided up the job

19:19

and I'm going to going forward because the

19:21

exhaustion thing is real. When I've

19:23

been doing the multiple hats in one

19:25

meeting and we think of how

19:27

to run an inclusive meeting, I

19:29

try to explicitly seek difference.

19:32

So what I do is like if we have a

19:34

meeting, we're going to make a decision and call on the

19:37

first person to and

19:39

whoever raises their hand gets to speak

19:41

first. If I'm not

19:43

careful and I just then call on the next

19:45

person, chances are if the first person said A,

19:47

the second person is going to say near A

19:49

and then the third person is going to say

19:51

near A. So

19:54

what I do is call

19:56

on the first person and after they speak, I just

19:59

I've learned. to say it in a

20:01

pretty tight set of words, can someone articulate

20:03

a different point of view? And

20:06

the language there matters because I'm not asking

20:08

if someone has because for some people particularly

20:10

of lower status they don't want to take

20:12

that risk. So can someone articulate a different

20:14

point of view? And then so

20:16

then the next person says be and then I

20:18

just say that sentence one final time. Can

20:21

someone articulate a different and even different

20:23

point of view? And then

20:25

we have diverged early so that we

20:27

can get to a much higher convergence

20:30

as opposed to the converged early

20:32

to a super low optimum.

20:34

Right. Higher quality convergence,

20:36

right? Because everybody has heard

20:39

all of the points of view. I

20:41

think that's great and I think, Frances, you're

20:43

right because people will often just pile and

20:45

say well I agree with what so and

20:47

so has said and this is another form

20:50

of a more subtle inclusion issue which is

20:52

when people restate what someone else has said

20:54

and then act like they owned it and

20:56

not really give credit to

20:58

the person. And so

21:00

I try to create a norm around

21:03

let's really listen, acknowledge

21:05

contributions, not repeat and

21:08

an ad if it's really

21:10

important to add but I think you're on

21:12

the right track which is actually we're looking

21:14

for more divergence and this is where your

21:16

agenda section is important which is we're going

21:18

to spend five minutes talking about the thing,

21:20

what is it and then we're going to

21:22

spend 20 minutes diverging all the

21:24

potential decisions we might make and then we're

21:26

going to converge, right? Do any of these

21:29

rules change in our hybrid Zoom

21:31

filled remote world or is it the

21:33

same stuff? The thing that's

21:35

increased in the hybrid world is what

21:39

again this is sort of a striped vocabulary word that's a

21:41

real word but the lurkers but

21:44

you know there's a little bit more people who

21:46

are like well I think I might

21:48

join, I'm just going to get my video off because I'm kind of

21:50

like going to be in the background doing other stuff but

21:52

if I hear something interesting or my name I

21:54

might you know de-lurk is what we call it,

21:56

it's drape. I'm going to de-lurk you know anyway so

21:58

I think that I

22:01

would, again, more formalize that.

22:04

Let me give an example. We have a meeting

22:06

type that, well, we call it the fishbowl because

22:08

we wanted to create a meeting where we'd

22:10

be doing real work, often with the

22:12

founders, on decisions and direction for a

22:14

lot of more creative things in the

22:16

company. What we realized

22:18

is it's not comfortable to have a lot

22:21

of people actively in that meeting or either

22:23

physically or on Zoom on their cameras talking

22:26

about creation and design. But

22:28

it's incredibly valuable for people to watch

22:30

that in action. We created

22:33

this fishbowl thing where people could lurk

22:35

in and either watch live

22:37

people in a conference room, seriously, with

22:39

the cameras off on Zoom from another

22:41

room, or now on Zoom, but with

22:43

their cameras off and quiet, so

22:46

that they could get up to speed on how

22:48

we make certain types of creative decisions.

22:50

What a great education. Great

22:52

for the culture, great for everything. A

22:55

great use of technology. Suddenly, you can

22:57

scale access to that meeting in a

22:59

way. It's not disruptive, but in a way that was impossible

23:01

before. Well, thank you for saying. I actually,

23:04

I will take a little. I came up with this

23:06

with our head of product marketing because we were

23:08

frustrated that we couldn't scale some of

23:10

that tacit knowledge. But I think taking

23:12

advantage of what's happening in the hybrid

23:15

world more is the name of the game,

23:17

but making explicit. People need to be told

23:19

because we all have different expectations

23:22

of what's going to happen when you're

23:24

on your laptop talking to somebody. How

23:26

do I know if I should be meeting in

23:28

person? I

23:30

just always had the position

23:33

that you can't run virtually

23:36

for too long, and too long

23:38

can have different definitions. But in

23:40

the case of me, basically the

23:42

initial sales leaders for Stripe

23:44

across various countries. I

23:46

was like, guys, look, we're going to travel to be

23:48

together once a quarter. One,

23:51

I want to set that expectation. That

23:57

being part of this team means we're going to be together once a

23:59

quarter. And for some of you, that's going to be harder than

24:02

for others of you. Some of you

24:04

are driving 40 minutes and some of you are

24:06

flying like seven hours, right? Or longer, Asia, you

24:09

know? And I

24:11

think they got that it mattered because we

24:13

had not, we were new, the company was

24:15

new, we hadn't gelled, but I think you,

24:17

you know, spending quality time in person means

24:20

you can run fast when you're apart. So

24:23

I would never let go of that. I think then

24:25

you just have this slider scale of like, how much

24:27

friction is it to be in that person? And

24:30

then the stakes just have to be higher. If it's

24:32

a lot of friction, the stakes are going to be

24:34

high. All

24:43

right,

24:51

we're going to do a quick lightning round, Claire. You ready?

