June 25, 2026
Your Meetings Already Confessed
Most organizations try to fix bad meetings by adding more process: surveys, task forces, calendar cleanses, and meetings about meetings. Larry Benz says the better answer is already sitting in your inbox.
In this episode of The Operator, Larry explains how healthcare leaders can diagnose meeting dysfunction by reading the artifacts meetings leave behind: huddle boards, tactical decks, strategic pre-reads, all-hands Q&A logs, and commitment records. The artifacts reveal whether meetings are producing decisions, accountability, debate, and connection — or just recycling the same metrics in different costumes.
Larry and Jimmy discuss why surveys measure mood more than function, why observing meetings can distort behavior, and why the most truthful documents are often the ugliest ones closest to the work.
The takeaway: stop asking people how meetings feel. Start asking what the meetings produce.
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WEBVTT
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All right, let's go.
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All right,
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most healthcare organizations have the
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same response when they think they have a
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meeting problem.
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They launch a survey.
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You've taken one, I've taken one.
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You form a task force,
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they create the committee,
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and maybe they even schedule, wait for it,
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a meeting about meetings.
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In Larry's latest article on The Operator,
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it makes a pretty uncomfortable argument.
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You don't need any of that.
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You don't need to attend a single meeting.
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You don't need another survey that you're
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just going to get a three point four
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back anyway.
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The artifacts have already confessed.
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Let's find out what we mean by that.
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Larry, let's start there.
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How can someone figure out what's wrong
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with an entire organization without going
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to one meeting?
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Well,
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let's just start out with the basics that
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I spent a lot of time on meetings.
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This is the sixth article because I think
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it's so important in an environment where
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many people are working remotely to get
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really inefficient about meetings.
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And when you put a framework around them,
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It helps.
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And you can see the artifacts.
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I know we'll get into this as we
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go along there.
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But I wanted folks to understand that the
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uglier the product that you're seeing,
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the decisions,
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the things that are written down,
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the things that actually come out of
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meetings,
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those are the compelling parts of what you
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do.
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CEOs make two or three decisions a week
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that are big.
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Teams make dozens and dozens.
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Daily huddles can make even more than
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that.
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They're smaller decisions,
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but they're really critical and they have
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to emanate out of our process.
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And that process is the meetings and the
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byproducts that they produce that I'm sure
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we're going to talk about here.
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Yeah.
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All right.
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So you opened up in your article with
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a VP sitting down with four artifacts.
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And by four forty five that day,
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that first day,
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they could know more about the
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organization than the annual engagement
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survey learned in a year,
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which you also go into saying you're not
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really learning a whole lot.
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Why start there?
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Why start with that first day and what
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they can learn?
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Yeah.
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So what I was trying to do here
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is I want to put the whole argument
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of the entire five-part series on one desk
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and one afternoon and let you watch it
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sort of work.
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So the article, she lays out four things,
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a photo of the morning's huddle board,
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the deck from Tuesday's weekly tactical.
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Again, those are two meeting contexts,
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daily huddle, weekly tactical.
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The third is the strategic,
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so the pre-read and the minutes from last
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month's strategic, and then the all-hands.
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with the Slido log.
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One artifact per tier.
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The entire stack on a single desk in
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front of one person who has not attended
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a single meeting and has not interviewed
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anybody.
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And by quarter five,
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she knows more than the annual survey
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learned in twelve months.
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These surveys take a long time.
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They're expensive.
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They're overdone.
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You're usually using a third party.
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People generally have survey fatigue and
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it just gets long.
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And then there's usually a campaign around
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the survey.
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And so there's a lot of artificial noise
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around it as well.
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But she took the four documents in the
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afternoon and really produced the truth.
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so i started the article there on purpose
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because every operator's instinct is when
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the ceo or the ceo says figure out
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our meeting culture everybody tries to
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reach a survey or god forbid a task
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force or a committee that reports up okay
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that's just poor and professional
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management and that was her first instinct
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was a survey her second was a task
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force her third instinct was the right one
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read what the meetings
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actually wrote down and if you notice the
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detail that the artifacts came to her the
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huddle photo got texted to her by a
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site lead she didn't requisition anything
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the evidence you know was already there
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inside the building and so that's the part
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operators miss you're not missing the data
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you're not reading it it's been hitting
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your inbox the whole time those are really
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what insights are
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So what is that line in the article
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which stood out,
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which was the artifacts had already
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confessed?
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What does that mean if someone's reading
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this and going, wait,
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I think I know what that means,
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but how can they be sure?
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Yeah,
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so what it really means is that every
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meeting in your stack leaves a paper
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trail,
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and that paper trail is the meeting with
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the performance stripped off.
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And here's the thing about a confession.
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It's involuntary and it's specific.
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The deck from Tuesday is the deck whether
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or not anybody audits it.
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Nobody dressed it up for you.
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The Q&A log from the all hands shows
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exactly what questions got submitted and
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exactly which ones got answered,
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not the uncomfortable summary,
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the actual list.
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So the huddle checklist on the clipboard
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shows what actually got raised at
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So the artifacts,
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they can't lie because they weren't
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produced to be looked at.
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That's the whole trick.
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The moment you announce an audit and go
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sit in the back of the huddle,
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the huddle performs.
