Re: Meeting Agenda (Revised)

Here is the meeting agenda you received:

Project Status Review Meeting

1. Current Status of Project ABCHorrible stock image. They do look happy though.

2. Sub-committee reports

A. Operations

B. Communications

C. Marketing

D. IT

E. Finance

F. Anyone else we forgot (HR?)

3. Review of high-level Project plans

4. Open Issues

5. Discuss next meeting

Based on what actually happens at most of these kinds of meetings, here's a take on the revised agenda:

Project Status Review Meeting

1. Current Status - and yes, we will continue to meet about this project until the last bit of light and hope has been extinguished from your soul

2. Sub-committee Reports

A. Operations - Oh yeah, nothing says 'efficiency' like bullet points with cool animations!

B. Communications - what do they do again? They never seem to make any sense.

C. You have likely faded out already, but it will be your turn soon.

D. Strange guy from Purchasing that wears suspenders. Or is it Shipping? Same thing I guess.

E. They really need to supply donuts at these meetings.

F. Guy from Finance who keeps talking to himself under his breath. That is weird.

G. Dude that works from home, who always has a dodgy phone connection, and no one has ever seen

H. WAKE UP!  It's your turn!!!!

I. Relax you gave your 2 minute update, the other 58 minutes of your life, well, just let them go.

J. Couldn't we have just posted all this on the Project Management system ? What's that? Oh right, we don't have one.

3. Time to break out the iPhone. The rest of the attendees will think you are a jerk, but it's worth it. You are multi-tasking darn it! Once the MS Project handouts get passed around the table, your eyes will glaze over anyway and you need something to keep alert.

4. Open Issues?  Yes, I have one.  Why are there no donuts at these meetings? I guess I have another one, what does 'work at home' guy really do?  Are you sure he even works here?

5. Next meeting - No, please don't make me go through this again.  Unless there are donuts.

I know what you are thinking, another hack post about time wasted in meetings, offering no solutions, not a shred of insight, and perhaps wasting your time just as much as the badly run meetings that it attempts to (lamely) lampoon.

So now I am forced to offer this suggestion - at your next 'Project Status Review Meeting' or close approximation in your organization, take the 'official' agenda and during the meeting mark it up with what truly happens, with what you are actually thinking, and what the true agenda should have been.

Then let me know how far off the mark I was.

Big Red Button, (you know you'll click it)

In the flurry of announcements and product launches in the consumer electronics market that preceded and accompanied the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, you may have missed a little announcement from Netflix, buried in a sea of news and reports about tablets and more tablets.

Last week the internet subscription and streaming service for movies and TV shows announced that streaming of Netflix supplied content to TVs would soon be made even easier, as a number of leading manufacturers like Panasonic, Sony, and Toshiba have agreed to place Netflix-branded one click buttons on remote controls for internet connected TVs, Blu-ray disc players, and other devices that connect the internet to TV.

For Netflix customers, this makes accessing and streaming content even easier and more convenient; for non-Netflix customers the simple act of grabbing the remote to fire up the TV will present an opportunity to raise interest and awareness in the service, and perhaps win over a few more converts. Heck, how many people, even if they had no idea what the big red button actually did, could resist pushing it at least once to find out what may happen. Instead of reading 'Netflix', the button could probably read, 'Don't click this', and lots of people would give it a go anyway.

I have posted about Netflix once before, in the context of how the Netflix subscription and streaming models, with their flexibility and low switching costs could be a sign of things to come in the enterprise and workforce technology spaces.  I think the 'Netflix' button getting placement on TV remotes offers up another potential lesson for both technology solution design as well as for HR professionals challenged with getting their messages seen and heard.

The remote is the launch point for the TV viewer's experience, and Netflix, wanting to be an active and engaged part of that experience is moving to bring forward their position from a place buried in a series of menu commands, to a simple and enticing 'Click here' button. Netflix knows there are competing with the almost limitless choices that a consumer of entertainment has, so by positioning themselves closer to the decision point, they will improve their chances of being considered, and consumed.

Just as the TV viewer navigates through these options before making a selection, most information worker types start their workdays also presented with a plethora of items competing for their attention. Start on last night's 22 new emails, check voice mail, have a look if anyone left donuts in the coffee room, and so on. And as the typical day progresses, the competition for attention intensifies, and the chances for any singular message or meaning cutting through the activity and noise are likely diminished.

