Make Meetings Count – Literally, with Meeting Ticker and Clockwork Meetings.

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Ask the internet and often it delivers more than you expected. Today was one of those days.

About two weeks ago I ended up in a Twitter discussion with Shirley Ayres and Paul Taylor about how much time gets wasted in meetings. It started with a post about are meetings are the symptom of bad organisation, and ended up with some ideas around calculating just how much meetings cost.

One of the things mentioned was doing the following calculation, in your head:

Number of people x Hourly pay x Hours spent meeting = Meeting Cost*

*This doesn’t include travelling to the meeting or preparation time, which probably needs to be built-in, but it’s a good starting point.

The idea is that you then compare this cost of meeting figure against the benefits that have resulted from having the meeting, simple. The benefits should be greater than the costs. However, calculating the monetary value of the benefits of a meeting is a bit more difficult to work out.

That was where I left the discussion until Shirley and Paul picked things up again this morning (I have a good reason for being absent, honest).

Say hello to Meeting Ticker and Clockwork Meetings, these are two very helpful programmes that allow you to display the costs of your meetings. To quote Nick Atkin of Halton Housing Trust, “this would shorten meetings by about 75%”. This is how they work:

Meeting Ticker was introduced by Paul this morning. This is open source software which has been developed on GitHub by Toby Tripp, Lydia Tripp, and Roy Kolak. It is worth reading the explanation of why Meeting Ticker was developed ….’expensive consultants sitting on their butts for hours on end’ was a big motivator (sound familiar?).

This is very straightforward to use; you add in the number attending, make an estimate of the hourly salaries and press start. You then watch a meter rapidly adding up the pounds and pence with “stop the bleeding” written dramatically below. It is slightly mesmerizing and would shorten meetings I’m sure.

A couple of observations:

  • Meeting Ticker is written on GitHub, open source software so anybody (with the necessary coding skills) could develop it further, for example to include a choice of salary ranges or a salary calculator.
  • It might not work using Internet Explorer. There is an advisory note saying “If this works on Internet Explorer, it is purely by accident”. Worth knowing if your organisation (there are plenty) only allows an ancient version of Internet Explorer as the web browser.

Clockwork Meetings This afternoon Ed Bullock from Halton Housing Trust came up with this free app on iTunes. It is just as easy to uses as Meeting Ticker, you add the number of attendees, hourly salary cost and press start. The big difference is the ability to set an audible ‘click’ to make a noise at set intervals. Just what you need in case you forget the fact there is ‘money on the clock’.

The discussion hasn’t ended here. There is a lot of activity ongoing to find the best on-line salary calculator that could be used in conjunction with either of these applications.

I’d suggest that you also need a large screen in the meeting room, so that everyone can see the costs rising as the meeting progresses (or drags on). Hopefully it will focus minds to think about costs and benefits.

I know we haven’t yet worked out how we measure the benefits of meetings. Maybe that’s something Shirley can encourage debate about next weekend?

So what’s the PONT?

  1. There seems to be software programme or app for just about anything you can think of, somewhere on the internet. You just need someone to look in the right place.
  2. A highly visible display of the costs of a meeting is likely to have an impact on how people behave and long the meeting takes.
  3. Slight word of caution here. Don’t let this approach fall into the wrong hands. I worry that a few people might misuse ‘meeting cost measures’ and force people into hasty decisions, when a more thoughtful consideration of the evidence is required.

Picture source: Meeting Ticker http://tobytripp.github.io/meeting-ticker/

Clockwork Meetings: https://itunes.apple.com/ye/app/clockwork-meetings/id384045562?mt=8

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Don’t spend any money on NHS Jargon Busters – it’s sorted! Download the Apps.

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20130509-224405.jpgI’m not ashamed to admit my naivety and ignorance. In the last post I was astonished to find out there was a book available called ‘NHS Jargon Explained’. I was just scratching the surface…..

On the basis that jargon is “the specialised or technical language of a trade, profession or similar group”, and the NHS is a massive organisation with very many specialist groups, this shouldn’t be surprising. A quick search using twitter turned up some interesting examples of NHS ‘jargon busters’. These are my favourites, apologies to anyone worthy who’s not on the list.