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The board gets run properly for the first
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time in months.
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The tactical suddenly has all kinds of
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good crisp action details to it.
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And that's the Hawthorne effect and
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exactly why watching tells you the least.
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The observed meeting is on its best
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behavior.
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It's the artifacts that come out of it.
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that you're caught off guard.
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So when I say they confessed,
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I mean the evidence of what your stack
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actually does versus what it claims to do
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is already written down, timestamped,
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sitting in a folder.
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You don't need a wire.
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You don't need to read the file.
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And here's an interesting tidbit.
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The most damning confession is usually the
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one that isn't there.
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The tier that produces no artifacts or no
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notes, no logs, no commitment records,
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just told you something.
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A meeting that leaves no trace was never
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in operating.
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mechanism it was a conversation that
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recurs and so everybody now in a lot
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of meetings and i do this um for
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accountability reasons uses a meeting
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software there's a million of them plod uh
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you know zoom has its own everybody has
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it so you know there's just a ton
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of those they can be used extremely
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effectively
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for accountability to run through AI to
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determine there to post, you know,
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the documentation.
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These things,
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these are good tools to help you.
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They're not replacements.
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And that's what I'm seeing tending to
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happen now.
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Well, so far, just in this conversation,
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I got a few artifacts of saying you're
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not a hugest fan of surveys.
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Why are organizations so attracted to
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surveys when the answers,
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as you just highlighted,
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are often sitting right in front of them
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somewhere else?
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Yeah, surveys are excuse, you know,
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they feel like there's some action going
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on,
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it produces a number that you can put
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on a slide.
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And, and, you know, that's,
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that's just almost irresistible to a
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leadership team.
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By the way, just as a side note,
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I'm a fan of one question surveys that
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go to the stakeholders of a particular
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department that evaluate that department.
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How is our accounting group performing?
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and have a Likert scale.
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Why did you answer it that way?
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That's it.
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If you do that appropriately,
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surveys could be good.
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But what we tend to do is use
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them as excuses.
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It say we listen to you,
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but it never really brought anything up
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uncomfortable.
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If it did,
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you did it in writing and you didn't
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have a conversation about it.
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And so it outsources discomfort to a
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vendor, you know,
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usually a very expensive vendor.
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But, you know,
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there's also a deeper problem.
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The survey measures mood, not function.
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A meeting could feel perfectly pleasant
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and produce nothing.
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Right.
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So the mood didn't matter.
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The dashboard recital is comfortable.
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The pre-screen Q&A is comfortable and
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polished.
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You never assess your revenue cycle by
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asking the billing team how they feel
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about it, right?
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You pull the aging report.
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Mark Benthien, SCEC,
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meetings deserve the same discipline,
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the question is never how the meeting
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feels it's what the problem produces so we
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like kpis because their objective,
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but we don't like kpis.
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Mark Benthien, SCEC,
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or results or outcomes of meetings i'm not
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sure why and that's why i've tried to
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differentiate between management
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leadership and operations.
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Because operators want that discipline,
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whether you're talking about an outcome
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from a KPI or how do you keep
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a meeting accountable or how do you keep
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people autonomous but accountability
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within structure.
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And to me, that's what it's all about.
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So just another little tidbit for you.
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Survey asked the floor to describe the
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building.
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The artifacts are the building.
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Why interview the witness when the
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security footage is already running?
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Right, right, right.
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Also,
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you highlighted that a lot of times you
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get a three point four because no one
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wants to be the squeaky wheel.
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No one wants to be the thing that
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says it out loud because as anonymous as
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a lot of surveys are.
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We all kind of doubt that or there's
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ways to figure that out.
00:09:19.812 --> 00:09:20.712
So no one wants to be,
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that's why you get to a three point,
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a three point four out of five.
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You identified three failed approaches.
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The sentiment survey,
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just sort of talked about that.
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The calendar cleanse,
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which I alluded to earlier,
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and the meeting about meetings.
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Which one do you see most often and
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which one is the most damaging?
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Well,
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most often by a wide margin is a
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sentiment survey.
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You get a three point four and you
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file it.
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It's the cheapest possible motion that
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still looks like leadership and acts like
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you're caring.
00:09:53.514 --> 00:09:55.254
But the one that does the most damage
00:09:55.294 --> 00:09:57.274
in my view is the meeting about meetings.
00:09:57.315 --> 00:09:58.635
And I've watched platforms
00:09:59.571 --> 00:09:59.770
you know,
00:09:59.811 --> 00:10:01.874
try to do this with complete sincerity,
00:10:02.514 --> 00:10:03.355
but you know,
00:10:03.395 --> 00:10:04.738
which is what makes it so, you know,
00:10:04.857 --> 00:10:05.258
brutal.
00:10:05.839 --> 00:10:06.500
And so, you know,
00:10:06.539 --> 00:10:07.841
so here's how it kind of lays out.
00:10:07.902 --> 00:10:11.886
The COO commissions a task force to fix
00:10:12.047 --> 00:10:13.649
the meeting problem or a committee that
00:10:13.708 --> 00:10:14.350
reports up.
00:10:15.230 --> 00:10:17.552
The task force schedules a working
00:10:17.613 --> 00:10:17.932
session.
