CHAPTER 4
Meetings & Office Communication
It’s amazing what you’re saying to others when you just listen.
—THOMAS FRIEDMAN
It’s no surprise that most office workers spend a large amount of their time at work in meetings. According to Inc. and the online meeting company Fuze, there are 25 million meetings per day in the U.S., making up 15 percent of an organization’s collective time, with the average employee spending up to four hours per week simply preparing for status update meetings.
They also found that most meetings are unproductive; in fact, executives consider more than 67 percent of meetings a failure, costing businesses more than $37 billion per year for unproductive meetings. Other estimates are even higher. According to Doodle’s State of Meetings Report, the cost of poorly organized meetings was $399 billion in the U.S. in a recent year, representing a tremendous drag on the effectiveness of businesses.
And other forms of communication at work fare no better. For example, The Radicati Group found that, every day, 205.6 billion emails are sent across the globe, only one-third of which are actually opened. Around 25 percent of employees think email is a major productivity killer, although 74 percent of all adults online prefer email as their main method of communication, as mentioned by Ving.
David Grossman reported in “The Cost of Poor Communications” that a survey of 400 companies with 100,000 employees each cited an average loss per company of $62.4 million per year because of inadequate communication to and between employees. And in her article “The Top Ten Email Blunders That Cost Companies Money,” Debra Hamilton asserted that miscommunication cost smaller companies of 100 employees an average of $420,000 per year.
Would meetings and other forms of communication become more effective and efficient if they were a little more fun? We believe so.
Let’s look at some examples of how companies make meetings and communications a bit more fun for everyone involved, helping participants get excited about communicating with each other rather than dreading the task.
At The Ken Blanchard Companies, the authors came up with the idea of rotating responsibility for bringing in a joke to their weekly meeting. It started the meeting out on a fun note, people had a week to come up with a joke, and everyone shared responsibility for the humor, making it even more fun. They also experimented with other tactics, including timers to stay on agenda and standing meetings, which always tended to be short!
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At the start of weekly staff meetings, Maria Gonzales, the manager of the Memorial Branch Library in San Antonio, Texas, has her team play a game where Gonzalez writes down a number and folds it up. Then everyone calls out a number, and whoever guesses the correct or nearest to the correct number becomes “It” and is encouraged to tell the group a joke, sing a song, or do some other fun or silly thing to help the team relax.
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Open Systems Technologies, a Grand Rapids, Michigan–based company, holds paper-airplane contests during their meetings.
“No meeting is still better than a bad meeting.”
—ANONYMOUS
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Plum Organics, a baby food manufacturer headquartered in Emeryville, California, distributes coloring books and crayons for team members to use at Thursday meetings.
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New York City–based Fast Company, the business magazine, has Monopoly game–themed meeting rooms.
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“Before COVID hit we needed to give a presentation to a group of people,” says Linda Mott from BC Hydro. Rather than create a PowerPoint, they developed their own version of an “escape room” where attendees solved puzzles and opened locks in order to get to a prize at the end. “It was a fun way to learn and was fun putting it together,” says Mott.
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What if you go to a business meeting and a Wii bowling game breaks out? That’s what happened to Tiffany Griffiths, an employee of Business Solutions Inc., an information system consulting firm headquartered in The Woodlands, Texas. “It’s a lot of fun,” says Griffiths. “It’s a way to get creative, to do things differently,” says Tiffany’s manager, Daron Brown. When not bowling, many “walking” meetings are held outside to take advantage of the fresh air.
CASE STUDY
WHO DONE IT? GROUP ICEBREAKER
Fareast Mercantile Trade Company Ltd. in Lagos, Nigeria, had great fun with a “who done it?” icebreaker during a company leadership meeting. The facilitator (Bob) distributed a checklist of various personal descriptions, traits, and activities to attendees and asked them to interview as many other attendees as possible over a 15-minute timeframe. The checklist included items such as:
- Lives with parents or grandparents
- Has a pet animal
- Has children under the age of nineteen
- Plays a musical instrument
- Has been married over twenty years
- Loves to cook
- Taught at a college or university
- Has visited 5 or more African countries
The goal of the interview was to find out which descriptions fit the person being interviewed, and to check off as many as possible. During the debrief of the activity, people with similar interests were grouped together to discuss specific questions and further share about common experiences.
The group enjoyed the activity so much that members continued the activity during lunch and into the evening. They found it was a great way to connect with and learn more about their colleagues. It’s a small, small world.
Virgin founder Richard Branson believes that innovative ideas come from innovative spaces. For example, holding a meeting in a park or cafe will inject freshness and create new ideas and ways of thinking.
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Workers at Genera Games, a mobile game publisher headquartered in Seville, Spain, have meetings while warming up and playing a quick game of basketball. And management team meetings at Nugget Markets, a Woodland, California–based grocery chain, have been known to be held in wrestling rings.
