Brevity

Read time - 4 minutes

I coach leadership teams of entrepreneurial companies as my full-time business.

In the course of a 2-4 year engagement they improve in many ways, one of which is how they communicate with eachother and the rest of their company.

Most people in most companies I’ve observed are inefficient communicators. Almost 100% of the teams I start with use way too may words and have substantially more discussion than is necessary or optimal for good decisionmaking.

What this looks like in practice:

1. Pontificating - especially business owners, who have learned over time they love hearing themselves speak. And over time start believing their team mate love hearing them speak.

2. Tangents - Teams start talking about one issue, and due to a lack of discipline and cultural structure, someone moves them onto another issue. Teams then meander through multiple issues without gaining resolution of the original issue.

3. Politicking - Without structure in place, humans will tend towards repeating their positions until they get their way, which is called politicking. This is especially common with key leaders/owners attempting to let their leaders make decisions, but being incapable of not having the last word.

4. Pilling on - When a decision has been made on an issue, humans want to still say the thing they wanted to say about it. This is called piling on, and it’s totally unnecessary in business decisionmaking. The only reason to pile on is ego and/or being obsessed with hearing yourself speak.

There are multiple other examples but these are the main culprits that dramatically slow down decisionmaking.

Why does this matter?

Because meetings are the most expensive use of your company’s resources, and wasting time slows down decisionmaking, requires more meetings to get the same work done, and generally makes people despise them in general.

Going from being an inefficient, politicking, squirrel chasing team, to a fast moving, efficient, and effective communication machine, takes a lot of work and a long time to be honest. So I’d be lying if I said “follow these three tips to improve your communications now”.

BUT,

here’s a few things you can do on Monday to start down the path of better communications:

1. Establish a consistent meeting agenda with your team and lean into it. An inconsistent agenda, or god forbid no agenda at all, creates confusion around what is being accomplished each session.

2. Adopt IDS structure - this is the core of issues solving in EOS (Traction). You don’t need to adopt the entire system, but IDS makes sense for any team.

   1. Identify the issue - don’t move on until you all agree what issue you’re trying to solve

   2. Discuss - brief discussion of what needs to be done to solve the issue (without repetition which is politicking)

   3. Solve - A decision, to-do, or other action that is captured and agreed on that will either make the issue go away forever, or progress the issue towards it’s conclusion

3. Assign a facilitator - Every meeting should have a leader who facilitates it. This person needs to be comfortable being the jerk who cuts people off when they get off track, keeps things moving and focused, and accomplished the objectives of the meeting.

4. Demand intensity and preparation from all team members - Like many things in life, you get out of meetings what you put into them. If every attendee just shows up and lets the meeting happen to them, there’s a 99% chance it’ll be a sucky meeting. If only the facilitator puts in preparation and comes with intensity, it’ll still likely be a sucky meeting. Everyone must prepare, and everyone must participate fully in the meeting.

5. Have the right attendees - Only have attendees who should be there. Anyone else shouldn’t be included. The only reason to have people at a meeting who don’t belong is 1) laziness in scheduling, and/or 2) ego stroking - e.g. we don’t want to offend Jimmy by excluding him.

Here’s your action - On Sunday or Monday morning, review your week and identify one meeting that needs improvement. Adopt a few of the above principles to that meeting preparation and agenda. See if the meeting goes better, repeat and gradually add more.

Have meetings you’re not the leader of? If they’re not great - talk to the facilitator and make some suggestions including offering to take on some of the load of preparation for the meeting. If handles appropriately, 99% of leaders would gladly receive some assistance - if you think the meeting sucks, they probably do to.

Bad communications and bad meetings suck the life out of growth organizations. Use these tools to make yours better this week!

Talk to you next week,

Mike