Real Science Fiction
As published in Corp! Magazine
See if you can identify the actual science fictional elements from the following description of a scene from the original Star Trek.
Captain Kirk and his officers are sitting around a conference table aboard the starship Enterprise. They are looking at screens set into the table, on which information is being displayed. Occasionally someone taps a screen to get more information. Kirk and the others conduct their meeting, periodically referring to the displays.
Now, the Enterprise is certainly fiction. We don’t have any starships, despite the more optimistic predictions from the TV show.
The touch sensitive video screens were certainly science fiction back in the 1960s. Today, they’re almost quaint. We’ve moved well beyond that, with our Blackberries, iPhones, iPads, laptops, and tablet computers. So, no points there.
The real science fiction in this scene isn’t the array of gadgets or even the starship. It’s the fact that not one person is using the screen for anything other than business. No one is checking email, no one is Tweeting, no one is browsing the InterstellarNet, and no one is playing Angry Birds. Everyone is actively engaged in the meeting. Granted, these meetings usually occurred when the Enterprise was about to be destroyed by Romulans or something, but even taking that into account the behavior of the crew is still pure fiction. How many meetings have you attended where everyone was actively engaged like that? While it does happen, most businesses I speak with would like to see it happen rather more frequently than it currently is happening.
The first, and perhaps most important, thing about getting people engaged in meetings is to recognize the feedback you’re getting. When you start a meeting and everyone is already nose deep in a Blackberry, that’s feedback. The trick is to recognize what it’s telling you. Some possibilities include:
- Participants do not see the point of the meeting.
- Participants are not interested in the topic or material being discussed.
- Participants do not see how the meeting is relevant to the work they’re doing or the deadlines they are facing.
- The meeting is lacking in focus or does not have clear objectives.
- You are boring.
Let’s take the last one first.
Sadly, not all presenters are the most interesting people on the planet. Some speak in a monotone,. Others don’t know when they’ve made their point and keep talking. Still others don’t respect the schedule. Naturally, if you’re reading this, that clearly doesn’t apply to you. However, not everyone listening to you realizes that. Therefore, it helps considerably to pay attention to your own presentation style so that you can be sure to get through to those who might otherwise assume that you are going to bore them.
Why are you holding your meeting? On Star Trek, there’s always a good reason for the meeting: for example, figuring out to avoid being eaten by a giant space amoeba. While it is unlikely that you are facing a similar threat, nonetheless there needs to be a point to the meeting. What is the goal? At the end of the meeting, what do you expect to have accomplished? If the answer is that you simply wanted to convey information to people, or have people share status updates, perhaps emails would better. After all, do the status updates really need to be shared at that moment in that place?
Along with the point of the meeting, it also has to feel important to the people you want present. They need to know that being there matters to them. This can be surprisingly tricky: far too often people assume they need to be present when they don’t. Since there are times when, surprising as this may seem, attendance at meetings is used as a gauge of employee engagement, it’s not too much of a stretch to realize that people might be attending the meeting to avoid being seen as disloyal. You can avoid this unfortunate misperception by having a clear agenda for the meeting and making that agenda known ahead of time.
Another advantage of a clear agenda is that the purpose and time requirements for the meeting are known ahead of time. This allows your employees to better plan their schedules. A documentation review session might be held for a specific period of time, while a brainstorming session might be more open-ended. Of course, even then it’s best to not “go until you are done.” Rather, define the duration in advance and also clearly define how you’ll know when you’re done. If you find that people can’t agree on how they’ll know when they’re done, you need to resolve that before you hold your meeting!
I’m occasionally asked when is the best time to start a meeting. Early? Late? Mid-day? The answer is that the best time is the time you specified. When people know when a meeting will start, they can plan accordingly. They walk into the conference room with their brains already focused on the meeting. If you don’t start on time, you create an opening for them to become bored waiting and get sucked into their smartphones. Once that happens, it’s much harder to get their attention back than if you’d not lost it to begin with.
A great deal of Star Trek is no longer science-fiction. What are you doing to make sure that employee engagement in meetings is on that list?