00:10:17.952 --> 00:10:19.094
You're burning up all this time.
00:10:19.134 --> 00:10:21.634
The working session produces, you know,
00:10:21.654 --> 00:10:22.515
in business speak,
00:10:22.535 --> 00:10:24.356
we call it a charter or a RACI,
00:10:24.537 --> 00:10:27.198
R-A-C-I, and a sub team.
00:10:27.720 --> 00:10:28.700
And within two quarters,
00:10:28.740 --> 00:10:30.662
your meeting audit has become a fifth tier
00:10:30.682 --> 00:10:32.383
in the meeting stack with its own deck,
00:10:32.842 --> 00:10:33.964
its own trailing metrics,
00:10:34.224 --> 00:10:36.164
and its own follow-ups, you know,
00:10:36.245 --> 00:10:37.706
dietly quiet, you know,
00:10:37.745 --> 00:10:40.307
dietly in the same follow-up, you know,
00:10:40.388 --> 00:10:43.090
offline cemetery I wrote about in the
00:10:43.129 --> 00:10:44.230
weekly tactical piece.
00:10:44.898 --> 00:10:46.658
You set out to cure the disease,
00:10:46.719 --> 00:10:49.561
and you incubated another strain of it.
00:10:49.581 --> 00:10:51.241
And that's why it does the most damage.
00:10:51.902 --> 00:10:54.323
The survey wastes a quarter of your time
00:10:54.344 --> 00:10:55.004
and a lot of money.
00:10:55.043 --> 00:10:56.845
The calendar cleanse maybe wastes a
00:10:56.904 --> 00:10:57.264
couple.
00:10:57.304 --> 00:10:58.306
You delete the meetings.
00:10:58.993 --> 00:11:00.214
But both are recoverable.
00:11:00.433 --> 00:11:03.514
But the meeting about meetings adds more
00:11:03.575 --> 00:11:05.755
work while claiming to remove it.
00:11:05.775 --> 00:11:08.778
And it does so with a straight face
00:11:08.817 --> 00:11:09.898
and a project plan.
00:11:09.977 --> 00:11:11.139
It's the only one of the three that
00:11:11.178 --> 00:11:12.820
makes the stack even heavier.
00:11:12.940 --> 00:11:14.980
You're just adding more stacks to a
00:11:15.020 --> 00:11:15.341
meeting.
00:11:16.201 --> 00:11:17.822
so the audit has to be the literal
00:11:18.264 --> 00:11:20.206
opposite of those three which is why i
00:11:20.267 --> 00:11:23.530
saved it for article six one person one
00:11:23.591 --> 00:11:27.576
afternoon artifacts only one page out the
00:11:27.696 --> 00:11:29.519
second it needs to be a committee or
00:11:29.558 --> 00:11:31.360
a sub team you've lost it yeah
00:11:33.004 --> 00:11:34.285
When I read meeting about meetings,
00:11:34.326 --> 00:11:36.587
it made me think about George Costanza.
00:11:37.067 --> 00:11:38.649
It felt very Seinfeld.
00:11:38.690 --> 00:11:41.253
It felt very when Costanza was working for
00:11:41.273 --> 00:11:42.033
the New York Yankees.
00:11:42.073 --> 00:11:43.355
It sounds like something Costanza would
00:11:43.394 --> 00:11:44.917
come up with, which is probably Gilbert,
00:11:44.937 --> 00:11:45.177
right?
00:11:45.197 --> 00:11:45.616
Exactly.
00:11:47.860 --> 00:11:49.100
So talk more about those artifacts.
00:11:49.201 --> 00:11:50.682
If someone's a health care leader
00:11:50.721 --> 00:11:51.361
listening now,
00:11:51.841 --> 00:11:53.123
let's go the opposite route.
00:11:53.182 --> 00:11:53.923
Normally, I would ask,
00:11:54.243 --> 00:11:56.124
what's the most important thing to pay
00:11:56.144 --> 00:11:56.703
attention to?
00:11:56.943 --> 00:11:57.445
How about this?
00:11:57.565 --> 00:11:59.725
What's the artifact that they're probably
00:12:00.025 --> 00:12:02.326
underestimating and should pay attention
00:12:02.767 --> 00:12:03.187
to more?
00:12:04.727 --> 00:12:04.947
Yeah,
00:12:05.048 --> 00:12:07.229
the ones you're underestimating are sort
00:12:07.269 --> 00:12:09.389
of the boring operational exhaust you
00:12:09.409 --> 00:12:11.171
don't think of as documents at all.
00:12:11.490 --> 00:12:15.133
So let me name them.
00:12:15.153 --> 00:12:17.193
So the huddle board photo or the clipboard
00:12:17.234 --> 00:12:17.693
checklist.
00:12:18.729 --> 00:12:21.870
Operators dismiss this as too low or too
00:12:22.510 --> 00:12:24.152
low hanging fruit that it doesn't matter,
00:12:24.192 --> 00:12:26.952
but it's the most honest artifact that you
00:12:27.113 --> 00:12:28.933
own because it's filled out at seven fifty
00:12:28.953 --> 00:12:30.774
five in the morning by someone who has
00:12:30.855 --> 00:12:33.297
no idea anyone important will ever read
00:12:33.336 --> 00:12:33.437
it.
