In short
Podcast Summary: Problem Solvers - The Greatest Meetings Policy Ever
Episode Overview In this episode of *Problem Solvers*, host Jason Feifer interviews Sarah Kellogg Neff, CEO of The Lactation Network, who introduces a unique approach to meetings: a company policy that allows any employee to opt out of meetings, regardless of who called the meeting. This unconventional policy stems from Sarah's experiences in high-pressure environments and aims to foster a more efficient and respectful workplace culture.
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Key Points
The Motivation Behind the Policy
- Frustration with Traditional Meetings: Sarah's background in digital marketing agencies showed her how exhausting and unproductive meetings could be.
- Empowerment: The policy empowers employees to assess whether their attendance is necessary and encourages them to prioritize their work.
- Cultural Philosophy: The philosophy revolves around the question of whether meetings serve the participants or vice versa.
Implementation of the Policy
- Organic Growth: The policy developed organically as Sarah recognized the need for better meeting practices during her tenure at The Lactation Network, which initially had a small team of 12.
- Modeling Behavior: Sarah actively demonstrates the policy by keeping attendee lists tight, encouraging team members to opt out when relevant, and avoiding the stigmatization of absence.
- Reinforcement: Continuous communication is essential. Sarah checks in with her team to ensure they feel empowered to opt out.
Meeting Philosophy
- Types of Meetings: Sarah categorizes meetings into brainstorming sessions, one-on-ones, and status updates, each with different engagement strategies.
- Pre-Meeting Clarity: Emphasis on pre-meeting clarity regarding purpose and expected contributions to ensure effective use of time.
- Regular Reevaluation: Standing meetings are regularly assessed to determine if they are still necessary and relevant.
Addressing Skepticism
- Capacity for Change: Sarah acknowledges skepticism from others about the feasibility of her policy but demonstrates positive outcomes from her approach.
- Negotiation and Flexibility: She argues that meetings can be adjusted without sacrificing productivity, emphasizing the importance of flexibility and respect for team members' time.
- Cultural Assumptions: The policy and its success rely on a foundational assumption of trust in employees' judgment regarding their time management.
Building a High-Performing Culture
- Recruitment and Onboarding: The hiring process emphasizes traits aligned with the company’s culture, such as curiosity and a willingness to contribute.
- Creating Trust: Emphasizing empathy and respect within the team builds trust, allowing for a culture where high performance is expected and nurtured.
- Feedback Mechanism: Sarah suggests starting conversations about meeting culture, gathering input from team members to create a coalition that can drive change.
Next Steps for Implementation
- Facilitating Conversations: To initiate change, Sarah recommends having open discussions about meeting culture with colleagues and managers, identifying shared frustrations, and collaboratively seeking improvements.
- Curiosity and Inquiry: Asking questions about the current meeting culture can foster a sense of community and lead to constructive changes.
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Key Takeaways
- Empowerment: Allowing team members to opt out of meetings fosters empowerment and respect for their time.
- Meeting Culture: A healthy meeting culture requires continuous evaluation and adjustments to meet the team's needs effectively.
- Trust and Flexibility: Trusting employees to manage their time effectively can lead to a more productive and engaged workforce.
- Collaborative Change: To effect meaningful change, start conversations and build coalitions within your team or organization.
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This episode of *Problem Solvers* provides actionable insights into redefining meeting culture in the workplace, emphasizing respect, empowerment, and flexibility in order to foster a more productive and engaged environment.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00From Entrepreneur Media, this is Problem Solvers. a show in which entrepreneurs do what entrepreneurs do best, solve unexpected problems in their business. We were completely wrong. And I'm just like, it's not selling. It was like, we have to start from scratch. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine.
0:22I don't know if anyone else in the world has a favorite company policy, you know, like a company policy that you heard that exists out in the world. and you're like, that is my favorite company policy. But I do. I have a favorite company policy. I read about it in the New York Times. It is a policy from a company called the Lactation Network. And a woman named Sarah Kellogg Neff was written about in the New York Times. This was a story in the Times. The headline was, that meeting was too long and it probably could have been an email, which incidentally is what I think. every single time I get out of a meeting.
1:01I hate meetings. And so anyway, I'm reading this story, and then I get to this part about Sarah Kellogg-Neff, chief executive of Lactation Network, and it says this. Ready? I'm just reading straight from the Times. That's why it is company policy that employees can opt out of meetings regardless of who invited them, even their boss or boss's boss. I mean, what? And then it goes on. Sarah Kellogg-Neff is quoted as saying, quote, when they get a meeting invite, every person is empowered to say, what is my role here? Or, hey, I'm working on another thing. Is it okay if I check out of that meeting?
