Chapter 8. Using clearing meetings to advance self-organization

This chapter covers

• Using clearing meetings to advance team organization
• Identifying and utilizing team goals
• Structuring and examples of clearing meetings

Self-organization can be defined as the team working independently of you, the leader, when making decisions and moving forward in a productive manner.

This chapter discusses how to use clearing meetings to advance the team gradually toward the ability and skills necessary to solve their problems without you. I’ve found this technique useful with my own teams.

In the previous chapters, you learned about the learning phase. In this chapter, you’ll learn how to gradually move your team into self-organization while measuring your progress. To reiterate, self-organization is achieved when everyone on the team learns how to solve their own problems instead of relying on you to solve their problems for them. One crucial tool that I’ve found invaluable in driving the team toward a state of self-organization is clearing meetings.

I first learned about clearing meetings when one of my managers introduced the idea to our management team. He then implemented this as a standard weekly meeting for our team, and I’ve experienced this for more than two years with my own team as well as with other teams.

Clearing meetings can have several goals:

• Introduce important issues everyone should know about
• Pull the Andon cord, a stop-the-line trigger that makes everyone pay attention to an important issue and do something about it
• Give everyone the chance to air issues that bother them
• Gauge the current level of the team’s self-organization
• Create more trust within the team
• Flex the team’s self-organization muscles and remind them to solve problems on their own

It’s called a clearing meeting because you uncover all the stuff the team knows is not working, bad feelings they’ve buried about the job, and information that should be shared; then you do something about it.

To understand how it works, let me describe a typical session.

The meeting

It’s 9 a.m. in the meeting room. Present are Jim (team leader of team 1), Jenna (team leader of team 2), David (marketing team leader), and me.

