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I
hope you enjoyed the "Manage Expectations or Expect
to be Managed" articles. If you haven't seen them,
you may want to read part 1 and part
2.
So,
what to do about the client who says "Our meetings
should be CRISP"?
What
exactly is a crisp meeting? Short? Non-confrontational?
One-way? I didn't know. (This actually happened . . . I'll
tell you the story.)
I
was managing a large-ish project, implementing a financial
management package. The company supplying the package had
assigned 15 of their "consultants", and the
client about 20 of their people. The client sponsor was
the CFO, who we'll call ... Tom.
Tom
had set up this weekly status meeting where everybody in
the project was expected to attend. As much as I wasn't
accustomed to running status meeting with 35 people, I
said to myself . . . "no big deal."
After
all, I prided myself for being a very good facilitator,
quick on my feet, able to guide groups of people, etc. I
had experience on the stage (yes, the theater), had been
an instructor in college, facilitated lots of design
meetings as a consultant. I figured, I can do this. I'd
get up, run the meetings, capture the status of most
everything, compile issue lists, to-do lists and so on.
And we'd be done in about 90 minutes to two hours.
Two
weeks into the project, Tom pulled me aside and said the
meeting had to be crisper. I figured, OK he wants our
consultants to be more "with it." i.e. more
aware of their work and how they related to everything
else. So I told them in a separate meeting to be more
"prepared" for the status meetings. It worked,
to a degree. The meetings were now down to 90 minutes,
max.
A
week or so later, Tom came and said, they're not crisp
enough. I didn't have the guts then to tell him "Well
your people are the ones who are slowing it down." He
suggested that I should have pre-prepared slides for each
phase of the project and the tasks within them, with
assignments and due dates. I thought, OK, we're getting
somewhere. I'm getting a better feel of his expectations.
We
tried that for a few weeks. It still wasn't crisp enough.
Tom, exasperated, said "Why are you asking so many
people what their statuses is?"
Bong!
Isn't that what status meetings are for? What other
purpose could there possibly be to meet, if I wasn't going
to ASK? He said I should KNOW the status, after all, I was
the project manager. For a few seconds, I thought how am I
supposed to KNOW if I don't ask?
Then
it dawned on me. His expectation of a status meeting was
not a status "gathering" meeting, but a status
"dissemination" meeting.
Once
I had that understanding, I knew what I had to do. Get the
team leaders (or their equivalents) in for a meeting the
day before the big meeting. Capture status there, and
present it to the whole group.
I
did that -- it worked like a charm. The meetings were as
crisp as a February morning in Minnesota. Or shall I say
(we're based in Houston) as crisp as the catfish at the
local beer joint.
It
had taken me a couple of months to understand his
expectations. What I learned was never to assume that
status meetings always had to be of one kind. I should
have asked, what exactly is your concept of crisp
meetings? It was a humbling experience.
Here
are some other articles you may find of interest:
Why
are clients the way they are?
where we suggest
that if one puts one's self in the client's shoes, we can
adapt our words and actions to make
They
never said they needed that
where we
discuss the common problem of ever changing requirements
"Is
that your final answer? Consulting and the Millionaire
show"
where we
discuss a very powerful technique we can learn from the
show that will reduce our grief on the job.
Enjoy
the S.I.P.s
where we discuss the Strategic Inflection Points of client
projects. If you learn to understand the hows and whys of
SIP's you will feel stronger and more confident.
or
go to the articles index.
And
of course, you're welcome to browse through our site: our
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