Guardian Newspaper, Glossary of Healthcare Jargons and Acronyms. This is 2011 vintage and has about 70 examples of the most common NHS jargon. I was a bit surprised to see BT (British Telecom) feature. Apparently it’s something to do with them running the N3 Network. Have a look at the Guardian article to find out what N3 means. You also need to know that a ‘spine’ isn’t necessarily that thing in the middle of your back.

NHS Local, West Midlands. This is provided by a group of NHS organisations, Universities and private sector organisations that are “transforming healthcare by changing the conversation between patient and the NHS” (that’s not jargon is it). The jargon buster has about 70 explanations, mainly to do with maternity services. Very useful if you need to use that service. A great explanation of ‘oily fish’ can be found here.

Leicestershire NHS, Health Informatics Service. This is blog by a Communications and Marketing Officer in Leicestershire NHS, that explains about 30 Information Technology terms used in the NHS. Helpful information about the language used by another specialist group that will be of benefit to those who don’t work in IT or understand it. Unfortunately there was no explanation of exactly what ‘informatics’ means (is it just me?).

Health and Social Care Information Centre, National Casemix Office Jargon Buster. I had to use the jargon buster to understand what a ‘Casemix Office’ does: “A system whereby the complexity of the care provided to a patient is reflected in an aggregate secondary healthcare classification.” Phew, thank goodness that’s cleared up. There are about 60 definitions here, some of them pretty baffling, but it is the language of a very specialist group. Well worth a look if you want to understand what ‘complications and comorbidities’ are all about, alongside ‘cliff edges’, ‘unbundling’ and ‘spells’.

NHS Confederation Acronym Buster. This has a bumper 500 acronyms explained. There is even Application Software (an App, see the NHS Leicestershire definition) available to download for free. This is very helpful and something you could keep under the desk for emergency situations when the healthcare experts are running wild. My only gripe would be that defining acronyms is only half of the problem solved. The jargon remains.

My Health London.  This is an award-winning information website for health services in London. The jargon buster is in a section focussed on young people and there is also a free App you can download called ‘Well Happy’. This is worth a look as it has very clear, jargon free explanations under headings such as ‘Sex and Relationships’ and ‘Alcohol and Addiction’.  Very useful for those difficult conversations with the teenage kids.

This has been a bit of an eye opener. Specialist groups certainly do have their own language, unfortunately jargon to outsiders. There were other examples I stumbled across from the third sector, IT, property and law. Nothing I could find specifically from the world of Local Government… yet?

So, what’s the PONT?

  1. In a large and complicated organisation like the NHS the occurrence of many specialist groups with their own technical language (jargon) is inevitable.
  2. The specialist groups need to make sure they don’t exclude outsiders by the use of technical language that isn’t easily understood.
  3. The good news is that may specialist groups are trying their best to share their ‘jargon busters’ which are free for everyone to use. Hopeful those who aren’t as well-developed or inclusive will pick these up and use them.

Picture Source: My Health London, Young Peoples, ‘Well Happy’ App.

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https://www.myhealth.london.nhs.uk/health-communities/young-people/download

Jargon. A tool of exclusion, efficient technical language or just the ‘cheeping of birds’?

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20130426-205100.jpgMy last post about meetings led to a bit of a discussion about jargon. It’s something that’s despised by many people, but has probably been used by most of us on occasions . So I’m being particularly carefull to avoid using it in this post.

It’s worth having a think about why jargon exists and why we use it.

Basically it’s just a very specific form of language used by people to communicate and (hopefully) help others understand what they are saying.

The origins of the term jargon seems to have come from the Old French word ‘gargun’ which describes the ‘cheeping of birds’. In the 14th century it was used to describe unintelligible or confused speech. Some of the modern definitions of jargon you’ll find include:

  • confused unintelligible language;
  • technical terminology or characteristic language of a special activity or group; and
  • obscure and often pretentious language marked by the unnecessary use of too many, long, vague and uncommon words.

For me, there seems to be two distinctly different reasons for using jargon, one acceptable (with conditions) the other completely unacceptable:

Technical. In this case you have a specific highly technical area where jargon helps communicate more clearly, efficiently and effectively (within the technical community).
Posturing. Here people choose to use language that prevents others understanding what they are saying. The word ‘evasive’ is used a lot in connection with this type of jargon.

