Things We Do & Why We Do Those Things: Ritualized Meetings

Nancy White asked a while back in response to this post  for more detail on how people collaborate.  So I decided that I would do a weekly post on a thing we do and why we do it at Gray Hill Solutions.  I plan to go into detail about the use of tools, the use of process, and the need for communication.

I also hope to have some guest collaborators write posts in this series as well.

Ritualized Meetings

I've noticed that people chafe at the word ritual anymore.  It brings forth notions of dark religion, people in hooded robes, bubbling cauldrons.  However, I like the first line of the Wikipedia entry on ritual:

A ritual is a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value, which is prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community.

Symbol, in turn, starts with the definition:

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts. A symbol, in its basic sense, is a conventional representation of a concept; i.e., an idea, object, quality, quantity, etc. In more psychological and philosophical terms, all concepts are symbolic in nature, and representations for these concepts are simply token artifacts that are allegorical to (but do not directly codify) a symbolic meaning, or symbolism.

So, in a ritualized meeting, meeting participants, which make up the community or sub-community gathered to execute a project, gather regularly and behave in a prescribed traditional manner.

Why is this important?

It's a Yardstick

The vision, direction, and velocity of a project is measured and acted on by the community.  In order for the community to be successful, it needs to hold a common definition (a socially based definition) of these three elements.

Vision - The overall goal of the project

Direction - How the group will achieve the goal

Velocity - How much work the group can do at a given time

Under these main elements there are a myriad of supporting elements that deal directly with your team like strengths of specific members, foreseeable constraints, and so forth.

The successful ritualized meeting, the Vision, Direction, and Velocity are all acknowledged, measured, and agreed upon.  The successful ritualized meeting take a while at the beginning of a project and then take nearly no time whatsoever by the end of the project.

It's a Sedative

Ritualized meetings are great to calm the savage beast.  They are music to malcontents on your team, they are a salve to the easily chaffed skin of your clients or bosses.  At ritualized meetings, you directly address their biggest fears (do you know what you are doing? do you know how to get there? and are you on schedule?)  Oddly, both internal and external pressures on teams are largely the same.

It's a Stimulant

By avoiding bad thoughts, ritualized meetings create good ones.  This energizes the team and things work more smoothly.

Perfectly?  Hardly.  Nothing is perfect, sorry.

How often to have ritualized meetings

This depends on the meeting type and what supporting information sharing you have behind you.

Regardless of what you are doing, I believe you should have a ritualized meeting with your client or boss weekly.  The meeting should last 15 minutes or less.  It's a little more formal than a traditional "status meeting" and often bosses will get annoyed at some point in the process.

Why?

Because the system is so efficient that there is little to report.  But when they squawk, remind them of other projects that didn't go so well.  Why didn't they go well?  Because they lost track of the Vision, the Direction, and the Velocity.

(If I were writing a business book they'd be the three V's Vision, Vector and Velocity.)

With your staff, have them daily.  Yes, Daily.   Make them very short.  You don't have to review the vision formally each day like a school master.  Rather, as a group you discuss what each person did the previous day and what they will do today.  Each person speaks for their own daily agenda, the group - not the manager - should do most of the alterations.  The manager or team leader is a group member and will certainly change people's directions - but the point isn't to make sure you have daily control over your staff.  The point is to make sure that the staff has self-control.

Closing

There are other ritualized meetings you will find a need for, as you will find different consistencies require different levels of attention.   The goal of them is to provide a highly familiar structure for the meeting that cannot be denied.  Meetings often gravitate toward dealing directly with specific problems.  In dealing with specific problems exclusively, we lose sight of the direction of an endeavor. 

So, to sum up: 

Ritualized meetings are:

1. Predictable (consistent structure and agenda)

2. Short (If something requires detailed discussion, that belongs in a conversation, not a ritualized meeting).

3. Reassuring (Parties involved receive confirmation of project direction)

4. Vital (consistently attended, respected, and worthwhile).

 

Technorati tags: agile management, management, business, ritualized meetings, ritual, communication, team management, consulting, nancy white, david anderson

Blogged at WorldClub in Narita Airport, Narita Japan Using Windows Live Writer

Comments

[Edward]

I'm thinking about the daily meetings in my life and the one that comes to mind is dinner every night with the family - not certain how that corresponds exactly to business meetings, but it certainly has Ritual.

I don't know how to have the staff get self-control though when the youngest is 20 mo.

[Nancy White]

Good stuff Jim. How do you think this would play out in a community or network setting, rather than a team setting?