How Might We Run Meetings In A Different Way?

Meetings make a big part of our lives.   Many of us feel that most of them have a lot of non value added activities, or that they should not be there in the first place.   How should meetings be run, to increase their effectiveness?

The Agile and Lean world has been promoting over the years the "stand up meeting", where basically people meet standing up, as there are no chairs.   This induces people to get to the point, make decisions, and move on.   Apart, they're probably healthier too!

Matt Homann recently shared in his blog a different way of conducting meetings that is used at innovation firm IDEO.   It is based on participants to generate ideas, by asking the open question "how might we", and keeping a collaborative environment at all times.

Of course there are many other methods and techniques for running effective meetings, and everyone should use what best adapts to your particular situation, the key question is:

What are you doing to improve the way you conduct your meetings?

Ask Two Irrational Questions To Motivate People

Motivation and influence is a one of the key functions of managers in companies. When executing new initiatives, if employees are not convinced to follow you in the direction your are proposing, efforts are most likely to fail.

It has been proven over the years that both logic and emotion are big components of motivation and influence.  Suppose you have a situation where the logic has been explained, and people have bought in emotionally.  What other things can you do if your team is stalling?

Some answers are provided by behavioral science, and authors like Dr. Cialdini have proposed useful ideas for influencing people that have been tested with some success.

Dr. Pantalon's ideas to influence are based on asking people two irrational questions, to induce people to take action:

• How ready are you to, on a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 means not ready at all and 10 means totally ready? 

• If the person picks a number higher than 2, ask, “Why didn’t you pick a lower (yes, lower) number?”

Confused?  Read the complete post by Dan Pink.   

If your are interested in Dr. Pantalon's book, it is called Instant Influence.

Sometimes, maintaining the status quo is not an option anymore, so if asking irrational ideas helps you change it, go for it.

An Alternative Solution To Rising Tuition Costs

Graduate education costs are one of those big expenses (or investments) that students (or parents) have to make in their lives.

We all know several people that are still paying off their college tuition debts, that have high income to debt ratios, and have to sacrifice quality of life to pay off their loans.

Is there another feasible way to fund your education costs?   Although this proposed model to finance tuition costs is not new, it definitely raises some interesting questions.

I would think that if a college were to apply a revenue sharing model with students, they would do several things differently, such as:

• Ensure quality of education if exceptional
• Ensure that concepts taught are practical in real life
• Ensure that students accepted are top quality and are committed to success

Both parties have a lot to win and lose, so probability of success has to be guaranteed somehow.  I wonder if students could also get "success insurance", just in case things did not turn out as you expected, as life usually teaches us.

Would you enroll to a college that allows you to pay education costs with revenue sharing model?

Unlimited Vacation Time As Standard Policy?

A recent article in Fast Company describes a new idea that companies like Hubspot, Accesibility Partners and Netflix have been exploring for managing vacation time, and that is, to Offer Unlimited Vacation Time.

The key idea behind this vacation scheme is that as long as employees do what needs to be done, they can take vacation whenever they want and for the length of time they want.   This may seem counter intuitive, but  apparently it fosters an environment of trust, productivity and reinforces many positive behaviors that you would like to see in employees.   Additionally, what would an Unlimited Vacation Time policy, in a company that's doing a lot of things right, do for it's Net Promoter Score?

I am sure many of us would agree that a significant percentage of HR policies in companies are significantly broken, ranging from people development, performance appraisals, compensation schemes, among others.   We can't forget that Deming reminded top management of all this several decades ago, but nothing significant has changed.



Would you recommend colleagues to work for a company with an Unlimited Vacation Time?  Why?

Special Q&A with Bill Waddell

I recently had the pleasure of doing a special Q&A session for the APICS Chapter with the one and only Bill Waddell, about continuous improvement and the challenges that lie with it.

Below, an excerpt:

Humans constantly resist change. How can I even deal with this?

I don't agree with the premise.  People change all the time – willingly.  What we resist is change we don't understand, or change that threatens us.  I think that puts the matter back on us – the lean leaders.  We have to a better job of explaining the change we ask people to make.  Our message can't be "trust us – it works for Toyota" and expect executives to radically transform entire organizations.  That would be irresponsible on their part.  When we can't answer all of the questions and making a compelling financial case for lean – when we ask people to take a leap of faith – it is our fault the people and companies won't change. 

Definitely great material.   A must read for all managers and change agents out there.

Airport Security and Muda

While reading on the web, I recently found this InfoGraphic about airport security practices in the US.   Many of these practices have been copies and implemented in multiple countries around the world.

The questions I have are the following:

• What assumptions would you question regarding current practices?   Which ones do you think are not valid any more?
• Are there non value added activities, or Muda involved?  Which ones would you eliminate?

How much Muda do your current processes have?


Bonus:   For a free resource describing the types of Muda or Waste, click here.

Back To The Toyota Kata

Some weeks ago I blogged about Toyota Kata, a concept described in one of the best books I have ever read about the essence of continuous improvement.  Kata refers to a pattern of behavior.  Toyota Kata, are the behaviors that every Toyota employee exhibit, and make them a world class compa.

If you haven't read Toyota Kata yet, you can read a book review by Larry Leach, that was also featured in a local APICS chapter newsletter.