Many professionals, fed up with calendars full of long disorganized and inspiring sessions, resort to unexplored, even cynical, statements:
Leaders are too lazy to make weighted agendas.
Managers hold unnecessary meetings to exercise their power.
Distracted participants, selfishly engaged in their work, are terribly unprepared.
But if we want a precise answer, rather than a mere question about the question, it would be wise to consider Hanlon's razor: never blame the evil that can be correctly explained by misunderstanding.
After more than ten years of working with leading organizations to correct broken meetings, I learned that many bad meetings can be better explained by a simple and imperfect assumption. We assume that intuitive problem solving, a highly effective approach for individuals in the context of meetings, will be equally effective for groups. But often not.
When individuals solve problems intuitively, the result is magical
To understand what the intuitive problem solving is, we must first recognize that when we solve a problem, from choosing a link to solving a second-order comparison, we make our way through five stages. :
We could assume that we go through all these phases to solve the problems. But in recent decades, psychologists have discovered that the opposite is true. Instead of going in the right direction, we tend to do it in a non-systematic way.
For example, pretend to order food online. You quickly begin to generate a solution - Mexican (phase 2) - but as soon as the thought comes to mind, evaluate (phase 3) and remember that you had the Mexican the day before, then generate another solution (phase 2) - Indian. At the time of the evaluation (phase 3), however, it is feared that your substantial chicken Tikka Masala will kill your appetite. Step back to this point and define the problem (phase 1) by asking yourself: "What kind of meal would make me satisfied but not too full?" A better question leads to a better answer: sushi (phase 2). Perform a quick bowel check to make sure the sushi is really what you want (step 3) and go to the order (steps 4 and 5).
This is called intuitive problem solving and it is so obvious that when we solve problems in this way we are completely unaware of it. All we have to do is draw our attention to the problem and just like the automatic transmission of a car, our brains switch for us. This makes the intuitive problem solving remarkably effective. Magic too.
When groups solve problems intuitively, the result is often chaos
Solving the intuitive problem is so magical for us as individuals that we think it should be just as good for the groups. When we have a meeting, we gather around a table, focus our collective attention on the problem, and let our automatic transmissions take over. All too often it turns out to be a mistake.
For groups to work effectively together and prevent them from talking to each other, members must participate in the same problem-solving phase at the same time. But because this information is private to their owners, participants in a group meeting cannot easily identify where they are in solving problems. As a result, members unknowingly start the meeting in different phases.
Imagine an IT team meeting to discuss a dissatisfied VIP customer who is in danger of sending the ship to a competitor in public. One participant believes that the way forward is clear and focuses on developing an implementation plan (phase 5), another is willing to propose alternative solutions (phase 2), while another participant is still trying to determine whether the release of this pompous hell is in fact also a problem (phase 1). Maybe it's a blessing!
As the meeting progresses, things become even more chaotic. Without realizing it, each participant continues to change phase without notifying the others. The result is an unorganized meeting that goes through many phases, but fails.
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