About
Articles by Ian
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Trapped in an evolutionary time-warp: how human genetics sabotage modern organisations
Trapped in an evolutionary time-warp: how human genetics sabotage modern organisations
“Thus, the task is, not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that…
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Local citizens making a difference
Local citizens making a difference
Last weekend, I had the pleasure of working with the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) and folk from…
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Cooperative Conversations – Bringing Joy to the Workplace: A workshop that will change a culture
Cooperative Conversations – Bringing Joy to the Workplace: A workshop that will change a culture
Want to bring joy to the workplace? Want to improve the level of employee engagement and retention? Want to improve the…
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Experience & Education
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Freelance
View Ian’s full experience
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Volunteer Experience
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Management Committee Member
Picabeen Community Association
- 2 years 4 months
Social Services
My contributions at Picabeen included:
- Streamlining of executive meetings,
- Development of a strategic plan
- Project managing (a) creation of a promotional video, (b) creation of a demographic data base.
- Policy formulation and review
- HR Advice
- Designing specifications for Website and arranging tender. -
Mentor to undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral students
The University of Queensland
- Present 6 years 9 months
Education
It is a privilege to provide guidance and support to mentee university students at a time that is of significant magnitude in their life journey.
Publications
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It's about time
Ian Plowman
• Our management meeting ran overtime and so I was late for the client meeting. The client was not happy.
• I don’t know why we schedule the meeting for 8.00am when the boss does not turn up till 8.15.
• We spent so much time on Sophie’s agenda item, we ran out of time to deal with my issue.
Time management is often a negative for meetings. Here is how to turn it into a positive. There are three distinct aspects of a meeting where clever time management pays off…• Our management meeting ran overtime and so I was late for the client meeting. The client was not happy.
• I don’t know why we schedule the meeting for 8.00am when the boss does not turn up till 8.15.
• We spent so much time on Sophie’s agenda item, we ran out of time to deal with my issue.
Time management is often a negative for meetings. Here is how to turn it into a positive. There are three distinct aspects of a meeting where clever time management pays off handsomely.
First, starting times. Specify an unusual starting time, like 8.27am (rather than 8.30) and start bat exactly that time, regardless of who is present. Why? because it is an usual starting time, so people notice.
Second, specify the expected starting and finishing time for each agenda item. The more complex and time-consuming agenda items are up first.
Third, if the agenda items are scheduled according to importance and complexity, the less important items are later on the agenda. If any of our earlier agenda items run over allocated time, NEVER have that result in the contracted meeting finishing time being extended. Carry the less important items over to the next meeting. Honour the social contract by having the meeting conclude on or before the designated time. -
Our conscious values do not matter a damn if our unconscious behaviours in meetings lets us down.
Ian Plowman
Ground-rules: Why they matter; how to create them, and how to best use them.
• People keep drifting off the topic.
• Fred keeps bringing up the same issue we dealt with three meetings ago.
• Most of us just sit there and don’t say anything. I’m sure there is a lot of texting going on that has nothing to do with the meeting.
• I’m called to this meeting though I’ve no idea what it is about or why I even need to be there.
At the mention of meetings, people often roll their…Ground-rules: Why they matter; how to create them, and how to best use them.
• People keep drifting off the topic.
• Fred keeps bringing up the same issue we dealt with three meetings ago.
• Most of us just sit there and don’t say anything. I’m sure there is a lot of texting going on that has nothing to do with the meeting.
• I’m called to this meeting though I’ve no idea what it is about or why I even need to be there.
At the mention of meetings, people often roll their eyes. Why? Because many people find that meetings are a waste of time and that the behaviour of people in them is cause for annoyance.
So why do many people not like meetings? Imagine a meeting that you recently attended, one where your negative emotions were triggered. Can you recall a person there whose behaviour was difficult? Can you visual their face?
For most people, the answers are ‘yes’ to both these questions. And yet to the logical follow-up question, the answer is ‘No!’
And that follow-up question is: ‘Who pictured themselves?’
The irony is that it is quite possible that I am the person that someone else found difficult. Yet, I would probably not describe myself as a ‘difficult person’, rather I’m a person of strong convictions, or I am a person who believes they have a right to speak their mind.
It is not people in meetings that are difficult, though it is sometimes their behaviours. I come to the meeting unconsciously expecting certain behaviours. Yet when my implicit expectations of behaviour are violated, I feel annoyed.
Best to make our desired behaviours explicit. Here is how.
Collectively list all of the behaviours we would rather not have. This is a brain-storming exercise.
Rank them according to the degree of disruption or annoyance.
In relation to the top 10, collectively decide on the opposite.
Publish those desired behaviours as our new ground rules.
Manage behaviour according to that list.
This is everyone's responsibility. -
Meetings as a social contract
Ian Plowman
Why do people hate meetings?
‘Making Meetings Magical®’
What do you expect when you attend a meeting? Is your implicit ‘social contract’ honoured?
Unconsciously, each participant in your meetings has signed up to a ‘social contract’. Evidence for this is most obvious when the ‘social contract’ is violated.
