Don't Just Stand There: Finding Creativity in Meetings

 There is a saying that goes: 'If you want to kill an idea, bring it to a meeting'. Or, 'if you are lonely, call a meeting'. Meetings in hierarchical healthcare organizations seem to follow a dull and counter-intuitive format: a waste of printed copies of 'meeting minutes', asking people to vote on the previous meeting agenda they most likely do not remember and the un-healthy snacks provided. Too many meetings are poorly organized, are bad for the morale and bad for productivity. Plus, they cost money.

Meetings seem to be an eternal nemesis for managers in any type of organization. But how meetings are approached depends greatly on the success of the company. To find out what makes companies 'turn from good to great' was the objective of a scientific project that took 5 years and involved a team of 21 scientists. The researchers read and coded 6,000 articles, generated more than 2,000 pages of interview transcripts and created 384 megabytes of computer. Their conclusion is incredibly simple and perceptive:

“We expected that good-to-great leaders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy. We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats—and then they figured out where to drive it. The old adage “People are your most important asset” turns out to be wrong. People are not your most important asset. The right people are.”

Innovative companies like Google and Apple live by this principle. They get the right people in the right seats, and then they challenge them. To their tears. They let them dream big but they also use a timer. 

My recent experience in meetings has been surprisingly gratifying. I found the meetings a source of inspiration - they triggered many new ideas and offered perspectives I haven’t contemplated before. Perhaps meetings are a source of creativity after all? Or, it could have been the meetings made more use of humour, or perhaps that the “right people were on the bus”.

Next time you participate in a meeting, perhaps you can challenge your beliefs. Prime your mind for the 'Je ne sais quoi'. Look for the one word on a whiteboard that triggers an idea, or listen carefully to the apparently unrelated story of your speaker. Creativity, after all, is accidental and ideas can be born of anything…even a meeting.