1:39And I read this and I thought, this is the greatest thing I've ever heard. This is my favorite company policy. I need to track down Sarah Kellogg-Neff. Hi, I'm Sarah Kellogg-Neff, CEO of the Lactation Network. Mission accomplished. And by the way, what is the Lactation Network? The Lactation Network is the largest network of international board-certified lactation consultants. And what I wanted to know is, number one, how did Sarah come up with this policy? And number two, what is it like to implement it? Because my hope, my dream, is that when people hear of policies like this being implemented and working, they might think to themselves, Oh my God, there's a better way, a way to get more work done by spending less time sitting around talking about the work that you're supposed to be getting done.
2:32That is what I want. And I wanted to hear from Sarah where this thing came from. So that was my first question. Where did this thing come from? It grew very organically from my experience working at digital marketing agencies. So I think a lot of ways, professional services broadly, right? Like so often the demands on your time are insane. Your time never feels like it's your own. There is never enough time in the day, right? And also you have to do a lot of collaborating. And so Sarah was trying to navigate this to get different parties to work with each other, even though they had different priorities and sometimes different timelines.
3:07And it just, it created this sense of frustration. And she thought there has to be a way to help a lot of talented people get a lot of things done. And the way to do that, she realized, was to start thinking totally differently about not just how to have meetings, but what is the point of a meeting? And as you'll hear Sarah say later, like this is really coming down to thinking, are we serving the meeting or is the meeting serving us? What is this thing that we have created that we're now in? Is it for the purpose of serving the creation or is it just a tool to use in the best possible way for each of us to make sure that we get done the things we want to get done?
3:57Today on Problem Solvers, Sarah and I are digging into meeting philosophy of which she has thought quite a lot about, and very specifically, this policy of allowing anybody to opt out of any meeting. Coming up after the break, let me tell you a quick story. A colleague of mine from 20 years ago was regretting the decisions that he made in his career. And so he reached out to me because he was listening to my other podcast, which is called Help Wanted. And he knew that on that podcast, me and my co-host, Nicole Lappin, who is a best-selling money expert, we bring on real people who have real work problems and we talk them through those challenges so that they are helped and we help the audience too.
4:43And he wanted to join us so that he could talk about how he regretted the decisions he made and get some guidance from us on what to do next, which is exactly what we did. And oh my God, it was so compelling. You have to hear it. Help Wanted. This is a show that comes out twice a week. We help people, we help you with the big work problems that sometimes you just can't talk to anybody else about. Find Help Wanted wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we are back. I'm talking with Sarah Kellogg-Neff of the Lactation Network about meetings and how terrible most meetings are and how there is definitely a better way.
5:24And before we really dig into her policy at her company, let's talk about meetings and where she developed her philosophy on them. I have worked in office environments where meetings feel crappy. You have that sense of if I'm not in the room, I'm not important. Or if I'm not there, people are making assumptions about me, right? That kind of FaceTime presenteeism that I don't think anybody likes. I don't like it. Sure. Hate it. But then I've also lived the opposite, right? And so it's okay, so I know this is possible. I know it is possible to cultivate a culture where there is so much trust and respect for your colleagues that they're not in the room.
6:00A, you're building empathy for the fact that they're not in the room. You're showing respect for the fact that they're not there. And so in a lot of ways, so much of it is the conversation around things like this. We talk about meetings a lot. In other words, do you know what I mean? It's my responsibility, I think, in a lot of ways to A, model it all the time. I'm never mad at anybody if they don't come to a meeting. I'm never offended by it, like not once. I work hard to be flexible and make sure that's like, oh yeah, no problem. You got another thing that's more important. I believe you, right?
6:25Okay. So then let's work from there. And that is so important and showing people that showing my team that, right. It's just one of the ways you can reinforce folks, right. Who might be more junior might be intimidated. I think just a, you can say it out loud, but then you got to back it up every time, right? Like there's no sideways glance. There's no, oh yeah, they're not here or, oh, we're going to have to wait until they're here. Like there's none of that. And so in other words, when you think about things like crafting a holistic meeting culture that really we want to reinforce and reflect the culture that you're trying to build.
6:53Like it's 50 decisions. It's not one, right? Like this opt-out idea is one piece of like a book that you can write about how we think about meeting culture. And in so many ways, it goes right back to how you write a job description, right? And how you talk to people that are in interview process and then how you onboard them and then how you model it, even when it's inconvenient and even when it's hard and you might not feel like it. And just that sense of reinforcing the stated rule. It's just, it is responsibility. It's a commitment, but man, it's worth it. And what you're describing there is the answer to the kind of criticism that I heard when I posted about your policy on LinkedIn.
