S3 E110 - Declare Meeting Bankruptcy

Declaring Meeting Bankruptcy: A Strategy for Leadership Efficiency

In this episode of the For Love of Team podcast, host Winston Faircloth introduces Chapter Eight: 'Declaring Meeting Bankruptcy' from his upcoming book, 'Team Love, 28 Ways to Demonstrate Caring at Work.' Winston discusses the overwhelming nature of back-to-back meetings and offers a radical approach to regain control of one's schedule. Through practical steps, Faircloth outlines how leaders can inventory their meetings, assess their necessity, and reset their calendar for increased productivity and deeper work. A courageous case study of a client who successfully implemented quarterly 'meeting bankruptcies' is highlighted, offering a blueprint for other visionary leaders to follow.

00:00 Introduction to Season Three

00:28 Chapter Eight: Declare Meeting Bankruptcy

00:43 The Burden of a Packed Calendar

03:14 The Big Rocks Analogy

05:00 A Client's Bold Move: Meeting Bankruptcy

06:57 Steps to Declaring Meeting Bankruptcy

08:54 Conclusion and Next Steps

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Transcript

Judith: Welcome to season three of the For Love of Team podcast.

This season, we are taking you behind the curtain as Winston Faircloth writes his new book, Team Love, 28 Ways to Demonstrate Caring at Work. Each week, we will share excerpts from a new chapter, including key concepts and takeaways to help you support your team as a visionary leader.

In this episode, host Winston Faircloth introduces Chapter Eight: Declare Meeting Bankruptcy.

Winston Faircloth: Chapter 8. Declaring meeting bankruptcy. It's a Sunday evening, and this past weekend, you mostly unplugged from work. It was tempting to dash off a few emails, but then you decided to intentionally stay out of the inbox. It felt so freeing to not be on a schedule...to let the day unfold, make spontaneous decisions to try out that new cafe around the corner, go hang out at a park, or have a short nap.

A weekend without appointments. But, as the new work week approaches, you can feel a sense of tension arise in your chest. That calm feeling of being in control of your day is quickly evaporating as you look at the week ahead on your calendar. You might be the visionary leader at the helm, but your calendar can often feel like it's in charge.

How did this happen? Once again. Back to back to back sessions as far as the eye can see, without so much as even a stretch break. A quick lunch, only to be responding to urgent emails in between bites. Perhaps a few moments to switch between mentoring a team member in crisis and meeting with the mayor and her cabinet about a promising new partnership.

Now looking over your meeting schedule, there are so many important needs for your time and for what only you can bring. Packed full of things you love doing, problem solving, coaching, collaboration. Yet, with precious little time for deep work, or even allowing for impromptu opportunities to connect. You have vowed to be better.

Protecting your most productive time. Allowing space between sessions to prepare to be your best. And that urgent demand, that incessant drudgery of meetings, just keeps on coming. Now, who pays the ultimate price for your calendar being so crowded? Well, with evening scrolling emails, grabbing a few hours over the weekend to prep for that big opportunity next week.

Often the people who pay are the ones we love who miss out on the most. Sometimes we need a calendar intervention to completely reset the pace of our work so that we can be present to those we love and those we lead. Now you've no doubt heard the story about a jar, big rocks, pebbles, and water. The challenge is figuring out how to fit all of them into a jar.

If we begin with water, just adding the pebbles can have the water overflow. If we begin with the pebbles, the big rocks just cannot all fit. And yet, when we begin with the big rocks first, then add the pebbles, then add the water last, almost everything fits into the jar. The same is true with our schedule.

Sometimes our biggest challenge is sorting through our calendar's biggest rocks. We have so many big rocks called the executive team, all staff meetings, direct report one on ones, and other ongoing meetings on our calendar. When you add up the numbers of hours per month in these recurring internal meetings like this, what percentage of your time is devoted to these?

And going deeper, when you take this inventory and when you think about these meetings, what patterns do you notice? Is there a default time allotment? An hour? More? What's the frequency of these sessions? Are they weekly? Monthly? Quarterly? How many of these Important big rock sessions conflict with your most productive time of day.

Is the meeting content mostly updates or is there real problem solving going on? Are there clear outcomes predefined for our time together? And are there obvious reasons for each person being in attendance at this meeting? Well, one of my courageous clients was so overwhelmed by the number and duration of their internal meetings that they decided to declare meeting bankruptcies.

Once per quarter across their leadership teams’ meeting calendars. Invitations for organizing organization wide, department wide, and leadership team meetings were taken off future calendars at the end of each quarter, allowing these groups to reset the purpose duration and invitation list for each of their required internal meetings.

One big change was that they, for example, set their default meeting times - they were capped at 20 and 50 minutes each for the duration of these sessions, allowing space between sessions for task switching. Invitees to meetings were either accountable or responsible for the project or needed to be consulted for the desired meeting outcomes.

In other words, they reduced the number of meetings that were just basically informational. And then teams then created new pathways to inform those affected by decisions that didn't always require meetings. Now using our earlier framework that we talked about in earlier chapters, this client focused on their compelling why: Define what meeting success look like and then invited the right "who's" to the session to streamline the number of internal meetings that they scheduled. Their bravest act of all was to declare meeting bankruptcy once a quarter to prune this internal meeting sprawl and reset the quarter to come with intentional and focused meetings.

Could you imagine doing this within your organization? Could you give it a try? 

So for further action, first, take inventory of your internal recurring meetings over the past few weeks or months. Note how much of your work week this consumes. 

Two, what percentage of these sessions would you say are devoted to problem solving efforts versus information sharing?

Three, are the right people in the room? Namely those who are accountable, responsible, or needing to be consulted for the meeting's success. 

Four, how often do these internal meetings have clear purposes or outcomes? 

Five, what about the duration and frequency of these meetings? Might they be pruned? These next ones I think are going to be really helpful for you as a leader.

Six, is there a pattern of the day? Is there a pattern about the time of the day that these reoccurring meetings are happening? Could we move more of these into the middle of the day to protect team member productivity? A lot of morning people need deep work in the morning. A lot of night owls prefer their deep work late afternoons.

Number seven, do these reoccurring meetings have an expiration date when we would reevaluate the why, the what, and the who around the meeting? And number eight, could we get into a quarterly rhythm of evaluating all of our internal meetings, declaring meeting bankruptcy on a regular basis, freeing up your time to do what you do best, and freeing up the time of your team members So that they can be most productive and make the highest contribution begins with taking an intentional look at our meeting schedules and perhaps declaring meeting bankruptcy.

Judith: Thanks, Winston! 

We invite you to share your feedback and biggest takeaways on our website at www.forloveofteam.com/blog and look for today’s chapter episode.

Thanks for listening. 

Remember that by loving our people who love our customers, your visionary leadership comes to life. 

We hope to see you next time on the For Love of Team podcast.