What meetings can learn from parties

You may have read my post on the cost of meetings. And while I feel most of them that we have to endure are useless, it is worth considering what a good meeting likes and feels like.

So in order to draw an analogy that we can all relate to, I thought I’d go for the idea behind the title of this blog post:

What meetings can learn from Parties.

Firstly the anticipation. When a we get an invite to a good party it is exciting. We start to look forward to it, plan it in our minds and think about some of the cool stuff that might happen. We think about who is going to be there and why the location sounds exciting, which could be on a boat in the harbour or just in your good friend Joey’s garage. We think about the atmosphere, and the music and actually do an ‘imagined version’ of the party in our heads. We plan for it and start to get prepared.

If it’s a party we are looking forward to we prepare for it. I mean, we want to ensure we bring stuff that makes the party better and makes the host know we appreciate the effort they are going to in order to make this thing happen. We know all good parties are an exchange where we all need to bring something. And we want the kudos that goes with making the party better.

If we are having a party the location matters. We decorate and move the furniture around. At good parties there is lots to look at, plenty of good food and people stand up, not sit down. We try and have as many conversations as we can, and meet some new people, maybe even form new long term relationships.

There is often a crescendo at a good party, a seminal speech or story that everyone enjoys. The moment that reminds us why we are all here, that salient moment. And then after it, the next day or the next week the party is talked about. Usually about how much fun it was, or why it sucked. We hope for the former. And if we are planning a party of our own, we want to learn from this one and even try and make ours a little better.

While we can’t do all of these things for meetings, the question is what things can we replicate from the party ethic? In the end we should try and make every meeting just a little bit less like a school assembly and just a little bit more like a party.

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Open pay display

I think companies should have everyone’s pay on display. A publicly available intranet site in alphabetical order with every employees name, salary and benefits next to it. Ok, so this is a bit of a shift from the secret salary world we currently live in. It might even cause a little bit of a distraction in the short term. But one thing is for sure, it will move our society to a far more accountable culture than we currently have.

Let’s consider for a moment the type of behaviour this is likely stimulate:

  • “I work harder than Joey, and he earns $20,000 more!”
  • “I want a pay rise”
  • “Holy shit, I better start working harder, I’ve been found out.”
  • “I wont get a pay rise in years”
  • “She doesn’t deserve that”
  • “Why do sales people earn so much?”
  • “Our company is a rip off, they don’t pay well”
  • “I can’t believe how little Mary earns, she’s a gun”
  • “I’m gonna work my ass off to get that job – I never knew I could earn that much!”

I really believe the initial chaos would lead to a better and more transparent workplace. One where everyone understands their role, impact and the investment the company makes in its people.

In my next startup, this will be policy number one. Total transparency in all financial documents, including salaries.

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Irreplaceable & the inconvenience scale

We all want to be irreplaceable. In an organisational context we worry about how needed we really are. It’s an omnipresent reality in a world of agricultural mastery and excess capacity. This is true for white collar desk jockeys, CEO’s and entrepreneurs alike. The more they need us, the safer and happier we feel. The truth is that everyone of us is replaceable. Even Steve Jobs. And the ultimate proof of this is human death. It happens, and we continue on with whatever it was we were doing.

I heard a good way to conceptualize on how ‘replaceable’ we are recently. The idea is that all of us can be replaced, and that the key question was how ‘inconvenient’ our loss would be to the cohort we belonged to. Where are we on the ‘inconvenience scale’ if we need to be replaced?Are we very high like Steve Jobs, or are we very low like a supermarket cashier? The more inconvenient it is, the more utility we are providing. It’s also quite likely that we have greater power of choice in actually placing ourselves elsewhere. One mistake we often make is equating how much we earn, with where we sit on this scale. Higher pay does not necessarily make us less replaceable, it often means the opposite. The real questions in understanding where we are on the scale are these:

  • How important is what I do to the people who pay me to do it?
  • Will the people who pay me lose money (or systems break) if I’m no longer there to do it?
  • How many other people can do what I do?
  • Will the other people who can do it, do it for the same price or a lower price than me?
  • Are these others easy to get?

If we answer these questions honestly we can get a fair assessment of the value we are creating, for our own business or one we work for. Everything we do in a given week doesn’t have to matter. It may just be that thing you do for 1 hour per week that no one else can. And the thing that we should be working on, is that one thing that only we can do. The stuff we are already great at, not our weaknesses. If we invest time working our our weaknesses, we simply make ourselves ‘more average’ and in turn we fall down the inconvenience scale.

The best way to be be high in the ‘inconvenience scale’ is to become a close to the money expert. By doing this, our potential loss becomes far more inconvenient.

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