A good friend of mine sent me an Instagram post showcasing a twitter thread from Ron Iver (snapshot below) questioning why 90 minute meetings exist when in the same timeframe a movie can uncover a story plot from beginning to end, explore complex themes, and touch on emotional points.
It got me thinking about two things:
- Concise storytelling
- People who thrive in meetings
I’ll start with the first point, and later you can judge the irony of the length of a blog post on concise storytelling.
On Storytelling
Shrek, a case study: Movies take time to story block, write, produce, direct, voiceover and release. Shrek, which is referenced in the tweet, was based on a book published by William Steig in 1990. It then took over 6 years from start to screen (Jim Hill Media, 2004; Looper. 2023) with painstaking 1990s animation technology. It potentially saved DreamWorks financially. It won an academy award. Lastly, but most surprising to me, it was added as one of 25 movies in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2020 (Business Insider, 2023). This movie was so profoundly impactful to our country, that even the government took note. 90 minutes can lead to compelling conclusions.
End of year reports: As we wrap up the fiscal year, we put together reports that showcase our findings. In consulting firms, we often go through several iterations, many meetings, and, of course, lots of PowerPoint versioning. We look at design, copy, metrics, and we trade many hats in review: direct contributors, account leadership, clients, executive leadership.
We summarize, analyze, customize, and downsize. Beyond time and labor, it takes intentionality to highlight key moments for the movie-equivalent of our year.
Concise storytelling is effortful. Often, the easier it looks, the more intensive it was to create.
On Meetings
Keys to Reducing Meetings: As an introverted analytics manager who very much enjoys quiet focused time, I have often championed reducing meetings, but at the very least status meetings. There are tons of resources online for how to make meetings better and what meetings to prioritize. Key items that tend to repeat have to do with writing agendas, inviting the right people, setting a purpose, drawing conclusions, getting action steps, and following-up. I tend to agree with a lot of these principles. What they require, however, is effort.
Good meetings require pre-work and intentionality.
They require thought as to how best to use everyone’s time. They require establishing a purpose and ensuring safe space for all team members. They require clear direction towards an end result.
Meetings (especially longer meetings) tend to be used to process. Sometimes group think-time can be particularly successful. Read This Before Our Next Meeting (2011) author, Al Pittampalli recommends meetings for conflict (workshopping, making a decision) or coordination (post-decision organizing). I tend to agree. Meet when collaboration is most required, move away from simple statuses or anything that can be put in an email.
Here’s the catch though: an email requires cohesive written structure and thought and therefore, even clearer communication.
Emails get sent and received, and don’t offer similar forgivable space for open dialogue and clarification as meetings. They require thorough attention to ingest the information and use appropriate tone to respond. They often sit in a “box” with thousands of other messages. It’s difficult to extract tone or urgency from subject lines unless they are urgent enough to receive the red exclamation point mark. If you don’t read it and happen to lose track of the exact date and time and sender from whom it was sent, Outlook will guarantee you the misfortune of never finding it again, nonetheless reading it.
As a recent senior manager said in an ironic response to a company-wide reply-all email thread: the volume of emails received over a (still ongoing) 5-day saga of threads can be entirely overwhelming and distracting. Sometimes more so than calling the whole company for 20 minutes of status updates.
On Processing Styles
Verbal (or external) processors require meetings. Sounding boards are an inherent part of some people’s workflows. They work better at verbally organizing their thoughts into cohesion and can turn that thought into action in the same speech bubble.
Internal processors, like myself, need silence to function. Albeit awkward for external processors, it allows me to take in others’ thoughts and reorganize it visually on paper or in my mind. Then, I try to adapt to the verbal process, following a the train of thoughts already in motion and finding the best spot to interject and verbally represent my participation. For more on these processing styles, I found this article helpful: Jeff Miller, 2021.
For this reason, meetings can be difficult, even tiresome. Silence can be misinterpreted as disengagement, and following directionality can be challenging.
It’s important to acknowledge that multiple processing styles exist in the workplace, another aspect of valuable diversity that makes companies successful. Both quiet contemplation, and collaborative consulting have founded iconic products.
Typically, the system you’re invited to participate in is the best structure for the organizer. People learn, organize and process information in different ways.
