3

THE BIG FIVE

After the jet reached cruising altitude, Iris pulled a small bag of celery sticks from her computer case.

“Been craving veggies lately,” she said between munches. “So what are the five big meeting pain points you’ve been yammering about?”

“Why don’t you tell me?” I replied. “What bothers you most about meetings at Spex?”

Iris thought for a moment and said, “Sheer volume. We meet too much.”

“What else?”

“Our meetings always start and end late—we jokingly call that ‘Spex Time.’ We never stay on track, agendas are rare, and presentations run way too long.”

Her whiskers twitched as she paused to think. “Oh yes, and action items vaporize the moment people leave.”

“Does this happen in both live and virtual meetings?” I asked.

Iris rolled her eyes. “Don’t get me started on virtual meetings! Most of them are boring as mud. I swear that half of my team is doing email during our weekly sales managers’ teleconference—especially Alex.”

“Alex?” I asked.

“He’s one of our best regional sales managers. But he never says a word in meetings, and if I call on him, he always sounds startled. He’s probably surfing the web or downloading music.”

Iris leaned toward me and whispered, “Personally, I’m starting to wonder if he really exists.”

“Okay,” I laughed. “What other concerns do you have about virtual meetings?”

“Tech issues,” she said. “In today’s Operation Elevation meeting, the senior leadership team had trouble logging in to the web conference, so we started 15 minutes late. In other remote meetings—often with our clients—we’ve had computers freeze, noisy cell phones, dropped lines, scheduling problems, you name it.”

“So virtual meetings are a big concern?”

“They could save Spex millions in travel costs and help us go green,” sighed Iris. “Unfortunately, our virtual meetings stink!”

She flashed a desperate, defeated look. “Can you untangle this mess?”

“Sure we can,” I said, reaching into my computer bag. I handed Iris a small bifold card titled The Hamster Revolution for Meetings Power Tools. “We start here,” I said, pointing to the first section of the card, “The Hamster Revolution Meeting Plan.”

“Neat,” said Iris, looking carefully at the card. “You’ve outlined most of the challenges I just mentioned and provided a solution for each one.”

The Hamster Revolution Meeting Plan

“We’ve also found that the top five meeting complaints apply to many different kinds of meetings, including staff, brainstorming, one-on-one, and client meetings.”

“So addressing these five problems helps almost everyone in almost every meeting situation,” reasoned Iris, taking the card from my hand and leaning back in her seat to study it.

“We’re experiencing all of these challenges,” she said. “But how long does this hamster thing take?”

I pointed at the plan and said, “We can cover the first two items, Meeting Overload and Missing Key Elements, on this short flight.

“If you find our discussion valuable and want to learn more, I’ll attend a few of your virtual meetings and provide feedback and solutions next week—that’s how we’ll tackle Virtual Meeting Chaos.

“Finally, I’d be happy to visit you and your team at Spex headquarters in three weeks. That’s when we’ll cover the last two topics, Meandering Meetings and Incomplete Action Items. Your total time investment will be three hours.”

“Not bad. But what about those 15 days?” asked Iris, with a mischievous grin that said prove it to me. “How can you possibly save me that much time?”

I smiled and said, “I thought you’d never ask.”