7:29Hi, it's me interrupting me. Just a quick note for context here. When I first saw that New York Times article that included Sarah's policy about meetings, I screenshotted it. I posted it on LinkedIn. I said, what you've heard me say here, which is like, this is the best policy ever. And some people said yes, but a lot of people seemed outraged, outraged by the idea that people would be allowed to not go to meetings. Anyway, we'll talk about that in a minute, but I just wanted to offer that context. Okay, back to the interview. But before we get there, let's talk about how you implemented it in the first place, because it's one thing to just casually tell people that they can do this, but they may not believe you or they may not be applied universally.
8:14And some people then may feel like they have the freedom to do it and others may feel like they don't. So you have to be incredibly thoughtful about it, which clearly you have. So can you take me to the beginning of when you decided this needs to be a formalized part of our culture, but it also needs to function, which means that we need to think about every part of our culture and how it is informed by this centralized decision. How did you start to do that? So, you know, we had the benefit of being small, which I think in a lot of ways helps from the beginning, right? When I joined the company about two years ago, there were only 12 of us, right?
8:52So we were tiny. And so I could just so organically say things like, yeah, listen, A, how I think about meetings in general is I try to keep the attendee list tight. And I said, I just said that a lot from the beginning. It's like the reason that I do this is because A, I don't want anybody to be there who, who, that is time wouldn't be well spent to be there, right? I just want to be really thoughtful about everybody's time and I want to protect it. But then also if you hear about a meeting and you want to be in it, ask the meeting organizer and that's okay. In other words, you have to spend time de-stigmatizing a lot of the assumptions that people make about meetings.
9:23And one of them is being included or not, right? Because like nobody likes to feel left out on one hand, but on the other hand, nobody likes to have their time wasted. And so when you just say that. Are you familiar with this thing that is like so many things on the internet, the first time you see it, you think the clever person who posted it came up with it. And then it turns out that this is a thing that has floated around and a million people have posted it. But anyway, the idea goes that here are the phases of a career. Phase one is, I wish I was in that meeting. Phase two is, I wish I was leading that meeting.
9:56And then phase three is, I wish I didn't have to be in that meeting. And I definitely feel like I'm in phase three, but yes, you're right. There are so many different ways of feeling about and perceiving meetings, which is stupid when you say it out loud, but when you live it, it is not because those are often the centralized places where things happen. It's so true. Right. And I think as I thought about this, this cultural decision, right. And as we continue to try to make sure that it's real, of course, the key touchstone is does literally everyone on my team feel empowered to do this. Right.
10:29And so, A, I continue to ask that question because it matters. You just have to keep asking, especially when you're growing fast, right? Like you just have to kind of keep checking and say like, yeah, that feels good, right? Like you feel like you could opt out of this meeting if you needed to, right? And so there's just a lot of that conversation, both for me and also my people leaders as well, right? That's just a responsibility. But when we were doing the New York Times article, the journalist followed up and said, can I talk to a member of your team? And I said, yes. And it was one of those things where it's like, you know, I don't want to edit a word that she says.
10:56I want her to tell the truth. And so that's what we did, right? It's just like, but I also, I took that opportunity to ask her, it's like, do you feel okay? And she's like, yes, I do it regularly. And I don't think a whole lot about it. A, if there's a meeting, if there's a standing meeting, and I know that the topic we're going to cover doesn't relate to me, I might opt out and it's not a big deal. It never matters. Or if I do want to be there and maybe I was included, I ask and that's okay. And there's always that sense of like, just knowing that you are the master of your time and you actually know better than anybody, how your time should be the best spent.
11:26I think in a lot of ways, that's really one of the more radical ideas that kind of is the baseline of all of this is that sense that like, what if your boss or your boss's boss or your boss's boss's boss actually doesn't know the best way for you to spend your time? What if that is true? What if we accept that? And that I think changes everything. And I also think that's absolutely true. Like I trust my team so much. I think we all have to take that leap of faith. We want to create the kind of culture at least I want to create, which is I believe people when they tell me, you know, when they tell me what they're doing, they tell me how they're spending their time.
11:55And I know that their judgment and they are closer to their to do list than I am. So if they say, I got to be in this other thing, I say, all right. And just that, that thing, that assumption, that leap of faith is pretty big. And I think that that can be honestly, one of the hardest things that people can encounter when they think about kind of making this jump, this kind of opt out opportunity. Well, very much so. And I'm curious how you got there, because when you phrase you, very interestingly, in the course of about 60 seconds, articulated points of view from the bottom looking up and the top looking down.
12:26Bottom looking up articulation was your boss or your boss's boss or your boss's boss's boss does not know how to manage your time as well as you. That's a perspective of someone who has layers of people above them. But you, You, Sarah, also are the person who people below you on an org chart are now saying, actually, you don't know how to manage my time as well as me. And there is conceptually appreciating that as a leader. And then there is actually absorbing and living it as a leader. And I wondered if there was ever a transition for you or if you ever get caught in a moment where you say, you know what, we really need to do this.