Me	“Morning everyone. As usual, we’re having this clearing meeting like any other Friday. Remember, nothing is out of scope for discussion here and I expect you to speak up if you disagree with something. We’re starting like any other meeting by going around the room with our usual set of questions. Jim, is there anything you wish had gone better this week? Something you’re not happy about that happened?”
Jim	“Hmm. As you know, our team was all set for a new release this week. Well, we failed to do a release even though that’s something we committed to do. I know we tried our best, but something wasn’t clicking. I hated how we deployed things manually instead of fixing the build script. I think that’s what eventually stopped us from releasing.”
Me	“OK. What are you going to do about it?”
Jim	(A little taken aback. Thinking...) “Well... hmm... I... I think we need to fix the build before doing anything else.”
Me	“So you will...?”
Jim	“I will fix the build.”
Me	“By...?”
Jim	“I will fix the build by this evening.”
Me	“Is that really something you can commit to? Do you know exactly what’s wrong with it that you’re so sure it will take that long?”
Jim	“Well, I’m just guessing.”
Me	“In that case, please commit to something fully under your control. For example, that you will spend X hours on it in the next couple of days until it is solved. Or something like that.”
Jim	“Yeah, makes sense. I will work on fixing the build at least five hours each day of the week until it works the way it should.”
Me	“Are you happy with that solution, Jim?”
Jim	“Mmhmm. Yep!”
Jenna	“Jim, if you fix the build, you’re doing that thing again. That thing where you take on everything yourself because you hate wasting time explaining things to other people. That hurts my team, because whenever they need something from your team, they usually get referred to you, since your team doesn’t know how to do anything but the simplest tasks.”
Jim	“Yeah, I get it. You also said that in the last meeting. But, seriously, we don’t have time for teaching everyone on my team about the build process.”
Jenna	(Sighs.) You’ll say the same thing in the next meeting and the one after that. Aren’t we supposed to be agile?”
Me	“Sounds like survival mode to me.”
Jim	(Sighs.) “I didn’t realize it until I heard the words coming out of my mouth.”
Me	“So what are you going to do about that?”
Jim	“I’ll need to make more time so the team can learn about the builds.”
Me	(Smiling.) “So you will...by...?”
Jim	“I will remove or change enough commitments by the end of next week, so that there’s enough time for me to teach at least one person about the build. And then the week after, on Monday, I will pair on the build with Christie, I think. She always seemed interested in how the build works anyway.”
Me	“OK. Are you happy with that solution?”
Jim	(Thinking...) “Yes, I think that’s a step in the right direction.”
Me	“OK, Thanks Jim. Jenna, anything that wasn’t working for you this week?”
Jenna	“Well, there was this one thing, but I’m already doing something about it.”
Me	“Great! If you wanna share, feel free.”
Jenna	“Well, not really. It was something between me and another person and we weren’t getting along, but I talked with them this morning, and we’re working on patching things up.”
Me	“Happy to hear. David, anything you’d like to share that maybe hasn’t worked well for you this week?”
David	“No. Nothing special.”
Me	“Really? Everything was just perfect? This week couldn’t have gone better at work?”
David	(Wrapped in thought...) “Well, you know, I think we’re building the wrong product.”
Jim	“What do you mean?”
David	“It’s a long story. Let’s take this offline. It’s just going to make this meeting too long.”
Me	“No, please continue. If it bothers you, the team needs to hear this, and we might need to do something about it.”
Jim	“Is this about that customer-mirror test?”
	(During such a test, you’re behind a mirror, watching a customer use your product.)
David	“Yeah. From what I saw on Tuesday, people are trying to use our product as we initially thought they might, rather than how we’ve designed it over the last couple of months. I have many doubts about it.”
Jenna	“So you’re saying we should drop it all and go back to the two-month-old idea? Seriously? All that time wasted?”
David	“I’m not saying...”
Jim	“David, you’ve only been here six months. You might be seeing things through rose-colored glasses.”
David	“Well, actually, that might not be a bad thing. But before changing everything, let me show you the videos.”
	(David runs and gets his laptop and shows about five minutes’ worth of his video highlights.)
	“Now, what do you think?”
Jim	“Yeah, that was not good.”
David	“Exactly.”
Me	“OK, David, so what are you going to do about it?”
David	“Well, I want to be more sure. I want to run some more customer tests.”
Me	“So you will...?”
David	“That’s it, I can’t do anything about that. I don’t own the budget. That’s you.”
Me	“I have to say I’m not convinced. We might be seeing too little. We might need more tests.”
David	“If you approve, I’ll make calls to the company that sets these up and arrange for three more sessions by the end of today.”
Me	“OK, do that.”
	(I write myself a note about the budget.)
	“OK, David, so are you happy with this start of a solution?”
David	“Yep!”
Me	“OK then. Great. Now let’s start with the second question. Jim, tell us about something good that happened for you this week or something good that was done by someone you work with.”
Jim	“Well, Blaine is back from being sick. And he’s jazzed up. Today he was teaching everyone about regular expressions. I feel like we are getting our energy back with this guy around.”
Me	“Great! Jenna? One good thing?”
Jenna	“I noticed that James from my team and Joyce from David’s team were working together on some numbers for the product box a couple days ago. That’s the first time I saw anyone from marketing talking to anyone but me on my team. It was great!”
Me	“Cool. David?”
David	“Yeah. That was nice huh? After we talked following last week’s clearing meeting, I talked to Joyce and challenged her to talk to a real dev. She said it was weird, but in a good way. In any case, my good thing is about Jim. When he spoke to that annoyed customer from Coca-Cola the other day, that really saved my neck. Thanks for taking a personal look.”
Jim	“Happy to help.”
Me	“OK. What’s not working for me? Well, nothing. Whatever wasn’t working, you’re already doing something about that. So for me, everything is working great. Jim, this week you and your team tried to do a feature we thought was next to impossible. You almost made it to release, and I think next week when it is released, it will be amazing. Thanks. Jenna, thank you for doing such an amazing job bringing two new people into your team at such a difficult time. You’re spending time with them instead of in meetings, and that’s commendable. Thank you. David, you guys brought in one of the clients we lost a year ago. Great job! OK, everybody. Does everybody know what they’re going to do once they leave this room?” (Everyone nods.)
Jim	“Um... Wait. So what will I do again?”
Jenna	“You’ll make time to teach your team about builds and then pair up. Next week.”
Jim	“Ah, cool, Jenna. Good memory. Nice!”
	(Everyone leaves.)