You as the HR professional, or the technologist attempting to cut through this clutter and have your message resonate, or have your new and snappy system for collaboration or learning or whatever actually connect with the people you are convinced it would help may want to consider the 'Netflix' remote.

The key - don't have your message or your feature swimming in a sea of similar message and options. If you believe it is truly important, and you have the guts to stand by that determination, then find a way to make it stand out, make your message or your new tool the equivalent of the big, red,' I dare you not to click me', super intriguing Netflix button. Get your link to the new tech tool on the user's home page, get the CEO to sign up and petition others as well.  Make your pitch boldly and differently.

Don't let your idea get lost somewhere between 'Pause' and 'Mute'.

Giving it all away. Sort of.

The sudden surge in popularity of the Q&A site Quora, and perhaps to a lesser extent the online community of experts being developed at Focus have once again led many to evaluate and assess the value and future of open, public, and community powered knowledge repositories.

Where other attempts have been made with varying degrees of success, (Yahoo! Answers, LinkedIn Answers), these new entrants, in particular Quora seem to have captured, at least for the moment, the interest and support of an influential subset of participants (most apparent in the technology space).

From many accounts, the quality of contributors and information found on Quora is unusually high, and in comparison to prior attempts at more broad Q & A sites like Yahoo!, the recent adoption and activity on Quora seem to have captured the attention of a well-connected and active user community.

Participation in open and public forums like Quora and LinkedIn Answers is often a recommendation made to job seekers, as their subject matter knowledge, reasoning ability, and the opportunity to be noticed and to forge connections with other industry or domain experts can all be seen as beneficial to a job search, or to the establishment of a professional identity or brand.

No doubt for many, the built in audience and reach of sites like Quora or LinkedIn offer individuals the chance to be seen and heard by large numbers of relevant people, much more so than can be reached by the launch of a new personal blog, or even by simply posting an online resume or professional profile. 

But for others, in particular for established professionals in a given field, the motivation to participate and contribute to public knowledge portals seems quite a bit different. Some may feel obliged and happy to simply share their insights openly, and willingly; driven simply by the satisfaction derived from adding value to the larger community in which they operate.  Some others might see these platforms in a kind of competitive manner; seeking to leverage them to establish their place in a virtual pecking order of sorts, a process made more acute and apparent when their specific contributions can be compared and contrasted against other well and lesser-known experts.

Most online professional community and networking effort is either directly ('please hire me', 'buy my company's stuff', or 'book me for a speaking gig'); or indirectly ('check out my new post on leadership', 'here's a great piece on productivity apps'), aimed at convincing or at least influencing the intended audience to do or feel something positive towards the contributor. And that makes perfect sense.  We all need to get paid, whether or not that payment is in hard dollars, or in the more amorphous currency of reputation and influence. Either way, the check always comes.

And I suppose that is the problem I get with sites like Quora or even on LinkedIn. I find it hard to read the individual contributions without thinking about the 'sell side' motivations, (or potential motivations) of the contributors.  Maybe that is just a weakness in my ability to distinguish the 'sell' from the content, but either way, these sites can easily degrade into the geek version of the high school homecoming queen contest.  A few popular, good looking, and well connected people trying to convince the rest of us how fantastic they are.  

I suppose at the end of the day, if you really want to contribute to the body of knowledge, you'd write or contribute to a Wikipedia page.  Everyone reads those, and no one knows who writes them.

Unlikely Sources

You are sick.

You are hospitalized with some kind of mysterious ailment.  The initial examination reveals a respiratory problem, but the exact diagnosis, and therefore the recommended course of action remains elusive.

As you lay in your hospital bed, feeling entirely unwell, concerned and nervous about your well-being, at least you can be comforted in the knowledge that by good fortune you are under the care of knowledgeable and experienced doctors, nurses, social workers, and law students.

Hold on a minute - social workers and law students?

What the heck?

I recently read an article about the University of Maryland Medical Center Pediatric Clinic's practice of involving cross functional teams of professionals and students in its assessment and treatment of its pediatric patients. A given patient's condition and potential treatment is discussed in a collaborative manner by medical professors,  seasoned doctors, first-year residents, medical students, and even professionals and students from the schools of pharmacy and law.