Have you ever attended a meeting that for any reason whatsoever left you annoyed, angry, disappointed?
The reason this negative emotion arose for you is probably because…Why do people hate meetings?
‘Making Meetings Magical®’
What do you expect when you attend a meeting? Is your implicit ‘social contract’ honoured?
Unconsciously, each participant in your meetings has signed up to a ‘social contract’. Evidence for this is most obvious when the ‘social contract’ is violated.
Have you ever attended a meeting that for any reason whatsoever left you annoyed, angry, disappointed?
The reason this negative emotion arose for you is probably because something occurred that you thought was inappropriate. And you can probably name a handful of meeting behaviours that will trigger this negative emotion for you. Each of these negative meeting behaviours represent a violation of your implicit ‘social contract’, a set of expectations that you bring to a meeting.
And each participant at the meeting has their own implicit ‘social contract’. Further, it may not be identical to yours, though some overlap is highly likely. And because these ‘social contracts’ are implicit – i.e. not expressed and not shared - no one knows what they contain.
Far better that the ‘social contract’, which is set up between the entity that called the meeting and those who attend, is made explicit.
And that explicit social contract has four important elements:
First: what are we here for? Here, the purpose of the meeting is explicitly expressed on our agenda, with every agenda item being expressed as a focusing question. Further, every agenda item specifies who will be talking to that issue, who carries responsibility for it.
Second: How long have we got? See earlier post on time-management.
Third: How will we work together? See earlier post on groundrules.
Fourth: Who are we? People are social beings. Our meetings will be more productive if, before getting down to business, we do a round of social expression, perhaps on the topic of 'Highs and lows of my life in the past week'.
These four topics create our social contract. -
Is there an ideal number of people for our meetings?
Is there an ideal number of people for a meeting?
The client has a chain of 60 service centres. Each month, the managers of those centres attended a monthly meeting. The sixty managers sat in a large u-shaped configuration with the business owners seated at the head of the open U. The client owners’ complaint: ‘All of the managers are passive. They won’t say anything'.
People’s experience of meetings informs us that some meetings work better than others. There are many reasons…Is there an ideal number of people for a meeting?
The client has a chain of 60 service centres. Each month, the managers of those centres attended a monthly meeting. The sixty managers sat in a large u-shaped configuration with the business owners seated at the head of the open U. The client owners’ complaint: ‘All of the managers are passive. They won’t say anything'.
People’s experience of meetings informs us that some meetings work better than others. There are many reasons why this is the case and this series of blogs attempts to unpack them. Two factors that are particularly important, and they are related, is (a) the number of participants, and (b) the physical setting.
Reflect on an informal social occasion such as a party, BBQ, or informal chit-chat after a church service. How many people do we normally see in a cluster? Rarely do we see more than six, and generally less.
We also know that the greater the diversity in a group, the richer will be the conversation. Yet, on the downside, the larger the group, the greater the possibility that (a) some voices may not be heard, and (b) that side conversations will occur.
So, what is the ideal number for a conversation or meeting group?
We want as few as people as possible to permit high inclusion. We want as many people as possible to maximise diversity. Experience tells me that the ideal middle ground is six people.
Where the group numbers are greater, consider setting up multiple tables of five or six, each working in parallel. This could be on the same topic, or different groups could tackle different topics.
In either case, the groups periodically report back to each other with recommendations. -
Who should attend our meetings?
We’ve held our meeting. We’ve made our decision. We are just getting into the execution of that decision when we are suddenly confronted with an objection we did not anticipate.
Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever participated in a meeting where a decision was made, after which there was some unexpected pushback? Have you ever seen a meeting make a decision in the absence of some critical information or viewpoint?
The problem is that, most times, those that attend are…We’ve held our meeting. We’ve made our decision. We are just getting into the execution of that decision when we are suddenly confronted with an objection we did not anticipate.
Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever participated in a meeting where a decision was made, after which there was some unexpected pushback? Have you ever seen a meeting make a decision in the absence of some critical information or viewpoint?
The problem is that, most times, those that attend are those that are available, rather than those that should be there.
There are nine sets of voices we should consider. They are:
1. Legislators and funders. Any party that can bless our activity or kill it.
2. Professional. Those with expertise in our topic areas.
3. Resource providers and field workers. More practical and pragmatic than the professionals.
4. Beneficiaries/victims. Those who will be impacted by our decisions and actions.
5. Those with local knowledge - interested bystanders.
6. Critical friend. Protects us from our own folly.
7. The marginalised/overlooked/forgotten.
8. Elders and forebears. Those whose stewardship and wisdom brought us to the present.
9. Our grandchildren's grandchildren. As the North American First Nation peoples asked: "What are the consequences of our decisions seven generations hence?"
Now it is obvious that we cannot get all of those voices into our meeting. Yet we should. So, what to do?
Invite those that can attend to act as proxies for those that cannot. Rather than bring their own perspective to the meeting, each participant has the responsibility to represent a viewpoint that would otherwise be absent. And that generally requires that we know, in advance, (a) what the topics for conversation are, (b) that we know whose proxy we are carrying, and (c) we fully inform ourselves of our proxy's perspective.
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