What just happened

You’ve just read a not-so-remote account of something that happened on a real team I was on. The team had a passionate discussion about things that needed to change, and people took responsibility for their problems. The meeting ended with everyone knowing what they were going to do and feeling things were already on the way to improvement.

To understand and analyze this meeting, we have to take a step back and talk about integrity and how that fits into the picture.

What is integrity again

I discussed the idea of integrity in chapter 6. In the example meeting, I used commitment language and made sure people exercised full integrity when making promises. When people promised something they couldn’t fully control, I brought them back to reality by asking them to commit to a more realistic set of actions that would bring them to their goal. For example, when they committed to fix a bug by a specific time, I asked them to commit to working on it X number of hours each day instead.

Let’s get a better handle on what happened by looking at the overall structure I used for the meeting.

The structure of the meeting

The structure follows a rather simple process and can take anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours, depending on how burning and passionate the issues discussed are:

• “What has not been working for you this past week?”
• Discussion and possible detours
• “What are you going to do about it?”
• Discussion and possibly more detours
• “What has been working for you this past week?”
• Your closing words

Let’s take a closer look.

The meeting

I started the integrity meeting by asking these three simple questions, going around the room with each one before moving to the next one.

“What has not been working for you this past week?”

This question is open-ended. The goal is to see if there’s anything that’s been missed, either at the personal or at the team level. People can get frustrated with the software world, and if you let them talk about the things that frustrate them, even if they seem small, you might be surprised at how much they’re willing to share.

Things that you might look for are these:

• “The build keeps failing.”
• “Documentation is lousy.”
• “Team X is giving us a hard time.”
• “We’re doing the wrong thing.”

These or other statements related to the current work environment, people, or process are valid. Looking at this question from the self-organization point of view, this question is asking, “Is there anything that is hindering the team and needs adjustment?”

But it’s a question that the people being asked should learn to ask themselves. You are asking this question because it’s part of the almost invisible process of training people to think about the current status quo and continuously contemplate which changes need to be done. Avoiding blind acceptance of the status quo is one of the concepts you want your team to learn.

People might at first say, “Nothing went wrong this week.” Try to persist a little bit. Give examples of possible sources of concern. Try not to accept “nothing” for an answer, particularly from the first couple of people answering. Other people in the meeting will follow the lead of the first few and, if the first ones are silent, will usually shy away from saying anything.

Also note that this kind of question can raise some demons that might previously have been kept in backroom meetings. If an argument starts, try to keep it going. Embrace conflict. People who’ve been heard are more willing to make a commitment even if they don’t like the decision made by the group or the leader.

“What are you going to do about it?”

If a person has indicated that something wasn’t going well this week, ask them, “What are you going to do about it?” You may ask in a more polite manner, but remember what we talked about in chapter 6: don’t use words that offer an easy way out. Here are some examples that give a way out by asking the question in a different way:

• “What could you do about it?” (This is merely contemplating versus requesting specific action.)
• “How would you fix it?” (Again, contemplating versus an actual request for action.)

Once you’ve challenged the person to action, make sure you get all the way to a commitment. That person needs to know what they’re going to do after the meeting is over or have a timeline or end date they’re expected to meet.

From the point of view of self-organization, this is an important learning tool for the person being asked. Always ask “What are you going to do about it?” when you hear a statement that something isn’t going well. Too often, we complain about the world and don’t do anything about it. Here’s a situation that’s much closer to us—our own work environment—and we have more say over how things work around us. We can influence our immediate environment, and we should.

For a self-organizing team, having each team member realize that they’re not stuck in a situation, but can always choose to do something about it, is one of those turnaround moments. A team can begin being proactive instead of reactive. A team can begin anticipating and preventing problems, and people on the team can stop thinking they have to be miserable while doing their jobs.

You can teach your team that, as professionals, it’s okay for them to feel annoyed at the way things are. They should be feeling happier when things are being done more professionally. Then they should take those gut feelings they have and apply them toward making a better work environment, product, and process.

The core lesson here again is this: don’t passively accept that which bothers you. There’s always something you can do.