What do you do about jargon?

Posturing Jargon. In the case of posturing this is easy (in theory). Just say, “I haven’t got a clue what you are talking about. Please could you explain that without the jargon.” Obviously, this isn’t as easy to do as it sounds, but it’s worth thinking about. Remember that the use of jargon will be an (unconscious or deliberate) act to exclude you from a conversation or prevent you understanding what is being said. You may have encountered this sort of person……..

Technical Jargon. For technical jargon it’s much less clear-cut. This might be a highly specialised area and the jargon actually helps with communication. I remember as an undergraduate I used a specialised scientific dictionary as part of classes. Perfectly reasonable as most of the words didn’t need to be used in general conversation, but it helped greatly in the laboratory. To people outside of that community it was just jargon – ‘cheeping birds’. You need to be on your guard to avoid excluding people from the conversation if they don’t understand the specialised words. There are useful approaches like having a ‘jargon buster’ (explanations of the jargon) available, but the objective should surely be to minimise the jargon in the first place, or keep it where it belongs, in the specialist community.

Management Speak. The place where this gets messy is the crossover between technical and posturing. What if you have someone posturing using technical jargon terms? Dangerous territory. If I was being sceptical I could say that this is the territory of management speak. This Guardian article highlights some of the worst examples like, ‘drill down’ (look in detail) and ‘sunset’ (close down the project). I’m sure you could find plenty of jargon and management speak from your own experience, and use it in that the old favourite ‘Buzzword Bingo‘.

One final thought whilst I was thinking about this post I stumbled upon a book by Tony White called NHS Jargon Explained. Initially I thought it was a joke. It’s not, you can buy it on Amazon. I’ve no doubt it’s necessary, but I do wonder if we’ve over complicated things to the point where people have written books to explain what public services are talking about. Not just for people who work in the service but also, “campaigners, patient interest groups, researchers and journalists, and patients and their relatives may also find it useful and enlightening!” No further comment…….

So, what’s the PONT?

  1. Jargon has its place in specialised technical communities where it helps communication and understanding.
  2. Once you take that language outside of the community you have to explain clearly what you mean, or risk excluding people.
  3. People using jargon to posture, evade, confuse or exclude people should not be tolerated. Ask the question, “I don’t understand, what do you mean?”

Just checking, how jargon free is this post? Anyone know of a jargon checker I could use?

Photo Source. Birds on a wire. http://johnsmyth.ie/blog/2011/11/21/the-chattering-classes/

Linked Posts: Buzzword Bingo http://whatsthepont.com/2012/11/16/best-practice-glossary-or-buzzword-bingo/

Meetings Sabotage http://whatsthepont.com/2011/10/30/meetings-sabotage-additional-field-examples/

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NHS Jargon Buster

Better Understanding – the benefit of meetings. Remember the first time?

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20130421-204621.jpgDoes anyone remember the first meeting they called?

I can, it was quite an anxious experience. Suddenly I had POWER! Power to take people away from doing something useful and have them sit around a table with me for a few hours. Outside of the work that kind of power would be considered a big deal.
The consequence of my anxiety was asking many questions like:

  •  Why do we need this meeting?
  •  Do all these people really need to be there?
  •  Is the journey from South to North Wales justifiable?
  •  What will it cost to put these people in a room for half a day?
  •  Is there an alternative way to achieve what we want to do?

The result was that lots of meetings never actually happened. There was often an alternative way to get things done, it just needed thinking about. That however was long time ago and I’m ashamed to say that I probably don’t put as much thought into calling meetings nowadays. Perhaps all that anxiety wasn’t such a bad thing?

The one thing still do quite often is a quick calculation of the cost of the meeting based roughly on salaries. Following the last weeks post about meetings being the symptom of bad organisation, Shirley Ayres mentioned that she also does this. Shirley takes it one step further by challenging those present with a question about are the outcomes of the meeting value for money? I might try a bit of that.

Ultimately there is great deal of power that comes with the ability to drag people away from what they are doing and into a meeting, it needs to be treated with respect.