What possibly could a law student or social worker have to offer in the diagnosis of a patient's respiratory condition? Would a law student be able to discern pneumonia from an X-Ray?  Would a social worker be qualified to accurately assess asthma from a stress test?

No and no.  But expertise from these non-medical disciplines might have important insights to offer the attending physicians about the patient's environment; about the external forces of community, family, or living conditions that might factor in to a more well-informed evaluation of the circumstances surrounding the patient.  These 'non-experts' might indeed be able to provide valuable insight that ultimately could impact and improve the treatment of the patient.

And even if the law student can't offer any relevant or precise contribution to a specific patient's care, the benefits that accrue to the law student, and the doctors, and the pharmacists, etc. from this kind of up close, in depth, and important exposure and collaboration can't be discounted.

Dr. Jay Perman, the President of the University believes that if students from different schools watch one another in action, they will gain greater understanding of each discipline's value to a given case. In turn, he believes patients will receive more comprehensive care.

Collaboration and inclusion of cross-disciplinary teams to serve dual purposes - to better solve the immediate problem, i.e. treating and curing the patient; and the longer term and broader goal of developing more well-rounded and capable professionals that have a better understanding and appreciation of the point of view and challenges of their colleagues from complementary disciplines.

It is an interesting approach to what has to be considered a typical process in the medical field.  Does the inclusion of professionals and students so as to form a cross-functional team really improve patient outcomes and enhance professional development?

Hard to say for sure, since the practice is still in early days.  

But I suppose we could ask the question this way - How much can you truly learn if you are only surrounded by people that have undergone the exact same training and education programs as you?

Could you ever see a problem differently, and perhaps offer up a different answer if you have been trained and socialized in the same way as all your peers?

Would it make sense to ask Marketing, or Purchasing, or Sales their opinion once in a while? Or are you pretty sure you know it all?

What do you think?

Book of Secrets

In my son's Christmas stocking Santa left a few interesting items - some card games, some Legos, some candy.  But the most intriguing item was a small black book - a Book of Secrets.

The Book of Secrets reveals a collection of, well, secrets.  The location of Winston Churchill's secret World War II bunker, how to concoct various secret potions, and how to survive a shark attack (actually that one really shouldn't be a 'secret', if you do have the knowledge on how to survive a shark attack I think you are pretty much obliged to share it).

It is a cool little book, perhaps a little outside the natural curiosity of the average 9 year old, the articles on how to flirt and how to attract women are (thankfully) not yet resonating with my son.  But after I took a look through the book I couldn't help but think how all of our organizations and workplaces could probably create our own version of the Book of Secrets.  A book that really explained the inside information, and delved into some of the inner, and unseen people, places, and practices that often make understanding and acclimation difficult for new employees.

When new employees join the organization, we typically give them a different kind of book, an employee handbook.  A book, while important, mostly and typically only tells the new employee what they can't or shouldn't do, and serves more as a resource for HR and Legal departments rather than a vital and important reference for employees.  When an employee screws up, the trusty handbook can be thrown at them, and all is good in 'keep our butts out of court land.'

An employee handbook may tell you the names of the company officers and where to find the organization chart, a company Book of Secrets would tell you who really is important, what departments get things done, and who the true experts are, whatever their title or their position on the 'official' chart.

The employee handbook lists, at times ad nauseum, a long string of company policies and procedures.  A Book of Secrets however, would tell the new employee which policies are truly important, and which ones are customarily ignored.

The company intranet, and the 'About Us' sections of the corporate website state, usually in the driest manner possible, the organization's documented vision, mission, and purpose.  The Book of Secrets would illuminate what values are actually important, as evidenced by what leaders are really saying behind closed doors, and the kinds of behaviors that are exhibited and rewarded (or punished).

The thing is, when employees have been around for a while, and moved past the initial, tentative, and occasionally confusing and contradictory reality they experience navigating the tension between what is 'official' and what is 'secret', they normally adjust, understand, and eventually start contributing themselves to the Book of Secrets. But, as always, no one documents any of this - this knowledge is, after all, secret. Let the next new hire start all over from the beginning.  

"Welcome to the company Maryjane, so great to have you on board. Here is the employee handbook and an organization chart, let me know when you've figured out what you really need to know."