Look in your calendar. How clear is the desired outcome of each meeting you’ll attend today? How is each meeting setting the tone, the culture of your organization? Often our meetings have grown a bit stale; they often need a bit of a re-think and re-design. (And we’re too often not taking advantage of the fact that meetings are a powerful practice arena for changing our culture.)
As a small, simple, and yet critical move towards improved design, consider adding a business outcomes purpose–and even a culture-changing purpose–to each meeting.
Example #1: Business Outcomes
A business outcomes-based purpose represents clear information about the most critical business changes and results you’re focused on.
Subject: Chatbot Vendor Selection Meeting
Purpose: We will bring together all the humans and information needed to make a decision on which vendor to select and how/when we move forward with that vendor–and make those decisions in this meeting. This chatbot selection is critical to our customers NPS+ scores, and feeling like they are receiving immediate, valuable assistance from us.
Example #2: Business Outcomes and Culture-Changing Practice
Now, consider adding a culture-changing purpose. One that addresses a desired move towards more diversity and inclusion, and more effective value delivery:
Subject: Chatbot Vendor Selection Meeting
Purpose: We will bring together all the humans and information needed to make a decision on which vendor to select and how/when we move forward with that vendor–and make those decisions in this meeting. This chatbot selection is critical to our customers NPS+ scores, and feeling like they are receiving immediate, valuable assistance from us. To make these important decisions, we will first seek to connect as humans, continuing to build the trust needed for us to have healthy conflict. Together, we’ll practice welcoming the elephants. We will use facilitated innovation techniques to create broader divergence–so that we can truly see and hear each other’s innovative ideas. We’ll use collaborative convergence and decision making techniques to make sure we understand the tradeoffs and value to our humans, our system, our customers–to help us come to a more informed, sustaining decision.
Having a clear business purpose for each meeting helps the humans understand when and how to participate, what information to bring to the meeting, and expectations for participation. Having a clear culture-changing purpose sets the expectation that we’ll be practicing changing our group norms, our culture, together–a powerful practice of positive reinforcement.
Do you have a creative way you reinforce culture change as part of every meeting–and every meeting invitation? Join the conversation on LinkedIn.