So why do we have meetings? There’s plenty of advice available on how to have effective meetings, have a look at businessballs.com for useful and practical material.
Amongst this they have an interesting view on why we have meetings which is about understanding.

Essentially the most useful purpose of a meeting is that face to face contact between people which increases understanding and meaning. Quoting the research by Dr Albert Mehrabian they make some points about how people develop understanding:

  • Written Word = 7% On this basis completely substituting meetings with emails will be challenging.
  • Tone of spoken word = 38% Telephone conferences will improve things, but there is still potential for lots of misunderstanding.
  • Facial expressions and non-verbal signals = 55% Face to face meetings stand a much better chance of achieving understanding and meaning. They also point out that meetings are the most effective way of; securing commitment, exchanging knowledge, creating new ideas and resolving conflict.

I’ve not seen any figures for how this works with video conferences. Face to face communication through facilities like Skype and FaceTime are normal business practice for many people. A video conference certainly feels more useful that a telephone conference, but is it as effective as a real time face to face meeting?

So it’s not just a social thing. The point about getting better understanding and meaning is a huge benefit and good incentive to have meetings. However, it doesn’t automatically follow that the benefits will happen just from meeting face to face. There is plenty more that needs to be in place to have a effective meeting, just scroll through the businessballs advice.

So, what’s the PONT?

  1. The improved understanding acquired through face to face meetings is a big incentive for holding meetings.
  2. The ability to call a meeting is powerful. Meetings use up lots of resources. Outcomes need to pass the value for money test.
  3. It’s worth remembering the ‘first time’ you called a meeting and using the same level of care and attention that went into planning that first meeting for all.

Picture Source: Dilbert by Scott Adams

Links to other posts: http://whatsthepont.com/2013/04/14/meetings-are-the-symptom-of-bad-organisation-yes-but-no-but-maybe/

Meetings are the symptom of bad organisation. Yes, but no, but maybe?

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20130414-191305.jpgFor anyone who works in a large organisation this will resonate. You can back it up with comments you might have heard over the years, like; “meetings suck the life-force out of me”, “that’s two hours of my life I will never get back” and “that was a big waste tax payers / shareholders money”.

Top tip for really dull meetings: pretend you have to visit the bathroom. Go and do some useful work, then return just before the end of the meeting. Nobody will have the courage to ask why you took so long.

Back to the full quote by Peter Drucker, “meetings are the symptom of bad organisation. The fewer meetings the better”.

The point seems to be that meetings represent a failure to properly plan and organise what you are doing. As a result you end up in meetings trying to fix things that haven’t worked. Ultimately if you have to spend time in meetings, you aren’t doing the things that really matter like: making products or delivering services.

There is plenty of research and figures to back up the idea that meetings are a problem. This paper by Romano & Nunamaker analyses a huge amount of the research written about meetings and presents some depressing findings:

  • Many reviews and surveys reveal that meetings dominate workers and managers time and yet are considered to be costly, unproductive and dissatisfying.
  •  The number of meetings and their duration has been steadily increasing.
  •  Studies of managers and knowledge workers reveal that they spend between 25%-80% of their time in meetings.
  • Self estimates of meeting productivity by managers in many different functional areas range from 33% – 47%.

I said it was depressing. Just imagine you are one of those knowledge workers or managers who spend 80% of their time in meetings, of which only 47% of that time is productive. That’s over 40% of your time in work, 2 days a week, doing something that is useless (and we worry about people wasting time on social media…….).

This lack of achievement and the frustration that goes with it has to have an impact upon your level of engagement and sense of job satisfaction. This paper by Rogelberg et al in Human Resource Management (March-April 2010) makes the link between overall job satisfaction and meeting satisfaction. It goes on to suggest that meeting satisfaction could be used as part of job satisfaction measures and employee engagement.

If you fancy a more in-depth look at this topic, and potential solutions, one of the co-authors of the paper, Joseph A. Allen runs the Centre for Meeting Effectiveness Lab  at Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska. There are some useful links on the page to work that the Lab is doing.

So, we need to ban all meetings! (Not quite yet……Rambo)

This could be one response to the ‘meetings problem’. As attractive as it might seem (to some people) it might actually make things worse. Meetings are very necessary for transparent decision making, relationship building and knowledge exchange. I’ve argued before that knowledge exchange is a social process  and meetings are a good place to achieve this. What we need is better meetings.

