I hate unproductive meetings, what can we do to make military briefings and meetings better?

LTC David S. Chang, ChFC®, CLU® — Mon, 12 May 2014 17:29:59 -0400

In the civilian world, we lose $37 billion a year on unproductive meetings. I guarantee when you count the government and military it is much higher!

I remember preparing days on end for a general's dog and pony show which I understand is important to do, but we didn't go over our slides because he wanted to talk about something else. i remember how the entire staff was so deflated afterwards, not because of what happened, but just because we were forced to spend so much time on making our powerpoint slides perfect (remember the fonts and format!!!)

Jeff Bezos at amazon doesn't do slides. he hates them and has the meeting agenda and notes sent out prior, then the first portion of the meeting is going through the notes, then they get to the point and out of there. The article below explains some tips, what else can we do in the military?

http://artofthinkingsmart.com/losing-37-billion-year-meeting-mistakes-making/

How to Overcome Unproductive Meetings - Tips for Productive Meetings! - The Art of Thinking Smart...

Tips for Productive Meetings and How You Can Make Them More Effective!

Response by SSgt Gregory Guina made May 12 at 2014 5:31 PM

SSgt Gregory Guina — Mon, 12 May 2014 17:31:58 -0400

GET RID OF POWERPOINT

Response by MAJ Private RallyPoint Member made May 12 at 2014 5:32 PM

MAJ Private RallyPoint Member — Mon, 12 May 2014 17:32:57 -0400

Biggest problem with any meeting is that people are more interested in hearing themselves talk than actually saying anything.

Response by SFC Private RallyPoint Member made May 12 at 2014 5:49 PM

SFC Private RallyPoint Member — Mon, 12 May 2014 17:49:06 -0400

get rid of powerpoint and unnecessary meetings

Response by SSgt Gregory Guina made May 12 at 2014 5:51 PM

SSgt Gregory Guina — Mon, 12 May 2014 17:51:31 -0400

Sir I had a period of time where I was in meetings for more than half my work week. Obviously this put a damper on my production.

Response by SSG Robert Burns made May 12 at 2014 5:58 PM

SSG Robert Burns — Mon, 12 May 2014 17:58:19 -0400

A meeting should not just have an agenda (we are lucky if it does) but an objective with tangible results. It it does not have an objective then why are we having a meeting on it?

Response by CPT Private RallyPoint Member made May 12 at 2014 6:08 PM

CPT Private RallyPoint Member — Mon, 12 May 2014 18:08:16 -0400

I also share a similar feeling on the worth of these staff huddles. The best solution to this issue is to simply have less meetings. Every minute a commander has to spend away from their soldiers equates to less work getting done and fewer trouble issues being identified and dealt with. We need to start trusting our leaders to do their jobs and stop hamstringing them with ppt and staff meetings. Ppt is just a tool...and at the end of the day it does nothing to solve problems at the ground level. We have become fixated on such things that ultimately have little or no impact to achieving the desired end state. Let's just toss all computers out the window and go back to analog.

Response by MAJ(P) Private RallyPoint Member made May 12 at 2014 8:47 PM

MAJ(P) Private RallyPoint Member — Mon, 12 May 2014 20:47:55 -0400

Many times having a moderator will help to stop the talking heads, bring people back on topic, and keep people attuned to the agenda (of course, having an agenda is a critical aspect too).

Response by LTC David S. Chang, ChFC®, CLU® made May 12 at 2014 11:07 PM

LTC David S. Chang, ChFC®, CLU® — Mon, 12 May 2014 23:07:19 -0400

Great responses, I also think less people for these meetings. Google has it that if there are ten or more people, than it needs to be broken down into separate meetings.

As a primary S2, I remember having to sit through 3-4 hours of unrelated things. Some SA is good, others just a waste of time!

Response by Sgt Packy Flickinger made May 13 at 2014 12:32 AM

Sgt Packy Flickinger — Tue, 13 May 2014 00:32:43 -0400

Pizza, beer, and pin the tail on the terrorist competitions.

Response by SSG Private RallyPoint Member made May 13 at 2014 6:31 PM

SSG Private RallyPoint Member — Tue, 13 May 2014 18:31:40 -0400

We're gonna need to have meeting in order to discuss superfluous meetings.

If it can't be said in an email, text, phone call, or a quick face-to-face, then it's unnecessary.

Response by Maj Walter Kilar made May 13 at 2014 11:03 PM

Maj Walter Kilar — Tue, 13 May 2014 23:03:21 -0400

The best meetings I ever had were the simplest ones--one person talking, and that that one person had a specific agenda, goals for the day, plus incentives for accomplishing these goals. The best ones rarely involved PowerPoint, but may have involved interaction on the white board or chalk board. The most productive meetings were done in 15 minutes or less.

