Marisa T. Martin

We put a lot of effort into What and How and less into communicating Why. We do think about Why, a lot, in fact – hours upon hours of meetings about Why - but then we jump right to What and How and don’t communicate the Why.

I read Patrick Lencioni’s fantastic “Death by Meetings” two weekends ago and have been thinking about how to improve our meetings ever since. We assume that information will cascade down the management chain with accuracy and immediacy. We’re lucky to get either one, much less both, so our teams often feel like they’re out of the loop. We have a fantastic office grapevine that fills the void, but not perfectly nor always accurately.

My first thought was to hurdle the layers of management with our blog (yes, we have an internal blog which you’ll hear more about), but not only are we hesitant to document every single thing for fear that it will be outdated by the time it publishes, we also don’t want to undermine the management structure. Information is good, yes, but a positive relationship with your manager is priceless.

What then? If we can’t go straight to the source by publishing information almost real-time, we need to get better at the cascading thing, and that means we need to get better at meetings.

“Better at Meetings” = accurate, useful, and relevant information delivered by the appropriate person at the appropriate time.

Next question: How? Do you prescribe to managers how we want them to lead? (No.) Do you suggest effective methods for leading? (Perhaps.) Do you use case studies or research to make our case, or is anecdotal feedback enough? (Don’t know. Depends.) On a personal note, is this the most effective use of my role? (In impact, perhaps. In measurable impact, perhaps not.)