13:06And I'm actually pretty annoyed that this person opted out of this because they didn't recognize that this meeting was really important, even if the other ones weren't. How are you living this in a way in which you are creating the level of comfort that's required for your team to live it to? Yeah, I think to start acknowledging that we all make assumptions about other people, A, and about what it means to be on a team, B, and about what it means to be high impact, right, or high performing team, delivering high impact results, however you might define that. And so I think, in other words, you do make a decision as a leader and also as a teammate to say, am I going to trust my team or not?
13:45It's really just that simple. And I think a lot of people, unfortunately, choose not to. And so then we all feel that. We all know what that feels like from micromanagement to checking in. Are you in your seat at 9 a.m.? And are you there to 5 or 6 or whatever it is, right? Like, we all know what that feels like. And so when you decide that you don't want to make that assumption and you don't want to create that experience, that's how. And I don't mean to be reductionist, but the reality is I think it's like that. It's just like I can make all kinds of assumptions about people. Do I want to round up or do I want to round down?
14:13And an interesting thing that happens, I think, I've had the opportunity to be on high-performing teams and to build high-performing teams since I was like 16. Like this is just a thing that I've always been drawn to. And so when you get on a high-performing team, A, you know it's possible. And you know that a lot of teams out there, frankly, aren't. And that can be such a drag. But when you know that it's possible, the commitment that you make to that is an interesting one to not only be able to attract and cultivate excellence in high performers that are already obviously high performers. But an interesting thing also happens, which is if you treat everybody on your team like a high performer, it's amazing how many high performers you'll find.
14:50Yeah. There's a lot of research into that, that people end up performing the way that you treat them. And if you treat them like a low performer, they become one. And if you treat them like a high performer, they become one. Yeah. Yeah. And so, and also the reality is I've lived that I've been put in a box. I've been said, I've been told, don't think about the whole business. Think about this tiny little slice that's yours. And I could perform that too. And it sucked. It sucked. And so what if, right? Like what if we create a culture where everybody has the opportunity to be a part of it and to be dialed in and to be trusted and to be treated like a high performer, like a, you attract high performers and B, you create them.
15:25And so it was an incredible flywheel that God, it's just, it's such a no lived it somehow, if you've seen the truth a little bit, if you've been on one awesome team, and you really think about why it was awesome, I think a lot of it comes back to assumptions like this. Also, I imagine a lot of it comes back to who you have selected to be on the team in the first place. This, in a way, I'm hypothesizing, and you can confirm and then take it in whatever direction you want. But as I'm listening to this, I'm thinking, we're talking about a team that you have where you feel confident that if you treat people like high performers, they will be high performers.
16:04But that means, of course, unstated that you have selected those people to be on the team in the first place, that this doesn't start with the team. This starts with hiring the team. Is that right? Yes and no. Okay. Well, as I said, I think there were 12 people on my team when I started and they're almost 70 now. So did I hire Moses team? Yes. I inherited excellent folks too, though. And I think in a lot of ways, when you look at performance there, a lot of them were excellent at drowning. A lot of them were excellent, but they didn't see a path to advancement. And so when, so that was actually the very first thing that I did when I came in and inherited a team was I went through and I talked to every single person.
16:41I said, what do you need? What's happening? Like, how can I help? And I made a list and then I did those things. And so then suddenly like, A, people are getting what they need. They're feeling heard. They're feeling respected. And they know that their opinion matters and that they know that they can rely on me to be responsive to that. Can you give, can you give an example of what that, of what that was just so people can understand the kind of things that you were doing? Yeah. I mean, one was simply, we were just stunningly understaffed, right? We have this team that their hair was on fire all the time and they didn't know who to ask for help.
17:10And it felt like they weren't being heard. And so to just listen and say, Hey, like we just actively, we objectively need to hire three more people. And I said, done. What else? And then there was just some, some lack of discipline and some confusion about who's working on weekends, how are we managing holidays, right? So just some operational stuff there to be like, okay, like how should this work when you guys want me and need? And to be able to implement that and then to follow through on it all the way too, right? Because I think in a lot of ways, especially when you're in there and you're making big changes and you're building trust to keep doing it, right?
17:39Because a lot of times that discipline can kind of lack. You change a thing, then things revert. And so kind of having that follow through and execution, I think is so important too, once you've identified the problem and the solve. But another big one, as I mentioned, was we created bands for advancement within our patient care teams and within our eligibility teams to say, hey, yeah, like here's entry level and then here's the next level and here's the third level and here's the fourth. And that unlocked several people on the team too, to be like, oh, there's somewhere that I can go here and it means something and my responsibilities can change and I can lead people.
