How many meetings can you handle in a week? 5? 10? 15? 1? 2? If your limit is something like 12? Why are you taking more? Why are you accepting more? The failure in our meetings is that no one knows what our actual limit is so we keep scheduling simply because we can. We can keep pouring water into a glass because there is space in it, it doesn’t mean we want to drink…
You used to be able to talk with someone and realize the conversation is going to go longer and realize there was a need to have an ad-hoc 2-hour meeting to map out everything that was happening. You never came out of that thinking – “that was a waste of time”. The value of ad-hoc meetings is that they are instantiated at the time a problem is discovered – “Hey we need to chat” -…
The Challenge of any Leader is to lead the team today with an eye on tomorrow. You’re always leading a battle on two fronts – today and tomorrow – and it’s one that no one ever sees happening, but daily, it’s happening in your mind as you run through team personalities, external factors, changes in technologies, deadlines, and commitments. Everything and anything. The trap is getting stuck in today because of what might happen tomorrow…
If your meeting is set up to simply “be there” and “discuss things”, your meeting will never amount to much. Meetings should have purpose, direction, creativity, and perseverance that roll themselves up into the ambition of what is trying to be achieved. You would code through the night to get your product out the door. You would work late into the evening to get the competitive analysis done before deciding what features to implement. You…
Everyone has their own narrative, everyone has their own story they tell themselves. Their hopes, their dreams, their purpose, their direction. It’s all wound up in your narrative. The goal of a leader is to get everyone’s narrative on the same page, everyone focused on the same narrative, everyone bought into it, and everyone working towards it. Directing the narrative is the first step to getting your team moving in the same direction.