00:12:34.096 --> 00:12:35.998
They're doing it for their sole purpose of
00:12:36.038 --> 00:12:37.438
what I call working in the team.
00:12:37.458 --> 00:12:38.578
You don't work for a company,
00:12:38.599 --> 00:12:40.679
you work within the team.
00:12:41.380 --> 00:12:42.980
The commitment record from the weekly
00:12:43.020 --> 00:12:43.562
tactical
00:12:45.354 --> 00:12:47.875
or far more often the absence of one.
00:12:47.895 --> 00:12:48.956
So that would be a second one.
00:12:48.996 --> 00:12:51.259
Fourteen slides and no record of a single
00:12:51.298 --> 00:12:54.181
decision with an owner or a date,
00:12:54.740 --> 00:12:55.721
anything.
00:12:55.741 --> 00:12:57.202
The strategic pre-read,
00:12:58.277 --> 00:13:01.038
the decision documentation does show
00:13:01.078 --> 00:13:03.720
dissent on the record it literally does
00:13:04.441 --> 00:13:07.102
and the three decisions and zero recorded
00:13:07.143 --> 00:13:08.964
disagreements you know all of those kind
00:13:09.004 --> 00:13:11.304
of things and it's the all hands you
00:13:11.325 --> 00:13:13.225
know q a submission long so it really
00:13:13.245 --> 00:13:15.288
would be you know sort of those the
00:13:15.427 --> 00:13:18.369
the those four come to mind initially but
00:13:18.409 --> 00:13:20.110
what ties them all together is that none
00:13:20.130 --> 00:13:20.410
of them
00:13:21.071 --> 00:13:23.172
was written to impress you, the CEO.
00:13:23.192 --> 00:13:24.773
They were written as a function of the
00:13:24.893 --> 00:13:26.293
outcome of the meeting itself,
00:13:26.312 --> 00:13:27.913
which is what meetings are really about.
00:13:28.394 --> 00:13:29.294
That's the filter.
00:13:29.754 --> 00:13:32.015
Any artifacts produced for leadership,
00:13:32.755 --> 00:13:34.697
the QBR, the leadership deck,
00:13:35.157 --> 00:13:36.437
has already been laundered.
00:13:37.317 --> 00:13:39.359
That's not where real action goes.
00:13:40.580 --> 00:13:42.681
It goes by those who are closest to
00:13:42.701 --> 00:13:44.562
the decision-making and closest to the
00:13:44.662 --> 00:13:44.981
action.
00:13:46.061 --> 00:13:47.961
So the artifacts that tell the truth are
00:13:47.981 --> 00:13:50.062
the ones that are produced sideways as a
00:13:50.143 --> 00:13:51.323
byproduct of the work.
00:13:51.864 --> 00:13:53.284
I have a kind of rule of thumb
00:13:53.304 --> 00:13:54.065
for this, by the way.
00:13:54.105 --> 00:13:56.486
The truthfulness of a document is
00:13:56.726 --> 00:13:58.607
inversely proportional to how good it
00:13:58.628 --> 00:13:58.947
looks.
00:13:59.248 --> 00:14:00.629
The prettier the deck,
00:14:01.009 --> 00:14:02.629
the more hand smooth it is on the
00:14:02.649 --> 00:14:05.051
way up to the CEO or the COO,
00:14:05.091 --> 00:14:06.312
the less valuable it is.
00:14:06.871 --> 00:14:08.092
If you want to know what's really going
00:14:08.192 --> 00:14:09.014
on in the platform,
00:14:09.033 --> 00:14:11.096
don't read any deck that was built for
00:14:11.115 --> 00:14:11.615
the board.
00:14:12.096 --> 00:14:12.277
You know,
00:14:12.317 --> 00:14:13.998
read the thing that somebody scrawled on a
00:14:14.077 --> 00:14:15.759
clipboard at seven fifty five in the
00:14:15.799 --> 00:14:17.321
morning and mentioned to their team.
00:14:17.660 --> 00:14:17.822
Yep.
00:14:18.042 --> 00:14:20.583
The ugliness of that is the effectiveness
00:14:20.764 --> 00:14:21.825
of a great organization.
00:14:21.845 --> 00:14:22.065
Yeah.
00:14:22.105 --> 00:14:24.527
The real stuff, the stuff you mentioned,
00:14:24.547 --> 00:14:25.467
like the Hawthorne effect,
00:14:25.488 --> 00:14:27.210
the stuff that can skip and bypass that
00:14:27.250 --> 00:14:28.530
Hawthorne effect.
00:14:29.150 --> 00:14:30.591
You suggest that organizations can
00:14:30.652 --> 00:14:32.874
actually hold hundreds of meeting hours
00:14:33.735 --> 00:14:36.297
but make only a handful of what we
00:14:36.336 --> 00:14:37.577
call actual decisions.
00:14:37.618 --> 00:14:38.719
You mentioned a couple of times in the
00:14:38.759 --> 00:14:39.099
article,
00:14:39.779 --> 00:14:41.461
was this a decision made in that meeting
00:14:41.520 --> 00:14:43.503
or was this decided two weeks ago and
00:14:43.523 --> 00:14:45.423
then sort of sourced or presented at the
00:14:45.464 --> 00:14:45.745
meeting?