Having better meetings depends upon better process and people’s behaviour. Before any of this you need to be confident that you need the meeting in the first place, which links back to the Peter Drucker quote, “the fewer meetings the better”.

Meeting process and behaviours are two things I plan to write some posts about soon. In the meanwhile some more meeting quotes: (there are thousands on the web)

  • “A meeting is an interaction where the unwilling, selected from the uninformed, led by the unsuitable, to discuss the unnecessary, are required to write a report about the unimportant.” Kayser
  • “An employee who needs permission to buy a box of paperclips can spend tens of thousands of dollars worth of employee time on bad meetings.”

So, what’s the PONT?

  1. Meetings are very necessary for many good reasons like; transparent decision making, relationship building and knowledge exchange.
  2. The numbers and duration of meetings for managers and knowledge workers is increasing.
  3. The costs of bad meetings in lost productivity and reduced staff satisfaction are huge. We need to have better meetings, starting now.

Picture Source: http://venturevillage.eu/make-meetings-effective. Some useful tips here on how to make meetings more effective.

20130414-191327.jpgAn old favourite.

Vardre RFC, Venice of the Swansea Valley? Re-visiting old rugby grounds

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For over quarter of a century I spent Saturdays playing rugby on many of the pitches across South Wales (all generally in the lower divisions). Unfortunately I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the places I was visiting. Before the match I was usually too anxious and afterwards, well it was usually dark, I was exhausted and occasionally ‘over refreshed’.
Recently I’ve had the joy of accompanying my middle son to rugby games with Pencoed RFC Youth (not a club I ever played for….. it’s a long story).
This has allowed me to see things differently and appreciate some of the interesting quirks and oddities of South Wales Rugby Clubs.
This week was a trip to Vardre RFC, which can be found at Clydach in the Swansea Valley.

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Lovely Clydach. This is Vardre RFC, at the confluence of the Lower Clydach and Tawe Rivers. The Club could well be a prototype for the Tardis. You enter a small door off Clydach High Street, pass through the modest bar and then get swallowed up by an enormous function room; not what I was expecting. There are also extensive changing rooms underneath the function room, but nowhere near the pitch.
Listen carefully if you ask anyone in the club for directions to the pitch. Last time I heard anything so complicated, with as many bridges, canals and water, I was in Venice at the Rialto Bridge.

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Here’s the first of the bridges. A lovely centuries old cast iron affair over the Clydach to Swansea Canal. You might have noticed the enormous chimney in the background. That’s ‘The Mond‘. The largest Nickel refining plant in Europe, which has a long association with the area. Some local ‘characters’ were sat at the right hand end of the bridge, thoughtfully placing their huge quantity of empty beer cans in a recycling sack.

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Bridge number two. Crossing the River Tawe this time. The bridge looks quaint on a sunny day, but I really wouldn’t fancy it at night when the river is in flood. It’s also single file, so if the rugby teams are coming the opposite direction you’ve got a long wait. Don’t look down either. Some of the wooden planks have seen better days.

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Waters-Meet. Excuse the self-indulgence here. This is the point where the waters of the River Tawe, Lower Clydach and the overflow from the Canal meet. As a former student of water quality this is a text-book situation. Where is the mixing zone? Where do you collect representative water quality samples? Why are there so many foreign beer cans on the river bank?

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Bus Route? This perplexed me. When I eventually found the rugby pitch I encountered a bus shelter. Hugely vandalised, but still a very modern bus shelter with electronics and one of those screens for real-time updates. We don’t even have those in the village where I live and this was in the middle of a field! I can only speculate that it was some creative ‘re-purposing’ as a team dugout by the Vardre RFC, Pitches (sub-committee). Alternatively a cover up for some late night, over enthusiastic e-Bay bidding.

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Grandstand View. Continuing the ‘re-purposing’ theme I tried out the grandstand, a single story, lean-too tin-shed affair. In keeping with many other South Wales rugby grounds I think the building materials may have been ‘borrowed’ from the local industrial facility. No picture unfortunately, but you do get a good view of the pitch, and the second ‘re-purposed’ bus shelter (also vandalised).

