Meetings — Mistrust and FOMO

Meetings are the bane of our existence. We spend so much time in meetings that we are numb to the effects of the meeting environment.

We sit there going over email or messages waiting for our turn to talk. We are not really engaged because we know the personalities around the table — Joe goes on because he likes to hear himself talk; Samantha, while really intelligent, tends to go over the same ground from previous meetings; the boss wants to build consensus on every detail to the point of dragging everything out.

So we dread meetings but we sit in them.

Why?

There are a few reasons that stand out. The fact that we don’t trust the others in the meeting is probably top on the list. This lack of trust is due to different reasons. The first is just that, you don’t trust someone in the meeting because they will kill your idea or they will take credit for your idea, or take you down in front of the boss when you aren’t there. This is a toxic environment and needs to be cleaned up immediately. The organization, department, team can’t get anything done with this type of attitude. For small companies this is the start of the path to oblivion.

Another reason for mistrust, which may be even more significant, is FOMO. Fear Of Missing Out. That the information divulged, decision reached, or direction established, or more importantly question asked, may not actually be disseminated to those that are affected by the new information, decision, direction or question.

I recently sat in a meeting where one of the development people asked that marketing investigate customer sentiment about a feature. Everyone in the room thought that it was a really good idea because he has a PhD. And is really intelligent. Problem is that the same thing was asked by the same person 3 months before. Marketing had, while at trade shows, in front of customers, asked about the feature idea and received some very good insights that were documented and shared with the team. And we would have gone down that same road again if marketing were not in the meeting to remind everyone that we had the exact information requested in hand and on Google Drive.

Later with the president, the marketing manager explained that he really, really didn’t want to be in the meeting but because of what occurred he had to waste his time just in case it happened again. (Turns out the president forgot about the research as well and would have trodden down the same cow path.)

Why do we subject ourselves to these types of meetings? All because we don’t trust the others not to submarine us, or to protect ourselves from rework, or because the president requires us to sit and listen to the most intelligent person in the room, who really isn’t the smartest.

We document ourselves silly but don’t keep the most relevant information close at hand. The toxic meeting or the FOMO meeting, whether in person or online, is a sure company killer. It is usually obvious to everyone, but no one does anything about it. This is like trying to kill the frog by tossing him into the pot of boiling water. Hard to do but effective. The more insidious version of meeting mistrust will just as surely lead to oblivion. It is more like the frog in the pot that has the temperature slowly brought to a boil. We sit thinking to ourselves, “hmm getting a little warm” until we meet the same fate.

So how do we make meetings productive without mistrust or FOMO? Here are 10 things you can do.

• Respect others’ time. In turn, let others know that your time is just as valuable as theirs.
• Cancel all but the most important meetings. Periodically review the purpose and goals of the meeting to determine what should stay and what should go or what should be changed.
• Those that remain, provide a notes page someplace, SharePoint, Google Drive, DropBox, where everyone can see all of the activity and/or progress or non-progress that the group is making.
• Send a reminder of the meeting with a link or copy of the latest notes attached.
• Start on time regardless of who is there or not — the first few times may be rough but let people know that the meeting will start on time and if they miss the first few minutes they can talk to someone else after the meeting.
• In the vein of Jeff Bezos, you could allow the first 5 or 10 minutes of the meeting strictly for people to read up on the status of the meeting. But start on time no matter what.
• When the subject matter is really important, consider the meeting before the meeting — talk to the key influencers and get a take on how they feel about the subject. If the response is not what you were hoping or expecting, you may want to postpone the meeting and work on the subject some more before taking it to the main group.
• Consider a designated note taker that is not leading the meeting so that the notes can be duly reported and then produced in a timely manner.
• CREATE AN ACTION ITEM LIST. If there are no action items, why have another meeting? If there are action items but the group needs a month to work on them, don’t have a meeting next week. Schedule the next meeting after the action item times have elapsed. If there are critical aspects to the action items it may be cause for an in between meeting.
• When the need for the meeting is complete, KILL IT.

Meetings can be useful to communicate vital information to a number of people in a short amount of time. Just be mindful of mistrust, FOMO, meeting fatigue and usefulness. Consideration of all of these will make your organization more productive and you a better leader.

Originally published in Medium - December 3, 2018