00:14:46.144 --> 00:14:48.267
Why do leaders overestimate how many
00:14:48.307 --> 00:14:50.447
decisions their organizations are actually
00:14:50.568 --> 00:14:51.068
making?
00:14:53.225 --> 00:14:55.208
So I think it's because we conflate or
00:14:55.249 --> 00:14:59.615
confuse or count discussions as decisions.
00:14:59.835 --> 00:15:00.296
They're not.
00:15:00.836 --> 00:15:02.698
They feel identical in a room and they're
00:15:02.719 --> 00:15:04.422
completely different on the artifact.
00:15:04.501 --> 00:15:06.104
And discussions make you happy.
00:15:06.485 --> 00:15:09.788
Decisions drive actions and success.
00:15:10.677 --> 00:15:11.477
Run the census,
00:15:11.557 --> 00:15:15.879
and it's violently short how well the list
00:15:15.960 --> 00:15:16.799
actually gets.
00:15:17.419 --> 00:15:20.321
You go through every artifact for thirty
00:15:20.341 --> 00:15:22.061
days and write down every decision
00:15:22.221 --> 00:15:23.062
actually made.
00:15:23.701 --> 00:15:25.701
A resource moved, a policy changed,
00:15:25.802 --> 00:15:26.582
a hire approved,
00:15:26.602 --> 00:15:28.403
a pilot got launched or killed.
00:15:29.403 --> 00:15:31.663
You had real discussion about your
00:15:31.703 --> 00:15:33.125
marketing campaign and whether it was
00:15:33.144 --> 00:15:34.024
effective or not.
00:15:35.947 --> 00:15:37.389
And you're looking at this and all the
00:15:37.970 --> 00:15:39.312
while you're counting and you're making
00:15:39.331 --> 00:15:40.793
about six real decisions,
00:15:41.313 --> 00:15:42.836
four of which you can trace.
00:15:43.857 --> 00:15:45.000
And they were actually made in the
00:15:45.019 --> 00:15:47.022
hallways and ratified by email.
00:15:47.342 --> 00:15:48.585
Meetings didn't decide them.
00:15:48.625 --> 00:15:50.027
The meeting witnessed them.
00:15:50.047 --> 00:15:51.087
They discussed them.
00:15:51.889 --> 00:15:54.171
So the reasons leaders overestimate is
00:15:54.191 --> 00:15:57.312
that a good decision feels productive.
00:15:57.793 --> 00:15:58.734
Everybody talked.
00:15:58.754 --> 00:16:00.054
Everybody was engaged.
00:16:00.115 --> 00:16:03.236
But nothing crossed the line from discuss
00:16:03.297 --> 00:16:04.518
to decided.
00:16:05.038 --> 00:16:06.879
No honor, no action, no date.
00:16:07.259 --> 00:16:08.620
Who's the responsible party?
00:16:08.679 --> 00:16:09.620
When is this due?
00:16:09.860 --> 00:16:10.721
What are we doing here?
00:16:11.302 --> 00:16:14.104
And so the feeling of productivity is
00:16:14.163 --> 00:16:16.985
conflated by discussion,
00:16:17.206 --> 00:16:19.528
and nobody wins in those situations.
00:16:22.469 --> 00:16:24.070
What I look for is the verb.
00:16:24.590 --> 00:16:26.431
Listen to how leaders describe their
00:16:26.471 --> 00:16:27.051
meetings.
00:16:27.410 --> 00:16:29.991
We discussed, we reviewed, we aligned,
00:16:30.072 --> 00:16:30.892
we touched base.
00:16:31.533 --> 00:16:32.773
Notice what's missing.
00:16:33.373 --> 00:16:35.553
We decided, we came up with.
00:16:36.195 --> 00:16:37.995
When the whole vocabulary of your
00:16:38.054 --> 00:16:40.475
operating cadence is discussing verbs,
00:16:41.056 --> 00:16:42.697
you've answered the question even before
00:16:42.716 --> 00:16:43.376
the census started.
00:16:43.437 --> 00:16:44.837
It's okay to do updates.
00:16:45.317 --> 00:16:46.577
Like I'll have one here in a half
00:16:46.618 --> 00:16:47.879
hour with my executive team.
00:16:47.899 --> 00:16:48.798
They're update meetings.
00:16:48.818 --> 00:16:50.059
It's not a decision meeting.
00:16:51.301 --> 00:16:52.642
It's more of a huddle and keeping
00:16:52.682 --> 00:16:53.663
everybody abreast.
00:16:54.524 --> 00:16:56.706
And so understanding the function of the
00:16:56.726 --> 00:16:59.750
meeting and when it's okay to have updates
00:16:59.789 --> 00:17:00.671
and discussion,
00:17:01.270 --> 00:17:04.394
but what is driving decisions and all the
00:17:04.434 --> 00:17:06.196
transparency around what's actually going
00:17:06.257 --> 00:17:07.317
on in the organization.
00:17:07.657 --> 00:17:09.319
That's the tough work of an operator.