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Rugby Action Shot No1. Our number 7 making a break, just before he got isolated in the tackle and was penalised for not releasing the ball.

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Rugby Action Shot No 2. Our number 7 demonstrating the classic line-out overthrow (aka failing to catch the ball). We did actually win the game though.

So, what’s the PONT?
1. Should Vardre RFC be incorporating a Gondola alongside the Magpies on the club badge given that they are the Venice of the Swansea Valley?
2. Where did Vardre RFC Pitches (sub committee) get those bus shelters from?
3. Will the Pencoed No7 be selected for the League match against Mumbles RFC next weekend? (btw, No 7 is my son. He is cool with this).

Clump Recruiting, Old Wine in New Bottles? What about the Pals Battalions and Richard Arkwright?

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20130404-224803.jpg‘Clump Recruitment’ is a jazzy new expression I recently heard mentioned at this event. The gist is that you can recruit Generation Y  people as a group or ‘clump’ by targeting where they hang out together (usually online somewhere, apparently). The idea is that you can then get them to all come along together and work for your knowledge economy business. This gives you all the benefits of a ready-made socially cohesive group. Large scale recruitment of the right people, done in a flash. Sounds fantastic.

I did start wondering though, hasn’t this sort of group recruitment happened before? Is the idea of ‘clump recruitment’ just ‘old wine in new bottles’?‘To explain my quandary here are two examples; the Pals Battalions from World War One and the older practice that flourished in the industrial revolution, where whole families worked for a single organisation.

The Pals Battalions of World War One.

The Pals Battalions were created at the outbreak of war in 1914 when there was an urgent need to recruit into the army. The Generals moved away from the traditional methods, reasoning that young men would be more likely to enlist if they could be sure they would be with people they already knew; friends, workmates, neighbours (and possibly family).

The idea certainly worked and between August and September 1914, 500,000 men had volunteered and a further 500,000 by the end of the year. A successful recruitment campaign in anyone’s books.

However, what shouldn’t be forgotten here is the impact of warfare on people from a specific community. The Battle of The Somme effectively wiped out the Accrington Pals, with a devastating effect upon the community the young men came from.

There’s is an excellent article about the Pals Battalions by Bruce Robinson on the BBC website which is well worth reading.

Richard Arkwright and Cromford Mill.

Richard Arkwright is a major contributor to the development of the industrial revolution in the 1770′s and has been credited with developing the world’s first factory system. You can read about him here or view the Tony Robinson, walking through history TV series.

What struck me in the video clip was how whole families were employed by Arkwright at Cromford Mill. Women and children in the factory producing thread whist the men were involved in weaving cloth. The workforce planning setup favoured the recruitment of a ‘family unit’.

A policy of incentives, like workers accommodation, may well have helped with the recruitment and retention at Cromford Mill. However, it also makes it difficult for workers to buck the system. If the whole family work for the same organisation there is unlikely to be much industrial dispute.

Throughout the industrial revolution there are numerous examples of several members of the same family, if not whole families or generations working for the same organisation. I know from my own family history that having a relative working in Deep Navigation Colliery meant that other members of the family followed.

Old wine in new bottles.

Back to old wine in new bottles, I do wonder if the idea of ‘clump recruiting’ Generation Y people is a bit of history repeating itself. The idea of recruiting specific groups, sometimes in very large numbers, has been around for a very long time.

If you want some interesting perspectives on ‘old wine in new bottles’, have a look at The Custody Record blog. I particularly like:

  • “We are not returning to how we did things before. We are moving forward in a familiar way.”
  • “We are not retreating. We are advancing in a new direction.”
  • “Old wine in new bottles.” The practice of taking something old and dressing it up to look like something new.

So, what’s the PONT?

  1. Recruiting groups of people who are very similar or linked can have consequences such as a potential lack of diversity in your workforce (or much worse in the case of the Pals).
  2. “History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new”. Biblical quote, Ecclesiastes 1:9.
  3. It’s always worth checking that the new idea isn’t just ‘old wine in new bottles’.

Picture Source: Cover of the book about the Carmarthen Pals Battalion. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Carmarthen-Pals-Steven-John/dp/1848840772