Chapter Five. Meetings and More
One way to ask for help from Innovators, Connectors, gurus and other colleagues is to hold a meeting. Here are some effective meeting patterns that can be used in this phase of your work: Piggyback(201), Brown Bag(113), Do Food(132), The Right Time(207), Plant the Seeds(204), External Validation(148), Next Steps(195), Stay in Touch(221), e-Forum(135), and Group Identity(155).
We’re all busy, and one of the worst time-wasters we face is meetings. But if a meeting or other event is optional and the purpose is just to tell people about your new idea, you can bring in attendees by using some of the patterns in our collection. First, the Piggyback(201) pattern recommends that you don’t do any work you don’t have to. Instead, give your presentation as part of a regularly scheduled activity. This way you avoid the effort of finding and reserving a room and advertising the meeting time. One company we visited held monthly Tech Forums where a multitude of technical topics were presented. This was a good place to introduce new ideas.
The Piggyback pattern is useful for other activities in addition to meetings. Taking advantage of an existing practice to bring your new idea in “the back door” is a good way to introduce change without disturbing the way things are normally done. As German author Jean Paul Richter advises, “Do not wait for extraordinary situations to do good; try to use ordinary situations.”
Linda remembers when a small group was struggling to attract participants for a new conference. One of the planners had the idea of scheduling the fledgling event immediately after another conference, a big international gathering that would draw folks who might stay a couple of extra days to attend the newer conference and also be magnets for other potential attendees. This proved to be an effective way to get the new conference going, so that even now, several years after its inception, the small conference still piggybacks on the larger one.
Let’s Meet!
If you do decide to schedule your own meeting, try the pattern Brown Bag(113) and have your gathering over lunchtime, when most people are free. Attendees bring their lunch and eat during the meeting. Here’s a cut from an advertisement for a Brown Bag at one company that calls the gatherings “Lunch and Learn.”
“OK, so you’ve heard of food for thought, right? Well, how about Food AND Thought?”
This practice seems to extend across organizations and across cultures. Linda attended a seminar in Japan and during lunch bento boxes were delivered to a nearby conference room. This allowed the group to continue discussions over lunch.
The pattern Do Food(132) recommends using food because it is a powerful influencer. In her article “Seven Secrets to Good Brainstorming,” Linda Rischler wisely observes, “Cookies always spur creativity.” Research has shown that people are more favorably inclined to ideas that are presented while they are eating. Indeed, sharing food has long been associated with building friendship and community. In French, the word compagnon means “companion” or “people belonging to the same community of craftspeople.” The Latin origin of the word means “sharing bread.”
Mary Lynn tells the story of suggesting that a regular committee meeting be held over breakfast one week. It was amazing to watch the transformation in the members. They relaxed and even joked a bit. The work still got done that week, in an atmosphere that was much more pleasant than a sterile meeting room with no food.
A tradition at one company is the “Food Place.” One department has its own kitchen, another its famous espresso room. One company we visited was built on acres of nature preserve and the inside was as beautiful as the outside. There were conversation nooks with coffee and tea bars—places to gather to get away from the office and enjoy a moment, contemplating nature and sipping a comforting beverage. It reminds the visitor of Christopher Alexander’s pattern, Alcoves. You are immediately drawn to those places.
At this point in your effort you probably won’t have resources, but if you use Do Food and, for example, buy cookies with your own money, you can enhance the influence principle and community building effects. It shows people that you believe the idea is important enough to invest your own time and money.
The Right Time(207) is another pattern to keep in mind. For example, there are always better times than hitting a team right before a deadline. Mary Lynn saw this when she worked in industry. She learned never to ask the software developers for anything in the last few months before they were due to release a product. Now in academia, she has observed that faculty members are more open to volunteering for a task or listening to a new idea in the beginning or at the end of a semester rather than in the middle when their workloads have heated up.
This simple recommendation can help you in the beginning when you are sensitive to the constraints of your target audience. As you venture forth into the larger organization it may not be possible to always consider timing, but certainly December in almost any organization is not a good choice. As the Cowboy’s Guide to Life Web site[*] wisely notes, “Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.”
