Are They Really That Stupid?

Before I continue I must apologize for not posting in the last few months. The project I am working on is getting very close to completion, I enrolled in a Masters program and my wife and I ware looking for a new home. I have not been able to allocate much time to blogging.

A working group is an interdisciplinary group of people working together to make a decision or recommendation in regards to a common subject. Sometimes the group has a well defined goal but many times that goal is not defined well however weekly meetings are usually held with presentations and pseudo decisions are made.

I am currently in a working group that is attempting recommend a common architecture in a certain aspect of our business. We meet weekly and make presentations but the overall goal, the question we are trying to answer, has not be defined well. So we end up sitting through presentation after presentation learning about what other members in the group are doing but never really deciding on a common direction nor working together to come to a common solution. Some of the most advance protocols and standards are defined in working groups, so they can work if the group is defined correctly from the beginning.

So, I wanted to take some time to discuss how a working group can avoid this mode of non-decision making. To quote Stephen R. Covey from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People you must “Begin with the End in Mind”. This applies to the individual as well as the group. The group needs to first spend time clearly defining what the group is to accomplish, decide or recommend. As well the group need to define when they know the goal has been met and when to disband the group. Because this discussion defines the future path of the group this initial discussion should be held in a face to face meeting, other future discussions can be held on conference call.

Many groups never start with this simple discussion and these groups often end up embarking on a long, highly ineffective, journey of discussion after discussion and presentation after presentation with no goal and no purpose. Once the group has clearly defined a goal they can move on to execution.

The execution phase starts once the group has defined clearly what is to be accomplished. Rules and roles should be defined now. Each member should be responsible for something significant to reach the goal also each member should have rotating clerical roles like minute taker and agenda writer. Once these roles are defined a brainstorm of topics for discussion can begin. Brainstorming and generation of a short list is a long process which deserves it’s own post (likely coming in the future). Once a short list of topics has been gathered assignments of those topics can be made to group members and presentations can begin. The short list needs to contain topics that are relevant to the end goal, a group does not want to waste time on fringe topics that have no impact on the final decision.

Similarly the presentations to the group should have a purpose, be it to introduce the group to a new topic, to argue pros and cons of a given topic or something else. The presentations need to be complete, concise and correct and the presenter should allow for discussion at the end. After the presentation and discussion are complete the goal of the presentation should have ben met and all members of the group should be committed to the outcome. Once all topics have been presented and discussed the group needs to make the recommendation or decision that it set out to make.

The group now needs to come to a consensus on the decision or recommendation. I feel that this is the most important phase in the entire process and if the process was executed properly this step should be very straight forward. This phase should start with a quick recap of the topics presented and how they relate to the final decision. The group should avoid rehashing past discussions, if more discussion is needed then perhaps the group is not ready for this phase. If a group does not complete this phase then the group has not done what it set out to do, the time spend by all the group members was likely wasted time. Also note that no members should object to the final decisions but they do not have to agree that that is the best path. A presentation or document should be generated to communicate the final decision or recommendation.

Working groups can be a great tool to make good and well informed decisions or recommendations but they can also be a huge waste of time. Working groups should be used with great care in the workplace and a working group should not exist without well defined set of goals and exceptions of it’s members. Each member needs to be committed to making to decision or recommendation that the group was put together to make. The decision should be a consensus decision that no member has an objection to and that each member can be content with.

What are your experiences with working groups? Have you been in a well oiled working group or have you been in one that is a huge time sink?

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A meeting is an event where minutes are taken and hours wasted.
    - James T. Kirk

We are getting close to a major milestone and what does management do? They schedule more meetings! More meetings that the entire team has to sit in and accomplish no productive work. The meetings are causing many of us to have to work late into the night. Why is it that when the schedule gets tight management feels they need to waste more time? Why can’t they simply come by and ask? That would give personal attention as well as get status information.

Meetings, Meetings and more Meetings!

Does this happen in your company?

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This post is a follow on to my previous post The Squeaking Wheel.

Do you remember that TV game show titled “You are the Weakest Link”? Well at times I would to see that short haired British woman at work telling people what they really are. It would be nice to have an outsider look in and tell it how it is. My goal is to help you identify if you are the squeaking wheel in your group and how you can make sure that you are not becoming to annoying. I start by providing a list of things to look out for.

• You are constantly talking about something but never solving it. You can always talk and that is easy but sometimes it is easier to just solve the problem. This will keep you out of trouble with your boss as well as keep you in good terms with your coworkers.
• Whenever you bring up a topic all the people in the group give you the same answer. The same answer that they have been giving you for the last five hundred times you brought it up. At this point it would be better to start suggesting solutions and you might get somewhere.

• You are beginning to get annoyed with yourself talking about the subject. This is a sure sign that you are beginning to annoy others with your topic. If you annoy yourself us this as a sign to find a new strategy.

• The boss asks you to mind your own business. This is a bad thing. If the boss is getting annoyed with your comments (many times not understanding them completely) then you have a really big problem. Immediately talk with him to find and solution and shut your mouth!

At times what you are trying to communicate is important and no one is listening to you for multiple reasons. If the topic you are trying to get solved is really causing trouble to the team and endangering the project then you should continue to be the squeaking wheel until your problem gets addressed. When you bring the problem you you feel that you are not making any traction then perhaps you have a problem with the presentation. Go back and think about how you are presenting yourself and the topic. Are you defensive? angry? or are you not communicating the problem clearly and with enough (or to much) detail to make everyone including management understand? Have you communicated the impact of not taking action?

After you have made sure that the team and management clearly understands the problem but does not feel the same passion about it as you do then fix it yourself or drop it. It is the job of management to make the final decision with the advice of the team as a whole.

I hope this helps some people discover that they have become a squeaking wheel and that sometimes it is best to move on. Are you the squeaking wheel in your team? Tell us about how to discovered you are and how you solved your problem.

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I hate to be a kicker [complainer], I always long for peace, But the wheel that does the squeaking Is the one that gets the grease.
    - Josh Billings (1818-1885) in a poem, “The Kicker”

Do you work with someone that is always complaining about something? I work with many. I also work in a place where the people that make the discussions have trouble differentiating between what is noise and what is really a problem. The old saying “The squeaky wheel gets the grease” is completely true when it comes to working in a large company where middle management has very little control over making major decisions. I sit in meetings where we spend the entire time talking about what font to use on the website, where when a real topic about the project is brought up it is tabled for later discussion. Note that usually the squeaking wheel is not the problem, the real problem is the other wheels that are broken and dragging on the floor that no longer squeak.

I feel this is due to two major issues.

• A few team members get get the complete attention of the meeting chair and “hijack” the meeting.
• The meeting chair has little control over getting the discussion back on track.

The first problem can be very detrimental to a team in general especially in meetings. If a small group of people make all the decision based solely on information they provided then the rest of the team feels that they have no input and will give up contributing. The second problem is a meeting management style, and it can work if the team is very good at working together. But with a team that does not work this can lead to a meeting with no outcomes except for being a complete waste of time for the rest of the attendees.

Back to the squeaking wheel, if you are a manager or a chairing a meeting be sure to be able to recognize the squeaky wheel topic and stick to the agenda. The issue that is brought up and becomes a squeaking wheel needs to be addressed in a different meeting, at the end of the meeting or by different means. If you find that a coworker is becoming a squeaking wheel and is not bringing up issues that affect the project then talk with then and talk to management. Management needs to gracefully make the person who has become the squeaking wheel aware of the fact and do there best to address that persons concerns. Usually the squeaking wheel topic is not as important as the meeting and is only noise to shield a larger topic.

Do you have an experience with a squeaking wheel in your team?

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