18:08Like how cool is that? And so just like, those are just a few specific examples of things that I could come in and change and create some opportunity and create some structure that is just, it can be night and day for excellent folks who I didn't have the opportunity to hire. They were already there and they're also excellent. Did meeting culture come up in those early conversations? I don't remember, to be honest. And in a lot of ways, so much of how I think about meeting culture is by demonstration, right? It's meeting by example. And so it's hard for me to remember how explicitly I talked about it with people, but I can tell you the things that I've modeled intentionally, including the opt out thing where it's like, Hey, listen.
18:45And I also, like I said, I did set out from the beginning, for instance, saying, Hey, I'm generally going to keep attendee lists short. Please do not be finished. You're not included. Please receive that as me respecting your time. Always like that's the assumption. And then also be, if you see a meeting, you really want to be in paying the organizer. Like the, we are here, meetings are here to serve us. We're not here to serve them. And so how do you think about that? That's a great line. I just need to stress that. Meetings are here to serve us. We're not here to serve them. That's awesome. Right?
19:14And so when you think about meetings as being fundamentally flexible, right, they are meant to also stretch and bend with teams and needs, right? Like we regularly reevaluate our standing meetings and say, is this still serving us? Does this still make sense? We will survey the team and say, hey, is there something you wish we were covering more or less of here? Do you want to keep attending this meeting? Should we change it from weekly to biweekly? And so we just do that regularly with our handful of standing meetings. And we're also very deliberate about not having too many standing meetings, right?
19:43In other words, as we think about meeting types, right? I think that's an interesting thing to start to unpack is... Yeah. So let's talk about that, the meeting types. Yeah. So I think there are a few kind of big buckets that meetings fall into. One is, is it a brainstorming meeting, right? Like, do we have a big juicy problem that we want to get together and just sit around and throw ideas at it and say, what if we did this? What if we did that? Those are fun. Then there are also, you know, a one-on-one meeting, which is kind of a touch point of like checking in. That's a one-on-one with a direct report usually.
20:10And they're bringing any challenges that they're facing. They're bringing anything that they need my help on. And I'm also bringing a couple of things to them, kind of status checks, right? That's a whole new category, one-on-ones. And then there are also just weekly standing meetings that very often for my team are status update meetings. And that's really important. And I think that my weekly leadership team meeting is a really good example where that is a 25-minute meeting max. Right. And all we do is run through all of our big priority projects and the latest status on each so that we don't all waste each other's time slacking each other on the side saying, what's the latest on this?
20:43What's the latest on that? Right. Like it's, it's just a reporting out meeting. And if we find ourselves asking a bigger question or saying, Hey, I'm having a hard time with this, or, Hey, we all need to think about this. We will stop and say, all right, this is a side meeting who needs to be in it. Okay. Schedule that. And then let us know where landed on that next week. Bless you. And so that discipline to say, uh-uh, this is substantive. This is not an update. Let's talk about this another time. Because otherwise these things can turn, they can go on forever. And then you've got a lot of people who are sitting there and this isn't relevant to them.
21:14Yes. So not only are people sitting there resenting that they're still in this meeting that should have ended 20 minutes ago, but also the mindset that they brought to the meeting wasn't the right one. In other words, like if you're coming to a brainstorming meeting, that mindset is so different than a status update meeting. And so when those things start to blend or when it's not clear, when it's going to be one or the other, you've already just like crushed engagement on your team. You've just absolutely suffocated it. And that's just also just from my own experience, right? If I'm coming in and I'm just like taking through a list and then you want me to think broadly about some huge question and go kind of on a wander session, I can't do that.
21:47And I resent it. It's like, I'm not in the right headspace. I wasn't thinking about this. Right, right. So I think when you're really clear, and I think a lot of people try to use agendas as a replacement for this idea. And I think in a lot of ways, agendas can be great. But in a lot of ways, I think that we overuse agenda. We use agendas as a crutch to create this mindset when the reality is the mindset is more important than the list itself. Do you know what I mean? Yes, but I want you to break it down a little bit more. What do you mean? Yeah. So I think a lot of folks try to compensate for lack of meeting discipline with an 18 point agenda saying we're going to cover all these things.
22:28It's going to be this specific and we're going to tick right through it. It's going to take 15 minutes and that's that. And I think the reality is you very rarely get through all the things and nobody's quite satisfied with what you talked about. And a lot of times you go off track anyway. Whereas what if it's about the preset, right? The pre-meeting clarity is, okay, we've got this one big business opportunity we want to think about. I want these four people there. And I would love to hear your perspective from your seat about what you think we should do and why. And like that, keep it short, right?
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22:57Because I also think that people tend, our default meeting length is 25 minutes. That's not an accident. Part of that is because people try to bite off way more than they can chew when it comes to a meeting. It's like, we're going to take an hour. We're going to take three hours. We're going to cover these 55 topics and it's going to be incredible. We're going to get so much done. A, I can't pay attention for that long. Right? Like an hour long meeting is hard for me at this point, like 25 minutes and I'm moving on to something else and I'm going to start over. But also, yeah, I just think fatigue in general sets in for everybody.
