Hey, what's up, Toby? We made it another week.
Hey. Yeah, very good. Here we are again. It's
The Processed at Aunt Rust. And today we're going
to talk about meetings, because it's one of my
favorite topics. And the myth that is that this
meeting could be solved with an email. But before
we get to that, I want to pitch my new sitcom
idea. called The Meeting. Here's how it works.
I think it resonates with a lot of people. The
sitcom is all of us in an office, and it's all
about the meeting. And so it's the pre -meetings
that lead up to the meetings. It's the polishing
of the PowerPoint decks. It's the spreadsheets.
It's all the things. And then at the very end
of the show, you go into the meeting. But you
never pierce the fourth wall and actually go
into the meeting and so the next day You just
pick up like the next episode picks up where
the last meeting left off leading to the next
meeting I Think it would work That either either
would resonate or people would like hunt you
down because it's too close to real life Two
on the nose, two on the nose. Even as you're
saying that, Chris, it reminded me of some of
the work I did early on in my career where you're
part of the team hustling together a management
reporting packet or a board packet, and you're
expected to kill yourself, come in early, stay
late for days or weeks on end, but you're never
part of the meeting. And so all of a sudden your
sitcom would be like PTSD for some of us. Oh,
that's so sure. And then the other one's like,
you go to the meeting, the meeting gets canceled,
whatever. It could be any number of things. Anyway,
back to process debt. One of the things that
I've heard over and over and over again, and
I think it's such a lie, is that that meeting
can be solved with an email. And I just don't
think it's true. Is there a common context around
which you hear that? What they really should
say is that person doesn't know how to run a
meeting. That's really what it should come down
to. That would be fair. I think a couple of episodes
we talked about how everybody wants communication,
but they need alignment. I think what can be
frustrating about those meetings is you go in,
they're poorly managed or they are... or there's
no purpose. It's a meeting for meeting sake.
It doesn't work. And so I think from a human
standpoint, we're communal animals. And so we
have to get together to meet. There's this funny
thing about when we're all together, we assume
that whatever's being said is being received.
And so the reality is you ran a poor meeting,
it wasn't aligned, you didn't necessarily get
what you want. But ultimately, I think the missing
component is at least when it's in person or
virtual, there's this perception of acknowledgement
of whatever the topic is. which is also a lie
when you're on a remote call. Cause if you're
like, have you ever put up everybody's screens?
I had Teams for a while and you could do like
40 people and it's, you know, it's a lot of people
are eyes down or eyes over to the other screen
and they might actually be totally all in. I
mean, most likely not if they're looking down,
but if they're looking to the side, they might
actually be looking at the, at the camera or
picture. But anyway, this is, these are, these
are, these are my observations. And I think it
really comes down to, we don't have a good acknowledgement
cycle. Like I don't know if people are engaged
in tracking. Correct. Like I'm sharing some knowledge.
Is that knowledge received? Is it the knowledge
even beneficial? Like. Yeah, there's no but the
end there's there's a hundred ways to do it.
You can send an email You could meet at the water
cooler. You could Send a pigeon if you wanted
like there's all sorts of ways that you could
would that be funny to send people at work Yeah
pigeon. No. Well, even I didn't I was I just
went to like snail mail I love it. That'd be
really funny. Print out your, write an email,
print it, and just mail it to them. There's a
lot of authorization processes inside of organizations
where you need to get something approved. And
I feel like if you printed it and put it in a
box and put a bow on it, it might get addressed
faster than having all the alerts in the world
going off. to get it approved and move it up
the chain. For sure. I was saying about your
comment about acknowledgement and having done
a fair amount of training, I have a lot of appreciation
for skills where somebody can re -perform to
show you that they now understand what you're
talking about. When we're discussing account
management or when we're discussing an approach
to the work, and we're seeking some kind of philosophical
alignment, it's really hard to know if people
are tracking what we're saying. And if they're
understanding the words, do they understand the
words in the context we've given them? And so
we also have this increasingly complex landscape
of multiculturalism where different cultures
might say, things with their body language or
verbally make acknowledgements that are different
than what we expect. Yeah. And so my favorite
is the, is the, you know, we've all heard this
story where it's like, yes, and somebody is simply
saying, I hear you, I agree with you. And I remember
the first time that came up for me and I thought,
well, that was easy. And it's like, no, no, you're
just being acknowledged. So my my negotiations
had not even begun, right? That's why But but
to your point about what is that acknowledgement
cycle and how do you get comfortable? You know
is yes enough Yeah, is it then you know, do they
need to restate? Yeah, the action you're asking
them to take or what if it's just Informational
then how do you know they left the room with
what you were hoping to impart? So I think one
of one of things that we're trying Because we
shoot a lot of Loom videos, which are just instructional.
And so one of the things that I'm doing is we're
trying to educate people on kind of our product.