24:54

Yeah. How long should meetings

24:57

be? The amount of time you need to meet

24:59

your objective, but definitely

25:02

don't be conservative about that. Be a little

25:04

aggressive. So if you think it's

25:07

going to take an hour to get to

25:09

a decision, I would test yourself by

25:11

trying to do it in 45 minutes. I

25:13

love that. How much notice do people need for

25:15

a meeting? Can I send an invitation the day

25:17

of? I think

25:19

if it is warranted,

25:22

i.e. we have new information, it is

25:24

urgent. People are actually quite forgiving.

25:27

If it is not warranted, I think

25:29

you need to give people at least a

25:32

day's notice, but ideally more than that. So

25:34

for a half a day meeting, how much would you prepare for a

25:37

half a day meeting? So

25:39

I mean, it sort of depends on the context.

25:42

But the first thing that popped into my mind is

25:44

at least half the time. So if it's a four hour

25:46

meeting, I'd probably spend two hours preparing for it. How

25:48

do I gracefully decline a meeting?

25:53

So I would say, from what I can tell about

25:55

this meeting, I'm not required for the

25:57

topic. If I'm wrong

25:59

about that, please. please let me know, but I'm going to decline.

26:02

By the way, you don't actually start a dialogue. You can

26:04

just say, I'm going, you let me know, but my default

26:06

is no. And then if they want

26:08

to come back to you and persuade you, fine. If

26:11

I'm hosting a meeting, Claire, do I need

26:14

to provide snacks? I

26:17

think if you are hosting a long meeting

26:20

and there are humans involved, humans

26:22

are animals that need energy. And

26:25

no, it's really wise to make sure people

26:27

get up and stretch. I think it's a

26:29

clean yes. I think it's a yes. I

26:31

think you've got to feed the people something

26:33

because you need them to be productive. You

26:36

need them to get up and run around the room

26:38

three times. You need them to eat a snack. You

26:40

need them to have their bio breaks. But if you're

26:43

not planning for normal human stuff to happen, you are

26:45

not planning well. Love it. Last

26:47

question. What's the best way to end a

26:49

meeting? Well, you do a

26:51

checkout, but first you'd remind everyone about the

26:53

objective of the meeting. You want people to

26:55

feel momentum. You want to remind them,

26:57

hey, our objective was this. And we did this. If

27:00

there was any action items that were generated, you want to

27:02

remind people of the action items because I like people

27:04

to know what they own and when they're due. And

27:07

then you do want to make sure if

27:10

there was a decision, everyone should know what's

27:12

next. Everyone should know the next steps

27:14

as you close the meeting. And then it's bonus,

27:16

you could do a checkout, which is

27:19

I like to do like a two word checkout.

27:22

As we're ending the meeting, two words for like

27:24

what you're thinking feeling right now. Cause it

27:26

gives you a little quick feedback, a little pulse

27:28

check. Wait, wait, let's just do it. Francis,

27:31

quick checkout, two words. What are you feeling right

27:33

now? Super

27:39

happy. She's

27:41

very literal. And

27:45

what's your checkout? You could have three words if

27:47

you want. This is a small

27:49

meeting, so we have more time. I'm

27:54

really energized. This

27:56

feels accessible. I'm

27:58

feeling a little bit of humility. at my

28:01

legacy of poor meeting management,

28:03

that I feel like there were, I hosted

28:05

meetings where I wasn't really honoring the

28:08

potential of the

28:10

gathering. Remember how I started, Anne?

28:12

Even I, even I violate

28:14

the rules of great meetings because it's

28:17

so tempting. It's impossible to imagine,

28:19

Claire Hughes-Johnson. But two

28:21

words for you. Really

28:23

encouraged, not enough

28:25

people talk about the tactics,

28:27

like how you do things that

28:30

seem basic, but are actually the

28:32

bulk of what we all do together.

28:34

And so I'm so glad that Fixable

28:36

is confronting these topics. And I'm so

28:38

appreciative to be invited to talk about

28:41

meetings. Claire, this

28:43

has selfishly been so much fun for us.

28:45

Thank you for sharing. Oh, fun for me

28:47

too. So much of yourself and so much

28:49

of your time. Any excuse to collaborate with

28:51

you is just a delight. So thanks for

28:53

joining us. We really appreciate it. I feel

28:56

the same way. Thank you for letting me

28:58

be your first master. And I

29:00

hope, you know, whatever our next master meeting

29:02

is, I want in and I'm happy to

29:04

help run the meeting. Thanks

29:11

everybody. This is our show, Fixable,

29:13

with Anne and Frances. We

29:15

want to hear from you too. If you

29:18

want to figure out a workplace problem together,

29:20

send us a message, email us at fixableintent.com

29:22

or call us at 234-FIXABLE. That's

29:25

234-349-2253. We

29:28

look forward to the next time. Fixable

29:50

is brought to you by the TED Audio

29:52

Collective. It's hosted by me, Frances Wrye. And

29:55

me, Anne Morris. This episode

29:57

was produced by Isabel Carter. Our

30:00

team includes Isabel Carter,

30:02

Constanza Gallardo, Lydia

30:04

Jean Cott, Sarah Nix,

30:06

Jimmy Gutierrez, Michelle Quint,

30:08

Corey Hageham, Alejandro Salazar,

30:10

Ban Ban Chang, and

30:13

Roxanne Highlash. Jake

30:15

Gorski is our mix engineer. We'll be bringing

30:17

you new episodes of Fixable every week, so

30:19

please make sure to subscribe wherever you get

30:21

your podcasts. And one more thing, if you

30:23

can please take a second to leave us

30:25

a review. We love hearing from

30:27

our listeners, particularly when they have nice things

30:29

to say about us.