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Simple Truth, a brand development agency based in Chicago, Illinois, puts a different spin on conventional meetings as well. They hold a 9@9 Meeting every Monday—a nine-minute-long meeting starting at 9 a.m. At TINYpulse, an employee engagement software provider based in Seattle, Washington, the daily staff meeting starts at 8:48 a.m. Both companies have found that employees seldom miss or are late for these meetings.
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Evergage, the cloud-based software firm located in Somerville, Massachusetts, has 15-minute daily meetings but has found they usually only last between 5 and 15 minutes. And they end with a bang by having team members do push-ups. The unusual approach caught on, and they all really like it, and push-ups have become a tradition.
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Workers at Asana, a team collaboration application company, and Airbnb, the vacation housing provider in San Francisco, California, never have meetings on Wednesdays. Hugo, the meeting notes developer based in San Francisco, California, cut its meetings down to four hours per week. By using its own product along with video and Slack, the company found its employees were better informed than when they relied more on traditional meetings.
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Workers are rarely late to meetings at the Inquisium division of Cvent, a survey software firm headquartered in the greater Washington, D.C., area. VP Darrell Gehrt started the unique custom of having latecomers sing when they arrive. “We’ve heard the national anthem, happy birthday, and nursery rhymes. The biggest downside is that it has been so effective, we rarely get the opportunity to make anyone sing these days,” says Gehrt.
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Brivo, a Bethesda, Maryland–based security management software firm, has a “no rehash” rule. Meeting attendees raise the “No Rehash” Ping-Pong paddle to let others know that a topic or point has already been addressed or made. “It’s a visual reminder, but more importantly it empowers everyone in the company to call out counterproductive rehashing whenever and wherever they see it,” says president and CEO Steve Van Till, who started the rule. “The bigtime savings is that no one has to justify invoking the rule itself, and the meeting can proceed with earlier decisions intact.”
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“Only hold meetings where two pizzas are enough to feed everyone in the room.”
—AMAZON
Along a similar vein, at The Ken Blanchard Companies, an Escondido, California–based management and leadership training firm, the authors used a coconut as a prop to facilitate discussions. Whoever held the coconut could speak without interruption. It helped keep the balance of speaking and listening in meetings. And it turned into an enduring communication tool and an endearing part of every meeting. At Microsoft, one team uses “Ralph,” a rubber chicken, to toss among the group to the speaker of the moment.
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Creative director C. J. Johnson of Santa Monica, California–based Buddytruk, a mobile app that connects truck owners with one another, says, “If we run over, the last person talking has to do 50 push-ups. At first it was just a funny gag. Now, it’s turned into a great bonding experience.”
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Stopwatches are set for 30 minutes at the start of every meeting at San Francisco, California–based Tripping.com, a search engine for vacation rentals. If the meeting goes longer, the person who called the meeting must throw $5 in the team “swear” jar. Business development consulting firm Just Fearless, headquartered in Los Angeles, California, also sets a 30-minute time limit for meetings. Founder Kisha Mays says if the meeting runs long, the chairs are removed, and everyone must stand until the end. This idea is not lost on the top tech companies. Facebook’s engineering manager, Mark Tonkelowitz, reportedly holds 15-minute stand-up meetings at 12 p.m. daily. The impending lunchtime makes for concise updates.
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8 Ways to Make Meetings More Fun
1.Don’t call it a meeting. Call it a “schlubfest.”
2.Hold meetings outside or in a park.
3.Start a meeting with the singing of a well-known song, giving a prize to anyone who can sing it without missing a word.
4.Assign a different team member to tell a joke at team meetings.
5.Bring toys to spur creative thinking.
6.As an icebreaker, ask each member to share two truths and one lie about him/herself. The others must guess which is the lie. Give out prizes.
7.To keep attendees engaged, add something humorous every few minutes.
8.Have fun-loving facilitators run major meetings/retreats.
Perhaps fearing “death by PowerPoint,” CEO and founder of online retailer Amazon, Jeff Bezos, has banned the visual aid application in his meetings. He believes the tool makes things easy for presenters but more difficult for the audience.
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“You want to go to work with people you like and where everyone is having fun.”
—MEGAN FOX
Strategic planning consultant Michele Tamayo, of Tamayo Group Inc., a Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California, consulting firm, shared two fun icebreaker examples she used during COVID-19:
When the State Association of County Retirement Systems (California) held a recent virtual board meeting, the facilitator asked attendees to share one “day in the life” example from their jobs along with one hobby or interest they had outside of work. After one member said that he played the bagpipes, another member urged him to play for them at the next meeting break. People were amazed and very interested in how long he had been playing, where he’d played, and so on.
To open a virtual board meeting of the San Diego County Bar Association, members shared a positive experience during the viral outbreak. One member proudly presented a diamond engagement ring, while another asked her husband to introduce their newborn baby. “At both meetings, everyone was very engaged, and it really opened up the conversation with several follow-up questions. They really got to know one another much better,” says Tamayo.
