Why a Seven Minute Meeting
Took an Hour-and-a-Half

Huge amounts of time are wasted in company meetings because even while people are sitting around the same table, they are often situated in different geographic locations.

Problem solving, decision making, planning and innovating are very distinct activities, each with its own processes. Yet few executives understand this and even fewer can spot when they are located in one place and their colleagues or subordinates, at the very same meeting, are located in another.

This inability wastes hours of time and large sums of money at all levels of the organization.

The CEO allotted an hour. It took an hour-and-a-half. But the meeting should have taken five to seven minutes. Maximum.

Participating in the meeting were the CEO, the COO, their top six project managers and me, observing quietly from the sideline.

The company had grown dramatically over the years with top line revenues in the upper tens of millions of dollars. The CEO and most of the project managers had grown up within.

Business was good. Growth was strong. Profits were good. But as the company grew, each project manager had developed his or her own system.

“We need a uniform project management system,” began the CEO. “I have two concerns that I want addressed. Number one is that two of our project teams will often work with the same client on different projects. Since the different teams have different approaches to delivering our services, our clients can find this confusing. All client experiences with our company should be uniform.

“Number two is that currently, if we need to move someone from one project team to another, it will take a few weeks for him to get up to speed when it shouldn’t take more than a day. We need a uniform project management system that is flexible enough to allow for the expression of each of your unique styles, but rigid enough to meet these two objectives: a uniform client experience and easily transferable employees.”

I watched the CEO get more and more frustrated...he repeatedly tried to drag them back to the point

He then presented a project flowchart someone had prepared. “This is just an example of how it might be done. We could use this one or adapt it based on your input,” he explained.

Then the debate began. The project managers pointed to the sample and asked questions. They brought up reservations. They expressed concerns. They agreed with the CEO that his ideas were good ones, but…

And this went on for nearly an hour and a half.

From the side, I watched the CEO get more and more frustrated. Most of their concerns would apply to any project management system, including their current ones. He repeatedly tried to drag them back to the point, but they repeatedly took him away.

How could the CEO have ended the meeting in seven minutes or less?

He should have moved everyone to the same geographic location.

Managers spend almost all their time involved in one of four activities. Either they are solving problems, making decisions, planning or innovating. Each of these takes place in a different “time zone” or geographic location.

Problem solving deals with the past. Something happened in the past that is causing a problem today. We need to find the cause and correct it or block its effects.

Decision making takes place in the present. We have an objective we want to accomplish and we need to choose the route that will best get us there.

Planning and innovating deal with the future. Once we’ve chosen a direction, we need to plan the steps and figure out how to redeploy our assets to get the greatest possible yield.

So the first question to ask is “Where are we geographically? Are we trying to solve a problem? Make a decision? Develop a plan or to innovate?”

I call this Process Geography™. Only after you know your geographic location, so to speak, do the next steps become clear.

The CEO and his project managers were sitting around the same table, but were in two very different “geographic” locations.

Decision making has three essential steps: (1) Setting clear objectives, (2) generating alternatives that could help you reach your objectives and (3) evaluating the risks that accompany each alternative. This enables you to choose the route that best meets your objectives while presenting manageable risk.

The CEO was in the first step of decision making. He explained his objectives. The accompanying sample process was just one alternative, one possible route, intended to serve only as an example of how to reach his objectives.

His goal for this meeting was only to get his project managers to agree that the objectives were important. Once everyone agreed, they could develop several alternatives over the coming months and choose the best one.

The project managers agreed with the objectives – they said so repeatedly throughout the meeting. But as soon as they saw the sample alternative, they jumped to the second step of the planning process: namely, analyzing “What could go wrong?”

They were sitting around the same table – but from a Process Geography™ perspective, they were on different continents.

Had the CEO and his team had been aware of Process Geography™ and their differing locations, the CEO could have said “Wait a minute everyone. I am in step number one of decision making. All I want at this point is your agreement to the objectives. You’ve all jumped ahead to the second stage of planning. Not so fast. Does anyone have anything else to add about the objectives I am proposing?”

The others would have instantly realized that they had jumped ahead. They would have understood that their concerns will be dealt with – when they become relevant – and the meeting would have been over eighty-three minutes earlier.

This was an expensive meeting. Many of the highest paid people in the company were there but they didn’t get much done. However, the real cost to companies is when this scenario repeats itself again and again, daily, all throughout the company.

Employees at all levels are meeting and wasting huge amounts of time because they often fail to realize that while they are sitting around the same table or standing in the same hallway they are actually in different geographic locations.

The CEO Thought-Provoker™ Questions

• Does everyone in your company understand that problem solving, decision making, planning and innovating are distinct processes? Can they identify where they are in the midst of a discussion or debate?


• Does your company train people in the distinct processes for each of these activities so that everyone in your company speaks a common language, saving time and improving efficiency?


• What steps are you going to take to provide a common language for all your employees so that they always know where they are and the next steps are always clear?

DOV GORDON helps senior executives make better, wiser decisions and quickly get things done. He is sought after for his perspective and advice on formulating and implementing strategy, developing an innovation culture and cultivating superior team work. Dov can be reached via his websites www.GordonGroupEC.com and www.Superior-Strategy.com or via email at dovgordon@gmail.com. Go here to listen free of charge to Part One of Dov's highly-acclaimed audio book: If You Are 'Implementing' Your Strategy - You Don't Have One: How to Control and Grow Your Business Successfully

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