Meetings, damn meetings

Engines of Disharmony #4 and #5

by Martin Powell

Whether we talk about formal meetings, group discussions or informal ones where
people just grab you and start on a subject matter, there is general consensus that we
spend too much time in them. They are a huge waste of time which we will never
get back and energy, which modern day business seems to drain from us often
without providing us with enough successes to boost that energy.

Yes you can engage all those time management techniques and meeting protocols
and for a while things may improve however, you are only dealing with symptoms
and we all know that if you do not deal with the real causes the disease comes
back!

The article, Can a manager really motivate others Engines of Disharmony,

outlined the 5 Engines of Disharmony defined by Dr Goldratt, explaining the impact
on synchronisation, motivation and indeed the culture of an organisation. That article
also outlined how to tackle the first 3 and align everyone on the same Strategies and
Tactics.

This is great for the bigger picture but what about day to day the detailed work that
people have to do and the detailed decisions that have to be made. Here we can
waste significant time and energy unless we tackle the 4th and 5th engines.

For the sake of clarity here again are the 5 engines and Elis comments.

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 Meetings, damn meetings - Engines of Disharmony #4 and #5

Engines of Disharmony

1. Many people dont really know (cannot clearly verbalize) how what they are
doing is essential to the organization. Would you be motivated if you were in
that position?

2. Most people dont really know how what many of their colleagues are doing is
essential, or at least contributes to the organization. Would you be
collaborative if you were in that position?

3. People are operating under conflicts. Do you really have the energy to fight
others every day?

4. Many people are required to also do tasks for which the reason no longer
exists. Peoples intuition is always strong enough to feel it, but not always is it
strong enough to convincingly explain it to their superiors. How satisfied would
you be if you were in that position?

5. Gaps between responsibility and authority. You, like any other manager, know
firsthand how frustrating it is to have something you are responsible for
accomplishing, but you do not have the authority for some of the actions that
must be taken. Would you be motivated if you were in that position?

Eli wrote:

The experience gained in removing (even partially) those type of

engines of disharmony is more than enough to realize that if we
systematically remove the above engines, we are bound to get the
desired culture change. The huge positive ramifications are
obvious.

So let us examine engine #4 what does it mean? In the past, when systems were
designed or significant changes were made, the company found that it needed to
have certain procedures, certain metrics, certain processes and certain reports.
These were either designed into the systems or they were invented to patch over
deficiencies. Are they still needed?

I first come across this phenomenon years ago when I started to flow chart, as part of
our audit process, clients procedures. For example, on one client I established that
there were 7 copies of the goods inwards note and naturally to complete the
flowcharting I needed to follow all 7. It turned out that 3 of the copies were passed to
departments who just filed them very neatly in nice binders on their shelves. When I

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 Meetings, damn meetings - Engines of Disharmony #4 and #5

enquired what happened to the information all 3 said that nothing did. Nobody
referred to the files and eventually they ended up being archived more waste. I
said surely someone has challenged why we need this copy! The answer was
yes but we were told, just do the work and dont concern yourself about it thats the
way things are round here!

A trivial example, may be, but it illustrates the mindset of inertia that is very strong
although it does not show how time in meetings is wasted. So let us use another
example. Some time ago, a particular company was experiencing escalation in its
costs, and Consumables was highlighted as a problem area. So it was agreed that for
the next months management meeting there should be a special report produced by
finance department (with the help of purchasing). This was duly done after
considerable work to get the data needed together. This provided good insight into
the amount spent on Consumables and the Purchasing Manager and Accountant
were given a hard time about the status of this category of spend. The leader of the
management team asked for this reporting to be continued for the following months
and so it was.

For the next three years in the management meeting, even though there was no real
problem anymore, there was some discussion on this analysis. No decisions were
made but time was still wasted in the meeting because it was an item that everyone
could understand and had an opinion on. Time was also wasted by the people
preparing the report each month as there was always a discussion between finance
and purchasing about allocation and categorisation of items. The accountant knew
that this was of little value but wanted it continued just in case.

You will probably say what a crazy story. I suggest you go to your people and ask
them - is your time wasted on procedures, processes or reporting that is never used
or seems to have no value? You may be surprised what you will find.

The way to overcome the inertia is simple but not easy because you need to break
patterns. The first pattern to break is your reaction when someone suggests making a
change (such as not carrying on the apparently valueless work). You need to curb
your tendency to immediately point out the negatives or to tell the person to go to
someone else (e.g. if you can convince Quality to accept the idea then fine). You
should ask them what would be the benefits? and listen. Then say Let me think
about it by doing this though you are giving a commitment to spend some time
thinking and the person will expect an answer.

Off-line, you then need to follow a process which in TOC we call the Negative
Branch Reservation (NBR)1 to properly evaluate the cause and effect. After doing this
you can go back to the person and explain your thinking and a more positive
discussion should ensue. Slowly item by item this will engender more openness and
lack of inertia from you and your people.

1 This process is outlined fully in the books Thinking for a Change, Its Not Luck and the Theory of
Constraints Handbook and described in the TOCICO Dictionary available at www.tocico.org It is also
taught as part of the Systematic Thinking Tools programme run by Goldratt UK.

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 Meetings, damn meetings - Engines of Disharmony #4 and #5

Now let us turn our attention to engine #5. It deals with the lack of alignment between
authority and responsibility. How does this relate to meetings and wasting of time?

How many meetings have you been in where two or more parties (often cross
functional) are debating what to do about a particular issue each pushing for their
point of view and trying to protect their responsibilities - and the person(s) who have
the authority to make a decision are not even present? This can be highly frustrating
when progress is delayed by not having the authority to make a decision. The effect
is that many times huge amounts of time are put into arguing / debating merely to
write a report that has to go to the decision makers. If we cannot trust the people with
the authority to make the decision why do we give them the responsibility and then
complain about how poorly they handled it.

In other cases, a manager can easily find that considerable time is spent and wasted
in fire-fighting. By this we mean that a subordinate comes to the manager asking for
his/her help because due to some policy or procedure the subordinate does not
have the authority to take the action needed. They have the responsibility but not the
authority.

For example, because of a single point of contact policy a person from the delivery
department is not allowed to contact the customer when delivery details on the
customers order are confusing. Only the customer account manager is allowed
obviously because there was some problem in the past, probably with prices. So
when, today, the customer account manager is not available and the delivery is due
out, then the delivery person has to go the manager and ask for help to sort it out. For
the manager this is a fire.

The manager has to take action and get it sorted put the fire out. However, if he/she
does not also invest some time later in fire prevention guess what happens the next
week another 3 items like it pop up. Three more fires.

The way for the manager to analyse the fire is by using the TOC Thinking Process
tool the Cloud. There is a version of this called the Fire-fighting Cloud which helps
the analysis and resolution of the issue by identifying the changes in policy needed.

Eli Goldratt used to say that most managers have 7+/- regular types of fires that they
have to put out. If they were to work systematically on these 7 and properly align
authority with responsibility, then they would be releasing significant management
capacity and attention which he also said was the real constraint of any
organisation.

If you want to change the culture of your organisation, then working on the
people, the soft side, is going to be a long and unrewarding process unless
you first fix the system by removing the Engines of Disharmony!

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There is a ROADMAP for Removing disharmony,
Capitalising on Current Operations & Creating a
Decisive Competitive Edge
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Watch the video >>
http://www.toc.tv?id=198
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Watch the video >>
http://www.toc.tv?id=192
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