We nearly meet because … that’s what we want to do
Let’s face it, other people are hard work. They have this annoying habit of not agreeing with us. They have their own ideas and agendas. They don’t, for some reason, think we are always marvelous. They are complex, demanding and just plain tiring.
Why would we want to meet them? Better by far to pretend to meet. Nod but don’t hear. Smile but don’t mean it. Keep “them” on the outside and save your energy.
When I am not in London—or on a plane—I spend as much time as I can in rural Italy. As a lifelong city dweller I am acutely aware of how few people you see on a normal day in the north Italian countryside. The scarcity of the people seems to put them into high relief. You notice them. They notice you. Your eyes meet. You raise your hand. You briefly discuss the ripeness of the tomatoes, the likelihood of rain, the latest aches and pains and whether Juventus are likely to scrape through this season without pouring shame on the team/the region/the nation. It is the sort of setting which encourages connections with others. London is another story. As I take the plane, taxi, or tube back into the center of the metropolis, I feel my mind becoming overwhelmed by potential connection. There are just too many people. I start to screen them out, like the iris of your eye shutting down to protect you from a blast of bright sunlight. Within minutes I am in a bubble where I can walk through a crowd of people on Oxford Street and see—no one.
This ability of the mind to filter out information is a key to our development as a species—and our survival as modern humans. The ability selectively to screen out background sounds so we hear what is being said to us is key to our communication. It is similarly crucial to our survival that we can separate the features of a landscape we don’t need to know about (the green stuff) from the things we might need to know about (like a saber-toothed tiger).
There is growing concern at the connection between the use of digital music players and fatal accidents. The London authorities have started talking about “iPod zombies” and San Francisco has spent millions on a media blitz warning against the screening-out effect of earphones. “Do you want Beethoven to be the last thing you hear?” one lugubrious ad asks the city’s joggers.
We nearly meet because … we confuse efficient and effective
As the doyen of management consultants Peter Drucker once said, “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.” Many companies are focusing on making their meetings more efficient. That doesn’t mean they are any more effective.
I have a friend who is a world-class management consultant. I’ll call him Ron—not his real name—for the sake of discretion and to prevent his clients taking out a contract on me. He has a great example of a client who has become exquisitely efficient and wildly ineffective at the same time. It’s all to do with paper. The client generates hundreds of thousands of sheets of contracts and agreements at each of their branches every week. The company has had to become supremely talented at moving all this paper around as well as storing and retrieving it. They have invested in ergonomically designed paper-carrying equipment (I think this means strong suitcases), transportation systems, and document logging. They were thrilled with themselves until Ron asked the unasked question: “Why do you need all this paper?” They were ready for this. “Because the regulator requires that we get our customers’ signature.” Ron pressed on: “Yes, but why does that signature have to be on paper?” he asked, no doubt making a lifelong enemy of the Logistics Director. In this digital age there are many legally acceptable forms of signature, of which a mark on paper is only one. There’s a tick on a form, a digitally scanned signature, a thumbprint, even the iris in your eye. Ron’s point was that while the paper is being dealt with efficiently, the more effective course of action would be to invest a tiny fraction of the time, energy, and money into talking with the regulator and finding a paperless solution. Efficient, yes. Effective, no!
I have seen efficient meetings—meticulously planned, immaculately laid out and run perfectly to time—that had no positive effect whatever. (We’ll look a little later in the book at how to redesign meetings so that they are both.) These are classic “nearly meetings.” And they are going to be happening all over the world today and every day. The people are present, or appear to be; the room or the call/video conference suite is booked, the agenda prepared, and yet no connection in a true sense actually happens.
We nearly meet because … we forget there’s an alternative
Finally, the most pervasive reason of all, we nearly meet so much because we don’t realize, remember, or believe we can really meet.
I am reminded of a leadership programme we were involved in delivering to the top echelons of a major European financial services company. It was held in a spectacular castle on the outskirts of Paris. At the end of our three days together the participants were talking about what they had gotten out of the experience. One man was asked what he had learned. I knew that this self-confessed “numbers guy” was earmarked for great things, but he looked terribly awkward as he said his piece.
“Every Monday I have a meeting with the people who report to me and I usually just like to get on with it. I don’t see any need to talk to them about themselves, how they are or what they’re up to. I am a doer and I see this kind of thing as a waste of time. What I didn’t realize until now, though, was that there was a real person sitting opposite me.”
He then sat down, looking somewhat apologetic and puzzled by an insight that was at once so mundane and yet so far-reaching—not just for his career but beyond.
I think this client spoke for all of us who crash through the day, intent on getting things done, and forgetting to connect with the people around us. We forget they are people, not just “functions.”
It’s because of stories like this that I’ve become curious about meetings. We go into meetings disconnected not only from others but also from our own thoughts, feelings, bodies, and our true nature.
Realizing that nearly meeting is mostly what you are doing is a great first step to start really meeting.
The True Cost of Nearly Meeting
Nearly meeting is exacting a huge cost not just on us and our businesses but on our planet.
Great meetings can save the world. Bad ones can really harm it. I can think of no better opportunity of a world-sized missed opportunity than the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. I wasn’t there, but I’ve heard from friends who were that it was a fiasco. A nearly meeting on an epic scale. With epic consequences.
The problems started even before you got into the conference venue. Thanks to inadequate—or willfully negligent—planning, entry lines stretched for hundreds of yards and required ticket holders to stand in the open air, sometimes for several hours, in polar conditions, without the comfort of heating, refreshments, or even a coffee. Coffee sellers wanted to set up concessions but were not allowed to. It was as though the Danes, normally quite welcoming folk, wanted to discourage people from attending.
There wasn’t even a fast-track entrance for VIPs. Ashok Khosla, Chairman of the New Delhi-based social enterprise, Development Alternatives, who is also the current President of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) found himself grid-locked in a non-moving mass of humanity and was clearly about to miss his speaking slot. If you know sustainable development, you know of Ashok. He’s been described by the United Nations Environment Programme as “a legend