And so what I'm doing is I'm literally taking
videos and saying, hey, look, do you know about
this thing? And they're crappy videos. They're
not polished. They're Loom. They're super easy
to put together. But then what I did is I created
I create a little board that basically forces
people. I pick the people that need to watch
the video, and they have to basically say, hey,
look, I watched it. And if it falls off, then
I know that that's been acknowledged. And some
of this stuff is really interesting because there's
stuff that I know that I'm like, oh, this is
obvious, but it's just not obvious to everybody
because they just wouldn't know. Because most
of the systems that we're in are just so complex.
And basically once you figure out the minimum
viable process to use that system, that's basically
the extent, that's basically your top bar. Even
if the capabilities of the software are so, so
far ahead, even if the software could save you
two hours, two more hours a day, people just
wouldn't know because they've got a job to do.
And so we've got tools that kind of act like
these really, really nice sports cars that people
keep in their garage. Or we use it just to go
to the grocery store 25 miles an hour there,
25 miles home. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like a lot
of, um, last week we were talking about Sigmas,
you know, how many, how sophisticated and error
free should a process actually be? or a professional
experience B. And it is a use case thing. And
so to your point about the acknowledgement, sometimes
it's just striking agreement that we don't have
to build a sports car if all it is is a grocery
getter. Yeah. You know, sometimes a wheelbarrow
gets us from A to B and we go dump truck. So,
yeah. Do you have to that point of acknowledgement?
So you're talking about a digital version of
that. How are you gaining comfort that their
acknowledgement reflected what you hoped that
they would pick up? These are really bite -sized.
So it's literally one topic at a time. Got it.
The reality is, it's just something that I know
that my gut is like, I'm not sure that they understand
this technical level of the software that we're
working on. But the other thing is, I also plan
to use it for process improvement. So if we go
and make a change in the system, I want them
to go and acknowledge that they've seen the change.
And so literally what I was doing is I changed
two columns in one of our Monday boards. And
I said, hey, look, we're going to be using this
one instead of this one. And when everybody's
done acknowledging it, then I'll basically remove
the old one and the new one will replace it.
Easy peasy, but also like, I could shout out
into the abyss, I could send an email, I could
put it into Slack, I could do all these things,
but it's somewhat disrespectful because it's
two hours of time. They need to go to a place
where they're prepared to learn, even if it's
just two minutes, and go through it, right? That's
that's the approach and the key does is like
this little approach won't work unless we have
rituals that make the people go to the board
and So unless you can have a hey, look, did you
clean your room? dashboard Like did you do the
thing? Dashboard then you're not going you're
you there's it doesn't work Otherwise, it's just
one more thing that Chris is out going to do
is his thing differently than everybody else
But if we can build this culture of like, this
is where I go to consume small bits of information
and it's only one to two to three a week, we
can handle that. I love that thought from a change
control because that does feel so much more consumable,
so much easier to stay on top of. Yeah. And that's
really the heart of it, right? Is we don't want
messaging or change to happen so fast that people
get lost. Yeah. Yeah, what's interesting is like
we either live in these like We either live in
these Kind of these ultra rigid systems that
we we don't have the admin control to change
Or we live in these super flexible systems like
just email and word docs Yeah, and like there's
like the two are are greatly greatly different
But but also but also it has to transfer right
and so Anyway, like this is this is you know,
the little approach that I'm taking which is
like look We're gonna build a ritual and then
the plan will be is like Once one day a week
will be like look. These are the videos Did you
watch them? It's two minutes of your life. You'll
be fine because these are little things that
everybody needs to know and If they're impactful,
they can vote on them and then we can create
basically more content around that topic. I love
the bite -sized approach to acknowledgement.
I think that's probably in today's world, it
can be more than just a simple nod. We can chunk
up information and distribute it very directly.
I despise notifications. I just absolutely hate
them. I hate them with a passion because they
don't work. It's just no, it's like, it's like
literally someone's got a bullhorn where it's
like, Sally said something about the thing and
you're like, shut up, Sally, shut up, you know,
or whatever. Like this is like, then you stop
listening is the real rub. Yeah. And, but, but
then it gets, it's this false sense of security
that like, Oh, you know, let's have a meeting
and then we'll solve all our problems. You're
like, it doesn't work that way. more complicated.
Well, let's come back. I want to hear how the
acknowledgement experiment plays out a little
bit. Yeah. Again, I have to put a ritual around
it. The one thing I'm learning about just getting
people to change and getting people under customs
is systems will do a lot, but the people have
to change. And to get the people to change, you
have to have rituals, which is kind of what we've
done as human societies forever. Is there some
sort of ritual that has to do with some sort
of change, whether it's becoming a woman or becoming
a man or whatever, or going out to war or whatever,
there's always been rituals around doing a thing.
Now we're just scattershot, dopamine hit. Distracted.
Truly. Yeah. Notification. I love it. More rituals.
I like it. All right. We'll do it again. We'll
catch you next week. It's a deal. All right.
Thank you. Bye.