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by Tim Casswell, Vice President, Union of International Associations, UIA
Age of collaboration.The quality and vitality of our meetings defines the quality and vitality of our organisations. We want effective and purposeful meetings. Success depends on how we are connected. Meetings are the connective tissue of the corporate mind, the synapses of organisational imagination, and the nerve endings of institutional intuition, the incubators of new initiative.
And yet the art of meeting effectively is still one of the frontier issues in human evolution. The most costly and most underestimated hindrance to all human endeavour is still dysfunctional communication.
Meetings are a set of complex relationships of bodies, minds, hearts, spirits and souls in time and space to make decisions, plans, impact, to make a difference. Complexity is a tricky thing to work with and the more effort we invest in "solving" the problem of meetings, the greater likelihood we have of creating effects contrary to our aims...
… so many techniques and approaches to meetings… a whole industry based on supplying technology, speakers, and facilities to interest, involve, and inspire participants… and yet so many of us feel excluded, bored, and cynical during and after many of the meetings we attend. Unless we are a speaker or a facilitator, in which case we feel invigorated, inspiring, and influential.
Here is the paradox. Meetings seem to have most valuable effects on the few who are asked to contribute in some way to the meeting, and least valuable effects on those who are asked to attend and get something out of the meeting.
In order to get meetings that interest, involve, and inspire participation, we simply need to ask everyone to contribute.
This, after all, is the age of collaboration. Social media is full of input, innovation, insight, intuition and imagination shared by people with people. Partnering and ‘coopetition’ is the new commercial model. The Kony campaign is a recent example of new collaborative political process. Let’s make our meetings genuine and authentic incubators of ideas and initiative. Our World Cafes, Open Spaces and Unconferences are all ideologically committed towards this but even they can fail in practice.
A way to check ourselves is simply to believe that the participants are extraordinary, enlightened, experienced, engaged people. Each of them a Keynote Speaker. Then arrange the meeting for a gathering of these people to realise their profound potential to make a significant difference. Any meeting that falls far short of this probably does not need to happen, and its purpose can be achieved another way.
We already have purposeful, transformative, creative meetings happening under our noses. Listen and we will hear them [though maybe not in the meeting room]. Look and we will find them [though maybe not on the agenda]. Pay attention and we will engage with fresh fascination and alert curiosity and co-create new ways to meet each other that we will actually look forward to.