23:25Nobody can focus for that long and everybody gets restless and sick of being there. And so again, it's just, it's all about, in a lot of ways, audience engagement. When you think about meetings, it's like, how do I keep people dialed in and focused on this thing? And then we can move on to the next thing and just chunk it out, break it up. Yeah. So far, I have just been affirming for 30 minutes straight everything that you're saying, because I love it. But I want to test what you're saying against a skeptic. So I'd said earlier that there was someone who in my LinkedIn feed when I had posted about your policy was very skeptical of it.
23:58And I went back and forth with this person, but I was just voicing my own opinion. I'm not you. So let's hear from you instead. I just want to read you Nicholas Stuller. Sorry, Nicholas. I don't know if I'm mispronouncing your last name, but I'm just gonna read it. This policy makes no real world sense. This again, being the specific policy of the opt out. When a manager needs their team members input on something, if the team member decides not to show up, progress can't be made. It is true, however, that there are many managers that have needless meetings, et cetera, et cetera. But if some players decided not to show up to some practices or meetings, could the coach win the season.
24:32So what do you say to that? First, it just kind of cracks me up how often people tell me that I can't do what I'm already doing. I love it. I love it. It's right up there with being underestimated. I just love it. Just keep going. I'll just keep doing what I'm doing. I understand why people think it isn't possible. I get it. And in part, because I've worked in the work environments where it would never be possible. And so I have empathy for that. I get it. I get the view. The reality is this. I think in a lot of ways, people also tend to think that, oh, if you're constantly readjusting meetings so it works for everybody, you waste time, right?
25:08You can't make decisions fast enough. I think there's a sense of urgency where it's like, oh, if I'm constantly adjusting my meeting schedule for people who can't make it, we never meet. And I can tell you, having worked in a marketing agency where I learned this habit, I've never worked in a faster paced, higher pressure environment, right? Where everybody wants everything yesterday. And so I can confirm just at the highest level, it's absolutely possible to still make decisions quickly. There is very rarely a meeting that cannot wait one day. Sometimes they can't, sometimes they can't, right?
25:39And so then sometimes you're meeting late at night and that's also a reality. Although I can say that doesn't happen really at TLN, it's incredibly rare, but in agencies, it happens a little more. It's like, yeah, okay, this is going to be related really early, but the reality is you're still accommodating folks and that is still preferable to not meeting at all. And so, yeah, I think when you're always approaching questions like this with a sense of flexibility and respect, you will realize that you will always still get the work done. It will always happen, right? I cannot think of a time in four years at an agency or taking this kind of approach to meetings caused me to miss a client deadline.
26:11Like it just doesn't happen. When you've got folks who care about the work, right? And you have a high performing culture, we have people who take a lot of responsibility for an outcome, which again, those are assumptions that are kind of baseline that you can, A, you can build a meeting culture on it, but also it reinforces and creates that sense as well, right? Like all of these things are self-reinforcing. But again, there is that core assumption where it's like, if we all care about this and if we're all doing our best and if we trust each other and if we respect each other's time and each other's judgment, what can we do then?
26:39And I think that that, just that baseline, that sense of like, oh, well, I'm having a meeting and if not everybody's there, then it's not, it's not getting done. That probably isn't true. Probably a four out of five people showed up and then you updated that person in five minutes on Slack afterwards, it'd probably be okay. Even though it would have been great if they were there. In other words, what is the best possible outcome versus what is good enough? How do you maintain velocity and also respect everybody's time? I tell you, it's possible. It's possible. There's not only one time to talk and that time isn't whenever this meeting happened to arbitrarily be set.
27:14That seems to be the point of distinction here is that this person who doesn't believe that you're able to do the thing that you're already doing is imagining that the meeting as structured was the moment to do the thing. And the simple reality is, as you're providing ample evidence every day, is that you can find another time, a time that just happens to work better for all parties involved. And that time could probably be tomorrow because things, most things can wait in the world. But if it literally can't wait, then you can just find some other time. Yeah. And you can negotiate. In other words, I think another aspect of working in an agency environment is there's not a whole lot of leaning on authority.
27:56In other words, you work with people who don't directly report to you. So you can't just pull rank. And so even if you want to, it's simply not an option. And so how do you influence your colleagues to help them achieve and prioritize your particular business need, right? Your client. And so there's just a lot of negotiation and respect that occurs around meetings. In other words, there's also, I think, an overemphasis that like all decisions are made in meetings or all the important stuff that happens, happens in meetings. I think if nothing else, as everybody has moved to, not everybody, but as so many people have experienced remote work and this asynchronous experience, we've discovered that we can actually do a whole lot of things at a whole lot of different times and still collaborate some way, whether it is hopping on the phone, hopping on a Zoom, talking in person or Slack or email or phone call, whatever it is, it's really possible to get it all done.
