Change Cultural Norms & Keep the Change

Outmoded meeting habits and norms are not working so well in our current world. We are following a cultural convention that does not serve anybody: yet we have not decided as a group to start doing it another way. We hold the cultural conventions and behaviors of how we act in our collective hands

So how does a cultural norm like meeting habits change?

A Cultural change is the dynamic process whereby a group of people change and adapt to external or internal forces. It can be:

1. Deliberate or clearly decided upon or

2. A natural adaptive process. the adaptive process has not been evolving fast enough to keep up with the rapid fire pace of change in our work environments. So it is time to take the first choice to be deliberate about this cultural change in meetings. 

If it is going to change. . .it needs to change across the board! It needs to change with the whole culture. Am I talking organizational culture or wider culture? I am taking organization culture first. You need to first deliberately change the culture of your organization by tapping the desire to make the adaptive change. To get people on board with changing meetings to be more effective, you can use existing motivators like reduce stress, make better use of time, and get out of meetings and back to other work sooner. Develop a clear new way that people can see and adopt without a lot of disruption to their current workload. 

The larger cultural change in corporate and government organizations comes later after a wide acceptance of the new meeting practices has taken place in a critical number of organizations. Eventually when a critical mass have made the change, the" Tipping Point" that Malcolm Gladwell talks about comes into play. Or if you understand physics, it would be a fine example of Morphic Resonance. (later blog)

"Tipping points are the levels at which the momentum for changes becomes unstoppable" Malcolm Gladwell

To make a real difference, don't change your meetings one meeting at a time. Maximize gain and make sure the change sticks by changing them through an across the board change.  Change your meetings as an organizational cultural change and "keep the change".

Robert's Rules of Order - Funeral Announcement

Henry Robert was a US Army Major who wrote a book in 1876 intended to provide clear rules of order to be used in "deliberative assemblies".

What the heck is a deliberative assembly?

A "deliberative assembly" is a governing body of people who come together for the purpose of unhurried consideration and discussion. It is a place for extensive deliberation and discussion and examination. Their purpose is to "govern".  An example is the US House of Representatives  or the Senate. 

An Assembly of people gathered for"unhurried consideration and discussion" is a far cry from what we need in our business meetings today! Yet the shadow of Henry Robert is still in our meetings and that needs to change. 

We should have had a funeral for Robert's Rules and moved on a long time ago. When Robert came up with his rules, it was a really different time for human beings. We had not yet invented telephones, electric lights, cars, airplanes, or computers. Today's meeting needs and business environments are results and time focused.  We urgently need a goal-driven, time sensitive, technologically savvy way to meet and make decisions that can be used in our global business world in virtual as well as face to face meetings. We need to leave behind these outmoded practices and stop wasting time for convention. 

Are You Dying in Inefficient Meetings?

Four years after the book Death by Meeting, people are still dying in inefficient meetings. Nothing makes me crazier than to sit in a meeting with someone grandstanding or taking the meeting off on a tangent, wasting everyone's precious time. This problem is rampant, and most people hate it. I surveyed 1000 business people over the last 3 years and found only 7 people who are happy with the efficiency, productivity, and time spent in meetings they attend. That is .7%!!  . . . . not a very good showing. 

The desire to change meetings is pretty universal in the US; the motivation exists; smart business people are running the show - so what's the problem? Here it is in a nutshell:

1. There has been no comprehensive solution or way to implement it. 

2. We are creatures of habit. This is especially true when a habit is part of our culture and there is a long history of doing a certain way. 

3. People are too busy with a multitude of urgent priorities to make the time to step back and figure out the way to change it. Until now...

I just spent a year of my life coming up with a solution. It is a get-to-the-point, cut-out-the-fluff meeting method to replace the current meeting rituals that have their roots in Robert's Rules of Order. 

See "Robert's Rules of Order are Dead" blog entry