Sorry. Ah yes, what is my point? My main point is that it wasn’t any of the above that really impressed me at all. It was the question that you asked just as I dashed off to catch my plane. It was that question that really caught my attention. You were talking about how the meetings had improved but then you said something like “But how do we stop them just sliding back to how they were before”? Bingo! For me it was like you had just thrown a single dart from 100m and hit the bull’s-eye! Where did that one come from? In that wonderfully obvious simple question you were addressing one of the most important topics within Lean and Business Transformation. Now, that was the thing that really impressed me!

James was well up the food chain., one of the “C-Level” Commercial guys who spent most of his time wandering the corridors of power. He was used to leading change initiatives but the one he and I worked on was a bit tough by any standards. His weekly meetings were pretty good at the beginning but it was a bit like “herding cats” as they say. Also, the individual members of the meetings were all pretty much C-Level heavyweights in their own right, most of them carrying around ten tons of male ego everywhere they went. They were certainly a bunch of prima donnas who were capable of some serious “princess like” behaviours. You don’t have to rub it in! Yes, I know, I was one of them!

Now it wasn’t usually a bad meeting but it did get to the stage where people weren’t reading their reports, some turning up late and others not there at all. Those who were there would be taking phone calls, using Blackberries and some having side conversations. Partly as a result this behaviour the meeting typically overran, which just made things worse for next time. James, after one particularly poor meeting, in exasperation, said something like “This really isn’t working very well is it, and it doesn’t set a very good example to the guys on the ground does it? Any ideas?”

I had done some work on effective meetings, standards and behaviours and made a few suggestions. One was that at the next meeting we could start with a tiny training element, just 10 minutes, with a few slides covering meeting preparation, behaviours and follow-up. I said that it might help. I sensed that James wasn’t overly keen on the idea. His concern was simply whether a ten minutes training session had any realistic chance of changing anything. I think that he only agreed because it was a ten minute exercise. I mentioned that I also had a little “Quality of Meeting Check-list” and we could have a go at using that as well. That got a big emphatic NO! His response was something like; “I don’t want someone else joining the meeting with clipboard and a ten page check-lists with review and follow up! That will go down like a Lead Balloon!” He was right, of course, and I didn’t have anything like that in mind.

I had worked with Ellen for years by then, and she was just one of those quiet, polite, hard-working, conscientious individuals that can actually be in a meeting and some people don’t even notice her. But she was so much a giant for me with her intuitive ability to read situations and then be two steps ahead of everyone without them even noticing. She just consistently delivered quiet unassuming excellence and we were all very lucky to have her as our Programme Administrator on this particular initiative.

Ellen knew how to deliver the ten minute training element on meeting effectiveness and take the role of meeting assessor using the little check-list. She knew though that this only worked if she was given “permission” by the senior person in the meeting, and this was James. I will come back to this point about “permission” in a little while, it is important.

Ellen was in every meeting anyway and it was no distraction at all for her to put a simple score between 1 and 5 for a few simple criteria like starting and finishing on time, no telephone calls or Blackberries, good participation in discussion and no side meetings. Also, she knew how to give her scoring with feedback in no more than sixty seconds at the end of each meeting. In other words she knew how to make this whole process very lite and Lean!

Ellen and James knew each other quite well and when Ellen had explained all this to him he was far more relaxed. But she knew the importance of “permission” and she explained this to him. She explained that for the check-list and her feedback to have any impact at all, James has to signal to everyone that her role was important and that he is giving her absolute and total support. As she put it “James, if you leave as much as a hairs width gap in support, everyone will tear the process to pieces and I won’t be able to do anything about it.”

James was one of the best. He was personable, approachable and polite. He also had a natural air of authority and was very statesman like. Ellen probably didn’t need to make the point about total support to James but it was a wise move knowing what she had in mind.

James thanked everyone and said; “Before we close this meeting, Ellen could you please give us you scoring and feedback? How did we do?” Ellen in her quiet, calm and confident way made a start. “Well”, she said “you lost 3 point for not starting on time; we had to wait for Chris and Stella. The discussion about the stage gate was a bit rambling and I took four points away as you, James, didn’t manage that very effectively!” Silence! You could have cut the air with a knife! Ellen had locked eye contact with James and everyone was frozen waiting to see how James would react to being “told off” by that little mousy blonde creature that was not even half his age and earning barely a tenth of his salary! It felt like hours but it was no more than a few seconds before James calmly replied with; “That is a very good point you make Ellen, thank you”.

So Ellen moved on; “For interruptions I took away four points, there were a couple of you using your Blackberries, but mainly this was you William. You were using yours all the time and you actually took two phone calls during the meeting”. That’s when the explosion happened. “How dare you!” William started, “Don’t you realize who you are talking to? I am Legal Counsel for this Corporation; I am dealing with critical and urgent commercial negotiations!” He went on a bit and the veins in his neck were bulging slightly and I think some steam was actually coming out of his ears. We all felt uncomfortable for poor Ellen; this was all a bit unfair. When the huffing and puffing had calmed down, we noticed that Ellen seemed completely untouched by it all, she then simply said: “William, you have just lost two more points for arguing!”

Now, somebody told me once, it might have even been Ellen, that there is no such sound in the world like ten tons of male ego when it comes crashing to the ground!  That is exactly what happened when William was told that he had lost two more points for arguing!

In the many meetings that followed, Ellen quietly ticked her little boxes, gave her sixty seconds of feedback, and the meetings started and closed on time.

Somehow, just by luck I suppose, the corporation never went into any deep legal or commercial crisis as a result of the Head of Legal Counsel not taking calls or responding to messages between 2:00pm and 2:30pm every Thursday afternoon.