00:17:10.413 --> 00:17:12.314
I think if someone's been reading,
00:17:12.433 --> 00:17:14.276
listening to this series about meetings,
00:17:14.635 --> 00:17:15.896
they have to understand they should be
00:17:15.936 --> 00:17:17.557
taking away that there's four different
00:17:17.577 --> 00:17:20.359
meetings and they have distinct, very,
00:17:20.400 --> 00:17:21.519
very distinct purposes.
00:17:21.901 --> 00:17:22.721
If you're running a meeting,
00:17:22.760 --> 00:17:23.882
you don't know the purpose of that
00:17:23.922 --> 00:17:25.502
meeting, that's bad.
00:17:25.962 --> 00:17:26.884
If you aren't reviewing,
00:17:27.324 --> 00:17:29.385
was this meeting purposeful, that's bad.
00:17:29.865 --> 00:17:31.146
And you had a line in this article,
00:17:31.207 --> 00:17:32.768
you're not running a meeting stack,
00:17:32.788 --> 00:17:35.128
you're running one meeting in four
00:17:35.229 --> 00:17:35.950
costumes.
00:17:36.269 --> 00:17:38.151
So how do organizations accidentally
00:17:38.191 --> 00:17:39.271
collapse fourfold?
00:17:39.332 --> 00:17:41.693
four different meetings into the same
00:17:41.733 --> 00:17:43.214
meeting that happens over and over again.
00:17:43.875 --> 00:17:44.135
Yeah,
00:17:44.756 --> 00:17:46.978
it happens through the path of least
00:17:46.998 --> 00:17:49.579
resistance, one trailing metric at a time.
00:17:50.381 --> 00:17:52.903
Nobody decides to collapse the deck.
00:17:52.923 --> 00:17:55.124
They collapse it by accident by letting
00:17:55.163 --> 00:17:57.746
the same, you know, comfortable number,
00:17:58.007 --> 00:17:59.667
you know, colonize every tier.
00:17:59.748 --> 00:18:00.828
So here's the mechanism.
00:18:01.288 --> 00:18:02.910
Same store production is the number of the
00:18:02.951 --> 00:18:04.090
CEO checks first.
00:18:04.332 --> 00:18:05.132
That's what I want to know.
00:18:05.152 --> 00:18:06.452
What is the same store production?
00:18:06.913 --> 00:18:08.134
So it shows up on the huddle board
00:18:08.154 --> 00:18:08.634
in the morning.
00:18:09.346 --> 00:18:11.686
Then it anchors the weekly tactical deck.
00:18:11.727 --> 00:18:13.567
It becomes a priority because that's what
00:18:13.587 --> 00:18:15.528
they think the CEO wants or that is
00:18:15.548 --> 00:18:16.429
what the CEO wants.
00:18:16.449 --> 00:18:18.569
Then it leads to the monthly strategic
00:18:18.609 --> 00:18:19.170
pre-read.
00:18:19.210 --> 00:18:21.750
Then it's the late opening slide at the
00:18:21.851 --> 00:18:22.530
all hands.
00:18:23.030 --> 00:18:25.011
It's been reviewed four times.
00:18:25.352 --> 00:18:26.133
No decisions.
00:18:26.192 --> 00:18:27.232
It's just been reported.
00:18:27.772 --> 00:18:29.473
Four meetings that were each built to do
00:18:29.513 --> 00:18:32.295
a different job surface everything.
00:18:32.414 --> 00:18:34.916
decide, debate, connect.
00:18:34.957 --> 00:18:36.297
Surface, decide, debate,
00:18:36.336 --> 00:18:38.358
connect are now all doing the same job,
00:18:38.378 --> 00:18:40.059
looking at the same trailing metric,
00:18:40.099 --> 00:18:41.240
and nothing has changed.
00:18:41.740 --> 00:18:43.682
And that's the redundancy map,
00:18:43.701 --> 00:18:45.563
and that's the whole series was based on
00:18:45.583 --> 00:18:48.325
that thesis on one sheet of paper.
00:18:48.785 --> 00:18:50.685
You mark every metric that appears at
00:18:50.726 --> 00:18:51.567
three or more tiers,
00:18:51.606 --> 00:18:53.087
and the costumes come off.
00:18:53.587 --> 00:18:55.769
The huddle was supposed to surface what
00:18:55.788 --> 00:18:56.809
the floor knows,
00:18:56.930 --> 00:18:58.250
but nobody was discussing.
00:18:58.891 --> 00:19:00.912
The tactical was supposed to produce this
00:19:00.951 --> 00:19:01.872
week's decision.
00:19:01.892 --> 00:19:04.211
That's what a tactical means.
00:19:04.692 --> 00:19:06.472
The strategic was supposed to host the
00:19:06.512 --> 00:19:08.574
five questions and have dissent and
00:19:08.614 --> 00:19:09.153
debate.
00:19:09.673 --> 00:19:11.153
How are we going to do this marketing
00:19:11.173 --> 00:19:11.614
campaign?
00:19:11.673 --> 00:19:13.335
How are we going to get more lead
00:19:13.375 --> 00:19:14.035
generation?
00:19:14.075 --> 00:19:16.135
How are we going to work with retention?
