I was chatting with a possible client (as I like to do) and they were talking about how darn hard it seems to actually get things done in spite of how hard everyone on their team is working.
I was saying “Gosh, no one else seems to have that problem (kidding!),” and we chatted a bit about what she saw that might be making it happen.
I pulled up a slide from something I did for a past client and read off the causes (stripping away anything that might ID the client), and I could hear her head nodding over the phone.
So take a look - how many of these things does your organization live through? What classic blockers did I miss?
If you’re a leader in an org, do the cheap and easy one first.
Call a meeting to talk about meetings. Ask everyone to bring two weeks of their calendar, printed out, and start with the standing meetings that have more than four people in them.
List them out and ask - “what’s this meeting for?” and “how valuable is this meeting as opposed to a dashboard/ a newsletter/ an email?” And add up the number of hours/week you spend in these meetings.
If you have more than 10 hours a week of standing meetings, set a goal of eliminating 50% of them.
Teach meeting discipline. I used to write the cost/minute of each meeting on the whiteboard when I started meetings ($50hr for junior folks + $100hr for senior folks + $150hr for execs)/60 is close enough.
You (usually - I’m a consultant, there’s got to be a qualifier) don’t need a Powerpoint and a room with 12 people in it to talk to each other.