This article was originally published in Computer World.
If a leader doesn’t let anyone else shine, no one will engage
Once upon a time, for that is how these stories always begin, there was a brilliant engineer. He could come up with all sorts of creative ideas in a flash. Because of this, he decided to start a company. His company did reasonably well, although it did have some problems. One of the big problems was that this brilliant engineer, now a brilliant CEO, was not always all that skilled at playing well with others. He always had the best answers to all the technical challenges the company was facing.
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Now, to be fair, his answers really were the best, at least according to some standards. On a technical level, he understood the technology of his business extremely well. His solutions were always technically brilliant. And that is where the problem arose.
One day, an engineer in the company was charged with developing a solution to a particularly vexing problem. This engineer went off and studied the problem. He worked hard at the problem. On the appointed day and hour, he presented his solution. Everyone loved the solution except, sadly, for the brilliant CEO. He knew the technology like no one else, and he immediately saw A Better Way. The CEO proceeded to demolish the engineer’s solution. Indeed, he reduced it to metaphorical rubble. If the engineer’s idea had been a village in Eastern Europe, it would have looked as if the Golden Horde had just swept through, leaving no stone standing upon another stone nor any blade of grass unplucked.
And then the brilliant CEO explained how it could have been done better. Truly, it is said by some, he waxed poetic in his analysis of what to do and how to do it. And all (or at least all those who understood what he was talking about) agreed his analysis was brilliant.
There was but one tiny problem: When it came time to implement the brilliant CEO’s brilliant idea, there was no enthusiasm, no engagement. None felt they had a stake in the outcome. Not a soul among them dared to make suggestions, even though the most brilliant ideas invariably need modification as they are implemented. The engineer who had been eviscerated by the brilliant CEO never again volunteered to lead a project and never offered another idea for consideration. Others, who had witnessed the evisceration though they had not personally felt its bitter sting, developed a similar attitude.
In the end, the brilliant CEO’s brilliant plan languished. With no one on the implementation team to champion it, the idea remained mostly just that, an idea. The company was left with nothing. Rather than a functional idea and a staff of loyal engineers motivated and enthusiastic about carrying it out, the company was left with no plan at all. An imperfect plan — well, that can always be improved. But no plan at all? That can be a bit of a problem.
Sadly, for the brilliant CEO, this was not the first time this sort of thing had happened. Having the Golden Horde sweep across the landscape of ideas, leaving nothing but destruction in its wake, is not something that any company can long survive. In such an environment, it is not long before people stop suggesting ideas, lest they draw the attention of that aforementioned horde. The board of directors came to the same conclusion and decided that it was time for the CEO’s tenure to also come to a conclusion. He was forced out, and the company went on its way without him. Perhaps their ideas were no longer quite so brilliant, but they had ideas. Perhaps their plans were no longer quite so ambitious and clever, but they had plans. Perhaps their products were no longer quite so perfect, but they had products.
From this, we can draw several important lessons:
1. When you crush every plan or idea people propose, eventually they stop proposing ideas or suggesting plans. It is unwise for one person to be left as the sole source of ideas; just look at Apple after Steve Jobs.
2. Tearing people down does not motivate them. Indeed, it does precisely the opposite. If you want to motivate people, find ways to build them up.
3. If it can’t or won’t be built, it doesn’t matter how perfect it is. Insert whatever you’d like for “it.”
4. Having the best mousetrap today is less valuable than having a consistent, repeatable process for developing good, solid, buildable mousetraps.
5. Point 4 will only happen when you know how to connect with your team and build them up.
In the end, playing well with others might not guarantee that you will live happily ever after, but it helps.
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?