00:19:16.155 --> 00:19:17.336
Okay,
00:19:17.355 --> 00:19:18.816
the all hands was supposed to let the
00:19:18.855 --> 00:19:20.176
platform talk to itself.
00:19:20.237 --> 00:19:21.237
It's a culture meeting.
00:19:22.421 --> 00:19:24.265
When all four have quietly become the
00:19:24.365 --> 00:19:26.328
metric review of same store sales,
00:19:26.348 --> 00:19:29.275
you've had one meeting wearing four
00:19:29.315 --> 00:19:31.338
different outfits and a calendar that
00:19:31.378 --> 00:19:32.481
looks very, very busy.
00:19:33.496 --> 00:19:35.376
And the fix isn't deleting the meetings.
00:19:35.997 --> 00:19:37.778
That's the calendar cleanse and the work
00:19:37.817 --> 00:19:38.357
grows back.
00:19:38.397 --> 00:19:40.118
The fix is reassigning the jobs,
00:19:40.138 --> 00:19:41.878
having assignable parties that are
00:19:41.898 --> 00:19:42.420
accountable.
00:19:42.819 --> 00:19:45.181
Give each tier one job alone that it's
00:19:45.201 --> 00:19:47.362
allowed to do and name what specifically
00:19:47.682 --> 00:19:49.041
does not get discussed there.
00:19:49.061 --> 00:19:50.883
That's why you have to have a meeting
00:19:50.903 --> 00:19:51.163
czar.
00:19:51.583 --> 00:19:53.923
The discipline lives in the execution of
00:19:53.943 --> 00:19:54.785
that meeting czar.
00:19:55.424 --> 00:19:57.626
A tier can't name what it refuses to
00:19:57.666 --> 00:20:00.128
discuss when it's been separated from the
00:20:00.209 --> 00:20:00.489
others.
00:20:00.548 --> 00:20:03.131
It's just the same meeting in a new
00:20:03.211 --> 00:20:04.711
wine costume, right?
00:20:04.751 --> 00:20:09.355
An old wine bottle with the same wine
00:20:09.395 --> 00:20:09.695
label.
00:20:09.756 --> 00:20:11.076
So you have to be very,
00:20:11.116 --> 00:20:12.778
very careful around all these things.
00:20:12.877 --> 00:20:15.079
And what I hope comes out of this
00:20:15.140 --> 00:20:16.201
is a lot of discipline.
00:20:16.621 --> 00:20:19.182
When I moved the series from a lot
00:20:19.222 --> 00:20:21.125
of physical therapy topics to more
00:20:21.204 --> 00:20:22.605
business-y, operational,
00:20:22.625 --> 00:20:23.405
it was intentional.
00:20:24.442 --> 00:20:26.523
And attacking meetings was, you know,
00:20:26.644 --> 00:20:28.403
something I needed to write about for my
00:20:28.483 --> 00:20:29.364
own edification,
00:20:29.384 --> 00:20:31.204
for our own organizational cleanse,
00:20:32.164 --> 00:20:33.325
because I started to see these same
00:20:33.365 --> 00:20:35.746
patterns in several healthcare platforms
00:20:35.766 --> 00:20:36.526
that I work with.
00:20:36.566 --> 00:20:38.247
So I hope people got a lot out
00:20:38.287 --> 00:20:38.507
of it.
00:20:38.567 --> 00:20:39.727
Now we're going to, you know,
00:20:39.787 --> 00:20:41.728
migrate and transition to a lot more fun
00:20:41.748 --> 00:20:42.067
topic.
00:20:42.087 --> 00:20:43.248
We're going to go back to call to
00:20:43.288 --> 00:20:45.009
care and talk a little bit more about
00:20:46.269 --> 00:20:47.328
not clinical excellence,
00:20:47.348 --> 00:20:49.349
which is understood not customer service
00:20:49.430 --> 00:20:49.789
excellence,
00:20:49.809 --> 00:20:51.750
but compassion and care excellence and how
00:20:51.789 --> 00:20:53.550
that can have operational impact on a
00:20:53.590 --> 00:20:53.871
company.
00:20:54.444 --> 00:20:55.125
Good forward tease.
00:20:55.144 --> 00:20:55.565
I like it.
00:20:56.065 --> 00:20:56.586
Big finish.
00:20:57.286 --> 00:20:57.945
Tactics.
00:20:58.226 --> 00:20:59.246
If someone's going to walk out of the
00:20:59.266 --> 00:20:59.746
door today,
00:20:59.766 --> 00:21:00.846
if they're listening to this on the way
00:21:00.866 --> 00:21:03.846
into the office and they had one hour,
00:21:04.446 --> 00:21:06.988
what's the single audit you'd tell them to
00:21:07.067 --> 00:21:09.969
run today or Monday morning to review
00:21:10.009 --> 00:21:10.969
everything you talked about,
00:21:11.028 --> 00:21:11.989
not just in this article,
00:21:12.009 --> 00:21:14.109
but in this series of articles?
00:21:14.369 --> 00:21:15.789
Yeah, I would go both bookends.
00:21:16.009 --> 00:21:17.029
If they only had an hour,
00:21:17.130 --> 00:21:19.371
I'd say visit a few clinics and ask
00:21:19.391 --> 00:21:21.371
to look at the scribbled notes of the
00:21:21.411 --> 00:21:22.051
daily huddle.