Response by Capt Private RallyPoint Member made May 17 at 2014 4:42 PM

Capt Private RallyPoint Member — Sat, 17 May 2014 16:42:52 -0400

Speaking of Jeff Bezos, he has the infamous "Two Pizza Rule" for meetings and, perhaps more importantly, team size:

http://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-two-pizza-rule-for-productive-meetings-2013-10

I have to respectfully challenge the statement that dog and pony shows for VIPs is important to do. Getting rid of feces-polishing is perhaps the first step to increased productivity and organizational change in the military. We should leave the selling of feces as fertilizer to the farmers--it doesn't help anything grow in the military. It only leads to an organization (and meetings) full of...

Along those lines, we can no longer afford to let fraud, waste, and abuse hide behind the veil of tradition:

//The plea to preserve “tradition” as such, can appeal only to those who have given up or to those who never intended to achieve anything in life. It is a plea that appeals to the worst elements in men and rejects the best: it appeals to fear, sloth, cowardice, conformity, self-doubt—and rejects creativeness, originality, courage, independence, self-reliance. It is an outrageous plea to address to human beings anywhere, but particularly outrageous here, in America, the country based on the principle that man must stand on his own feet, live by his own judgment, and move constantly forward as a productive, creative innovator.
The argument that we must respect “tradition” as such, respect it merely because it is a “tradition,” means that we must accept the values other men have chosen, merely because other men have chosen them—with the necessary implication of: who are we to change them? The affront to a man’s self-esteem, in such an argument, and the profound contempt for man’s nature are obvious.
Rand, Ayn. “Conservatism: An Obituary,” Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 198\\

Or as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."

The retort to that is always, “But what about the importance of our military culture?” This question presupposes that culture is a matter of tradition. However, this country’s free market entrepreneurs have proven beyond doubt that culture can be maintained--even emboldened--during the process of transformational change. Amazon, for instance, still sends out the letter to investors from day one. As an organization it has succeeded in maintaining those foundational cultural ideals despite being one of the most transformational organizations in history. Jeff Bezos often says that Amazon is transformational because of its culture, not in spite of it. That is the American way. And shouldn't the defenders of this American way also live by it?

The bottom line is that we should refuse to allow fraud, waste, and abuse (in meetings or elsewhere) to hide behind tradition, or tradition to hide behind culture. Unproductive meetings are just a symptom of this institutional-level tradition of unnecessary extravagance. While I would certainly like to see powerpoint go to hell and have less meetings with less people in them, I don't believe we will have any meaningful change until we address the root cause: tradition for tradition's sake.

The 'Two Pizza Rule' Is Jeff Bezos' Secret To Productive Meetings

Jeff Bezos thinks large meetings are unproductive. That's why he has a "two pizza" rule.

Response by SGT Private RallyPoint Member made May 17 at 2014 6:08 PM

SGT Private RallyPoint Member — Sat, 17 May 2014 18:08:56 -0400

Sir,

I've been on TQI steering committees in the civilian world and our meetings were much more productive than they are in the Army.

We designated meeting facilitators and time keepers on a rotating basis. Meeting agendas contained specific talking points and were distributed in advance, along with a list of attendees and their roles. The talking points had time limits, so we always prepared in advance and were very succinct in our discussions. If we needed more time than allotted, we notified the facilitator in advance so he could modify the timeline.

I've heard military leaders use the excuse that meetings run long because it's the nature of our business and we need to be "flexible", but really it's because some of the talkers ramble and haven't organized their thinking.

Response by SSG Private RallyPoint Member made Jan 5 at 2015 4:28 PM

SSG Private RallyPoint Member — Mon, 05 Jan 2015 16:28:07 -0500

FM 6-0 Chapter 7 discusses how briefings are to be presented to commanders, staff, and others. The Army uses four types of briefings: information, decision, mission, and staff.

FM 6-0 mentions nothing of power point. It is a tool to be used, but we can become too concerned about uniform format and fonts than the function.

Response by MAJ Raúl Rovira made Mar 3 at 2019 3:31 PM

MAJ Raúl Rovira — Sun, 03 Mar 2019 15:31:36 -0500

It is an unfortunate culture. Meetings do not start with a purpose and due outs are not discussed at the end. Without a timekeeper, meetings go over. I am generalizing as some organizations might be better at this.

Two things that could be asked at the end of every meeting are:
- What is one thing we did well in this meeting?
- What is one thing we could do better at the next meeting?