At the end of every event, consider the pattern Next Steps(195). Give people something to hang on to. Wolf’s Law of Meetings states, “The only important result of a meeting is agreement about next steps.” In our training classes, we use the last 30 minutes to lead the attendees in brainstorming what they would like to do next in their organizations.
Using Information That’s Out There
If you have some interesting books or interesting articles about your new idea, use the pattern Plant the Seeds(204) and bring these materials (seeds) to the meeting. Some of these seeds will take root; that is, they will be picked up, read, and spark the interest of some people. This comment by Winston Ledet, author of a chapter in Peter Senge’s book, The Fifth Discipline, describes this phenomenon:
I looked out my hotel window and noticed that the grass was littered with pinecones. Nature, I realized, doesn’t put all its resources into one or two seedlings, and expect them to take root. It drops myriad seeds, like those pinecones, over as broad an area as possible. Most of them may die, but enough survive to generate a whole forest.[**]
We heard this story from one Evangelist:
I remember bringing books about patterns to a project retrospective session. They generated curiosity and questions about patterns. Funny story: One of the participants picked up one of the collections of patterns during a break. When he put the book back on the table he told the others, “Hey, guys! You should check out this book—it has a great ending!”
The pattern External Validation(148) is closely related to Plant the Seeds. When you begin to introduce the idea, there is little evidence for the validity of the new idea in the organization. So you must look for evidence from the outside. People will usually pay more attention to anything in writing, and will be more impressed if the external source has a good reputation. Successful entrepreneur and author Robert Sullivan writes, “How do you react when reading an advertisement versus an article? You are suspicious of the advertisement but reading about the same product or service in the body of an article gives it instant credibility. Clearly the author is an ‘expert.’”
Mary Lynn tells this story of introducing patterns into one organization:
When the book Patterns in Java hit the market, I showed it to many Java developers. It caused many of them to become interested in patterns and they started coming to me with their questions.
Stay Connected
As you collect a list of interested people, think of good ways to use the pattern Stay in Touch(221). Author and Buddhist monk Jack Kornfield reminds us that “When we get too caught up in the busyness of the world we lose connection with one another—and ourselves.”
One way to stay in touch is to use the pattern e-Forum(135). Creating an electronic forum will allow you to communicate with a large group of people on a regular basis. But be careful with this over-used medium. As one Wall Street wag stated, “What do you mean we don’t communicate? Just yesterday I faxed you a reply to the recorded message you left on my answering machine.”
If there is sufficient interest, at an appropriate point use the pattern Group Identity(155). Assigning an identity to your change initiative helps people become aware that it exists and what it is trying to do. Baseball legend Casey Stengel quipped, “Finding good players is easy. Getting them to play as a team is another story.” In our training sessions, participants form teams. We ask them to choose a name for themselves, because we’ve learned how this simple step gets them to work closer together. At the conclusion of the exercise, we ask the teams to tell us about their strategies. They always begin their brief summaries by saying, “We’re <incredible team name>!” and this is usually accompanied by a rousing cheer.
A change agent at Hewlett Packard tells the following story:
I wanted to do something at the corporate level with a focused topic: thermal cooling in computers. I only knew six people who were interested but each of them knew another six, and so on. Ninety people showed up at the first meeting—the beginning of an annual thermal cooling conference. The “COOL TEAM” now meets weekly by phone, e-mail, and conference call. The technology developed out of this conversation delivers tens of millions of dollars to the bottom line, and, with regard to cooling, leaves our competitors behind.[*]
If you’ve been able to apply the patterns in this chapter, you’ve been busy! You’ve had a meeting using the pattern Piggyback(201) or Brown Bag(113). Perhaps you were able to Do Food(132) and you scheduled the meeting at The Right Time(207). You brought some interesting books or articles, hoping to Plant the Seeds(204) and point to External Validation(148) for your new idea. You talked about the Next Steps(195) for your fledgling effort and maybe you used e-Forum(135) to help Stay in Touch(221) with people who are getting interested in your work. If you were really lucky, your collection of like-minded folks has started to form a Group Identity(155). If you have more time and want to see your change effort really take off, have a look at the patterns in the next chapter.