The question “What are you going to do about it?”—normally asked in connection with a problem statement—contains a core lesson; you’re teaching them to ask themselves this question when something bothers them.

This is the core of self-organization: when the team finds something that needs to change, they look within to begin solving the problem, instead of forwarding the problem to a manager.

“What has been working for you this past week?”

Once you’ve gone around the room and all the bad energy has been emptied, and you’ve made sure anyone who had a problem will be doing something about it, start asking this question.

There are several reasons for asking this question:

• Clear the air and give everyone a positive feeling
• Acknowledge people for their actions and efforts
• Share good news and information with the team

Try to make the answer about other people in the team or company, but don’t force it. Here are some examples of answers I hear:

• “I sat with X from the QA department, and, for the first time, it was really helpful.”
• “I pair-programmed with X, and we found something I was stuck on for a while. It felt good.”
• “We finally released that thing we were stuck on.”
• “We got new machines! Finally!”

There should always be something good to say. Don’t let people say nothing. If they can’t think of something, return to them at the end of the round. This is a lesson in noticing others and being socially aware enough to share a compliment.

Your closing words

Now that everyone has expressed what didn’t work and what did work for them this week, it’s your turn. You answer the first question, “What didn’t work for me this week?” Now, it’s possible that there was something that didn’t work for you this week, and you still haven’t begun doing anything about it. This is a good time to bring it up with your team and say what you’re going to do about it.

For example:

This week I noticed that I spent way too much time on meetings instead of being there with you when you needed me. Like when the build crashed and you waited for me a whole day. So what am I going to do about it? I will block off at least 50% of my time in the coming month in the company calendar, so that I don’t get this distracted again. I’ll do this by the end of the day today.

Also, as closing words, remind the team that, as an exercise, you want them to try to reach the next meeting not only with things that didn’t work for them, but also with actions they’ve already taken. It can go something like this:

Next week, the day before the meeting, imagine the meeting has started and I’m asking you what didn’t work well this week. Imagine your answer and my follow-up question, “What are you going to do about it?” Then, answer that question in your head, commit to an action, and then just do it. Ideally, you should come to the next meeting saying, “There was X that bothered me, but I’m already doing something about it.”

The overall point of this meeting

As discussed at the beginning of this chapter, this meeting can be used for many things. I find that it’s effective for teaching a team of peers to think proactively about solving things that bother them and at the same time gauging how self-reliant they are.

At each meeting, notice how many people say, “I had a problem with X, but I’m already doing something about it.” The day that everyone says that, you can say your team is self-organizing. They’re proactively solving their own problems without waiting for anyone else’s permission to do something about it.

Keeping the meeting on track

What happens if you notice personal attacks, stubbornness, helplessness, or other negative behavior in the meeting? If you haven’t had many meetings yet, this could be the underlying team dysfunctions coming to the surface.

If this is the first time this has happened, or the first meeting, sit back and perhaps write notes about behavior you found problematic. I wouldn’t necessarily do anything immediately. If a new member in the team suggests changes and gets attacked in the meeting, let them handle the fire on their own. Don’t stop the meeting and take things offline. Let the team member learn how to handle themselves in a team argument. Later, after the meeting, you can sit with them in a one-on-one meeting and coach them on handling future meetings more effectively.

Conflict is not bad in such meetings. In fact, if you have no conflict, you might not be talking about the truly important subjects.

A beta reader asked if seeing negative behavior means the team isn’t mature enough to have such a meeting. I think the purpose of the meeting is to take an immature team and help it grow to maturity. Delaying the meeting until you feel it’s the right time will prolong the process of maturing the team.

Next up

Next, we’ll talk about influence patterns and how they can aid in your quest to develop team skills in the face of naysayers.

Summary

• Clearing meetings combine commitment language, integrity values, and slack time to push the team toward learning how to solve their own problems. They’re also good for measuring how the team is progressing on that path: the more issues they solve without needing to bring them up in the meeting, the more they’ve solved their own problems without needing your intervention!
• Clearing meetings are also a great way to find your team spirit and encourage everybody to be less political and work together, because they help to build team trust over time.