28:45I went back and forth with this guy on LinkedIn. And I'm just going to read you a little bit more of that interaction because where I ended up going with it is something that you said earlier in our conversation that I want you to unpack more. And we'll get there in a second. So anyway, so what Nicholas wrote was that the notion that a team member can simply not show up to a meeting they are requested to be at simply does not work. And I said, you're imagining a system staying fixed, but the meeting expectation changing, and that's not going to work. But if you wanted to, you could create an entire system in a way that would improve the overall efficiency and create different minute by minute expectations.
29:29In other words, like the challenge that I think that, and as I read that, I was like, I wasn't that clear on that LinkedIn post, but whatever, we're going to be clear right now. The thing that I was thinking about, and I think the thing that you've been thinking about a lot too, is that if you want a policy like this to work, you can't just take a company where there is a normal expectation of meetings and then keep everything at that company fixed and just change one thing. And that one thing is that people can opt out of meetings because that will crash into all the other systems and structures that supported the idea that everyone should be at these meetings and that like specific things happen at these specific meetings.
30:09So what you really need to do is start to think not of a completely fixed environment with one thing that is variable, but rather as a variable environment where lots of different things are going to change. And if that's the case, then suddenly you actually can create a different culture with different expectations and still achieve great results. And that's what you were talking about at the beginning where you were saying that making this work meant not just changing this one policy about meetings, but also changing a lot of other things at the company right down to how you write job descriptions so that you were supporting a culture with a different kind of understanding of meetings.
30:49Can you unpack that more? Yeah. So yeah, in other words, I think, yeah, to look at the opt out example as if, right, is that that could just be plucked out of our culture and slotted in any existing culture. and that's going to unlock something that works. I think, of course not. Of course it isn't. And so, yeah, as I mentioned, like it is not one thing, it's 50. And so thinking about what those things are, as we write job descriptions, for instance, a phrase that I require us to include in every one is, we don't have all the answers and we don't expect you to either. And the follow-up sentence is something like, what we do expect is that you show up and you bring your best every day and you're open and you're curious, right?
31:29And you show up, whatever that means. And so I think when you key in on little ways like that to articulate what it's like to work at your organization, and for us, what do I want it to feel like? I want it to feel curious, right? I want it to feel innovative. I want it to feel creative. And how do you actually achieve that, right? Because everybody tosses those words around. And, of course, innovation with a capital I, right? It's everywhere, right up there with disruption, whatever all those things are. And I think when you start to peel back what processes you put in place to cultivate those goals, that's when it gets really interesting.
32:02And opt-in or opt-out is one example. Another example is, A, as I mentioned, setting out short attendee meeting lists. That's our default. And so in other words, we'll mess it up. There will be some times where you want to be in a meeting and you weren't included. No problem. Talk about it. It's okay. And so when you destigmatize stuff like that, like just doing that right from the beginning and doing it over and over again is so important because that's how you're going to remove some of the politics that I think are so common in companies, especially as, you know, who are the important people and where are they and what are they doing and are they there or not?
32:32Another example, like I said, is meeting types, right? In other words, hey, I'm not going to go to that brainstorming meeting or I am going to go to that brainstorming meeting, but I'm not going to go to the implementation meeting that immediately follows it. But then I will check in again whenever you guys need me, just getting that kind of cadence of what exactly is needed for me in this meeting. And if I'm not there, what impact will that have on my team? Can they proceed without me, yay or nay? So in other words, the whole team is encouraged to think that way, right? Because everybody understands what the purpose of the meeting is anyway.
32:58So everybody's empowered to think, what does it mean if I'm not there, right? And is that worth it for the company? And then can I talk to my boss about that? That's another thing. Speedy meetings, right? Like I said, 25 minutes. That's definitely my default pre-meeting clarity. No meeting Wednesdays. That's another really good one for us. That's another one that I first experienced on the agency side too. And it was really hard to execute at an agency because clients are calling it all the time. But man, coming company side, it's been, we have just some more agency over our time as well. Right.
33:27And so we have a chance to say, we're going to take a day. It's going to be midweek. It's not going to be the beginning or the end. Right. And so then Monday and Tuesday get stacked up, especially for somebody like me, gosh, I have six to eight meetings a day every day. Right. And so emails can pile up, follow-ups compile up, and also focus strategic work. I can feel like I don't have time for it. And so I know I've got that midweek respite where it's like, oh, I will catch up on those emails that stacked up. And then also I'm going to think about this. I'm going to write about this article, right?
