Management Meetings that produce nothing!
Many management meetings (within the workplace) rarely ever make things visible on the table’, other than a cup of coffee! So, how are decisions made if data and information is not made visible?
Such lack of visibility is often the reason why many management meetings fail to produce any value other than just small talk and/or textbook talk! So, with this in mind what do these meetings actually produce? Well, we can be sure that they are likely to produce:
Inaccurate communication which can ruin good plans.
Siloed solutions which can introduce inefficiencies and conflicting goals.
Repeated start overs without realising what already exists, thus creating unnecessary duplication.
Reporting that no longer has any currency which triggers unwanted and wasted behaviour/effort.
Too many things are hidden in people’s heads, back pockets and personal drives etc
All of this suggests to me pure waste, and increased exposure to risk (meaning the lack of accurate information or absence of, is a risk in itself). Trust me, I could consume quite a few pages highlighting examples, none which I would say are more important than others’, however, let’s just pick two,
Example 1: When we talk service level agreements (SLAs), what services are we basing this on? Meaning, if we have never defined the services then what meaning does an SLA have? Remember, an SLA should not be based on single system metrics such as an incident management report, SLAs should be based on a balanced bundle of metrics that represent what is important and deemed as value to the customer (e.g., translated into business efficiency/services). Not to mention, are the SLAs in-keeping with the current business strategy? Do we even know what the business strategy is?
Example 2: When we talk customer/user experience (CX/UX), what value streams (workflows) and journey maps are we basing this on? We must not forget, services are ‘end-to-end’ therefore, we need to take a holistic view. Meaning we cannot consider the functional responsibility and interplay of teams individually (silo's). This is not about, "I'm alright jack," i.e., “me or my team,” because this just creates that 'watermelon' effect, i.e., it appears to good on the outside (everything is all green) when its actually red on the inside! In other words, we should succeed or fail together not in parts!
I hope that makes sense.