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Meeting attendees at Poll Everywhere, the San Francisco, California–based company that collects live responses through their online services, have a “moment of Zen,” where they take time, as a group, to learn something new or reflect on the meeting or their day. Leaders and facilitators share inspiring quotes or stories, and team members discuss wins and highlights and compliment others.
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When she worked for Time Warner in Milwaukee, Noelle Sment used an effective stress management strategy: a Bad Day Board. She would list everyone’s name with a magnet that could be moved to show who was under a lot of stress, experiencing personal problems, struggling with difficult customers, etc. Initially meant to serve as a warning system for others, the group soon started cheering up anyone who was having a “bad day” and had a lot of fun in the process!
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Barbara Ashkin of Syracuse, New York–based Cxtec, a technology infrastructure provider, added humor to the company’s phone-answering menu that—in addition to the expected options—said, “Press 4 to hear the lion roar. Press 5 to hear a funny joke.” “Customers appreciated the humor and realized that this is a different kind of company,” says Ashkin.
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At the Seattle, Washington, offices of Hulu, the company encourages transparently sharing information in a variety of ways: via Huluverse (the company’s social intranet), video conferencing, chat rooms, monthly company-wide meetings called “wind downs,” or good old-fashioned face time with coworkers.
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7 Ways to Have Better Meetings
1.Send agendas well in advance of the meeting.
2.Use an icebreaker.
3.Recognize people’s achievements (start of the meeting).
4.Have a clear objective, ground rules.
5.Take notes.
6.Invite only necessary attendees.
7.Keep them short.
At Emeryville, California–headquartered Pixar, the animation and entertainment studio, workers participate in Note’s Day. The company puts current projects on pause to have company-wide brainstorming sessions. People gather in small teams to share ideas and discuss relevant issues and company challenges. Leaders from various departments drop into other teams’ meetings to understand and hear the varying viewpoints.
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“We believe in work+life, not work vs. life.”
—DHARMESH SHAH
Facebook holds “hackathons”—employees collaborate intensely on tech-related projects over a finite period of time—throughout the year, and they have not only become a great way for employees to interact and work together, but have resulted in the creation of several beneficial features such as tagging friends in Facebook comments and “liking” friends’ posts.
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To inspire direct interactions with his workforce, Charles Phillips, CEO of Infor, a software company headquartered in New York City, gives his cell phone number to all employees, encouraging them to call or text whenever they wish.
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At Moz, the Seattle, Washington–based marketing analytics software firm, CEO Rand Fishkin strives for complete transparency, including the type of information he shares on his blog—from multimillion-dollar business deal failures to his proposal to his future wife. Employees have found it very inspirational and have become more transparent themselves.
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Sridhar Vembu, founder of Zoho, a software development company headquartered in Chennai, India, relies on a tool called Cideo to transparently communicate with his company. He uses an A.M.A. (ask me anything) format to respond to both spontaneous and prepared questions.
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At New York City–based Bitly, a URL shortening service, CEO Mark Josephson connects with his employees on a daily basis by sitting at different tables and desks throughout the office. But it’s his Cocktails & Dreams meetings where he finds some of the best engagement. Every week, someone is nominated to be a bartender, and everyone in the company grabs a drink together, while Josephson gives an update. “We meet weekly to share updates and progress as a company,” says Josephson. “We celebrate wins and acknowledge losses. It’s ultimately a great way to recap the week and set the stage for the following week,” he adds.
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Mark Dankberg, CEO of the Carlsbad, California– based broadband services and technology company ViaSat, started Mark D’s Book Club, where workers can read books on business, strategy, leadership, and innovation. The idea was started as a way for the company’s global team to learn the same business concepts and language, think strategically together, and exchange ideas. “It has become a way for ViaSat employees to better understand how we think, how we view the world, and how we make decisions,” says Dankberg. “And it helps each employee be more prepared in shaping their own career development.”
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7 More Ways to Have Better Meetings
1.Give a variety of food. Meet and Eat!
2.Incorporate a teambuilding activity.
3.Change the scenery; meet in different venues.
4.Switch seating order.
5.Rotate roles (facilitator, timekeeper, scribe, eraser monitor).
6.Use breakout groups.
7.Meet standing up.
CEO Harry Herington, of information service provider NIC Inc., a digital government service provider from Olathe, Kansas, has fun and promotes employee engagement by visiting NIC branches across the company via motorcycle. He calls his initiative Ask the CEO, and the idea was born to ensure open communication in the aftermath of the 2001 Enron scandal. “How do you get someone to trust you? You look them in the eye,” says Herington, who hosts a dinner during his visit. Workers are encouraged to ask him any business and nonbusiness questions.
“If you had to identify in one word the reason why the human race has not achieved and never will achieve its full potential, that word would be ‘meetings.’”
—DAVE BARRY