33:53I'm going to make the strategic decision. And so, and then Thursday and Friday are stacked up again with meetings. And then it's the weekend. And so getting that kind of predictable cadence for the whole team, because of course it also takes a whole team to kind of create a norm like that and to protect it. So that's another really good device that we've used to say meetings are so important, but again, they serve us. And so sometimes they don't serve us and we actually need a break from them. and everybody does. Sarah, I've absolutely loved this and could probably talk to you about meetings all day, which would disrupt the meetings that we probably both have scheduled for the rest of the day.
34:28But let's then instead end with this. Let's say someone has listened to this and it has forced them to reflect upon the meeting culture at their company and they have realized that it is not nearly as productive and respectful as they would hope. You can't change it immediately because as we have just described, this is not a simple send out an email, new policy kind of thing. But what would you recommend as a first step for somebody who wants to try to create a change for something that sounds simple, but is actually quite complex? Yeah, I think you have a meeting and talk about it. But actually, right, like I think if you're sitting on a team and you wish maybe you're not leading that team, right?
35:12Like maybe you're not leading the meeting and you find yourself sitting in meetings where it's like, man, I don't feel like this is the highest and best use of my time. And so how do I do with that information, right? Maybe if I don't have the power to change it or I don't feel like I do. I think you grab time either with, maybe it's your manager, maybe it's your fellow colleagues, just to get a sense of saying, hey, I would love to think about how we approach meetings in this organization. Because I think that we can make them more high impact for X, Y, or Z reason. Does anybody else agree? right like how do we do you feel like meetings are serving us well today maybe that's even a better place to start just ask the question right to see how other people are feeling about it and try to create an environment where people can just share openly and say and again that meetings are a device they're not they're not a critique right if i say that the meetings aren't working for me i'm not insulting anybody i'm not criticizing anybody i'm saying how are we making this device work for us is it working today and then going from there and saying what purpose do we want our meeting culture or what kind of culture are we trying to create even though not even further Say, what do we want it to feel like to be here every day?
36:12What's the point? How do we want to work together? What do we want it to feel like? Do I feel trusted to do my job? Yay or nay. And then maybe if this is feedback for a manager, it's like, hey, when this happens, when X, Y, Z happens, I feel as though I'm not trusted to do my job. And so I wonder if we can explore another way to do this. Or I've got some ideas about how we could make this more high impact. Are you open to that? So it's just a lot of, like, as you think about influence, right, both down, sideways, and up in your organization, how you cultivate that influence and have conversations like this.
36:45It's about coalition building, I think, at the end of the day, right? If you're experiencing a problem, someone probably is too, but ask questions. Because I think that that's an easy one. And gosh, I mean, I'm a lawyer. And so it's easy for me to say, I've got an opinion. It's a strong one. Here's what it is. And so it's like, let's all go this way. It's easy for me to do that. That's kind of my default. And so something that I work on just as a leader and as a colleague is opening questions first and sharing my perspective last because I don't want to make assumptions just because I'm struggling with it that everyone does.
37:14And so I think it's techniques like that, right? Like whenever you're trying to affect any kind of change, whether it's on your little team or across your company's culture, looking for folks and figuring out their experience and building asks and building opportunities and just troubleshooting. shooting. I mean, it's just like what I did when I rolled in, right? When I was new to the job two years ago, the first thing I did was go and ask questions. Because I had ideas about what could be better, but I didn't know for sure. And I learned a ton about what could be better. I had about 20 % of the answer before I started.
37:40And I got the other 80 % just from talking to everybody. And so it's that. It's just like, how do you talk to people and bring curiosity to see if other people are feeling the same way as you or not, and if not, why? And then how you can think about making it better. And so I feel like in a lot of ways, that's really just kind of broad and vague, but also that's how you do it. It doesn't matter what the change is, I think. It's just asking other people who are having the same experience and seeing if you want to pick up a banner on their behalf because you probably do and they probably want to come with you.
38:05Sarah, this is awesome. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. It's been my pleasure. I write a newsletter. It's called One Thing Better and my favorite response that people send me is where they say, you know, I subscribe to a lot of newsletters and I don't open many of them but this is the one I open every week. And I really appreciate that. And the reason I think that they're doing that is because this newsletter is designed with you in mind. One thing better, just one way each week that you can improve your company or your career and do work that you love. I know that there is infinite advice out there.
38:46It feels totally overwhelming. So I make it simple. It is one thing to do, one way to solve a problem, one way to think differently about the challenges ahead. One thing better. Try it yourself. You can find it at one thing better dot email. That is a web address. Just plug it into your browser. One thing better dot email.
From the publisher
At The Lactation Network, anyone can opt out of any meeting. Why? Because CEO Sarah Kellogg Neff has a philosophy about meetings and company culture — and you need to hear it.
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