00:21:22.672 --> 00:21:23.571
That'll tell you a lot.
00:21:24.144 --> 00:21:25.684
And then I'd look at the agenda and
00:21:25.726 --> 00:21:27.847
I'd look at the outcome,
00:21:27.988 --> 00:21:29.548
maybe even listen to part of it on
00:21:29.588 --> 00:21:33.272
something you recorded on the all hands.
00:21:33.653 --> 00:21:35.034
What percentage of the people actually
00:21:35.054 --> 00:21:35.674
showed up?
00:21:36.174 --> 00:21:37.876
How many of the questions were unfiltered
00:21:37.916 --> 00:21:38.817
and unscripted?
00:21:39.519 --> 00:21:41.641
Did the meeting take its entire half hour,
00:21:41.721 --> 00:21:43.521
hour, whatever it was allotted to?
00:21:43.602 --> 00:21:44.884
Or did you give time back?
00:21:45.463 --> 00:21:46.224
That's what I would look at.
00:21:46.771 --> 00:21:47.511
Yeah.
00:21:47.692 --> 00:21:47.893
All right.
00:21:47.913 --> 00:21:50.934
Most organizations think fixing meetings
00:21:51.115 --> 00:21:54.115
starts with another survey or committee or
00:21:54.537 --> 00:21:55.897
another meeting about meetings.
00:21:56.298 --> 00:21:58.679
This article hopefully goes into detail
00:21:58.699 --> 00:22:00.680
and shows you why that evidence already
00:22:00.720 --> 00:22:01.300
exists.
00:22:01.401 --> 00:22:02.862
The artifacts already know what's wrong.
00:22:02.902 --> 00:22:04.982
The question is whether you're looking for
00:22:05.002 --> 00:22:06.124
them or if you're willing to, I think,
00:22:06.203 --> 00:22:08.924
also pause and take a look at yourself
00:22:08.964 --> 00:22:09.506
and say,
00:22:10.145 --> 00:22:12.106
the thing we're doing is part of the
00:22:12.146 --> 00:22:12.807
problem as well.
00:22:12.827 --> 00:22:14.087
And that's not usually an easy
00:22:14.127 --> 00:22:14.749
conversation.
00:22:15.249 --> 00:22:16.569
But if it made you uncomfortable and
00:22:16.630 --> 00:22:18.330
rethink how your organization operates,
00:22:18.530 --> 00:22:19.391
that's sort of the point.
00:22:19.932 --> 00:22:21.531
Subscribe to The Operator on Substack
00:22:21.593 --> 00:22:22.593
using the link in the show notes.
00:22:22.653 --> 00:22:23.913
And if you're about to schedule a meeting
00:22:23.933 --> 00:22:25.094
to figure out why there are so many
00:22:25.114 --> 00:22:25.615
meetings,
00:22:26.515 --> 00:22:28.155
maybe send that person this episode.
00:22:28.215 --> 00:22:29.277
Maybe do it anonymously,
00:22:29.636 --> 00:22:30.916
but don't have a survey about it.
00:22:31.998 --> 00:22:32.999
Subscribe on Substack.
00:22:33.019 --> 00:22:33.239
Larry,
00:22:33.259 --> 00:22:34.298
thanks so much for the time and doing
00:22:34.318 --> 00:22:34.479
this.
00:22:34.499 --> 00:22:35.519
Absolutely, Jim.
00:00:01.411 --> 00:00:02.032
All right, let's go.
00:00:02.892 --> 00:00:03.072
All right,
00:00:03.193 --> 00:00:05.096
most healthcare organizations have the
00:00:05.195 --> 00:00:07.919
same response when they think they have a
00:00:07.940 --> 00:00:08.539
meeting problem.
00:00:08.980 --> 00:00:09.942
They launch a survey.
00:00:10.082 --> 00:00:11.603
You've taken one, I've taken one.
00:00:12.676 --> 00:00:13.797
You form a task force,
00:00:14.096 --> 00:00:15.057
they create the committee,
00:00:15.358 --> 00:00:17.478
and maybe they even schedule, wait for it,
00:00:18.099 --> 00:00:19.859
a meeting about meetings.
00:00:20.480 --> 00:00:22.079
In Larry's latest article on The Operator,
00:00:22.359 --> 00:00:24.140
it makes a pretty uncomfortable argument.
00:00:24.341 --> 00:00:26.442
You don't need any of that.
00:00:26.801 --> 00:00:28.702
You don't need to attend a single meeting.
00:00:29.003 --> 00:00:30.843
You don't need another survey that you're
00:00:30.862 --> 00:00:31.923
just going to get a three point four
00:00:31.943 --> 00:00:32.404
back anyway.
00:00:32.764 --> 00:00:35.645
The artifacts have already confessed.
00:00:36.424 --> 00:00:37.646
Let's find out what we mean by that.
00:00:37.746 --> 00:00:38.485
Larry, let's start there.
00:00:38.845 --> 00:00:40.447
How can someone figure out what's wrong
00:00:40.466 --> 00:00:42.847
with an entire organization without going
00:00:43.287 --> 00:00:44.148
to one meeting?
00:00:46.789 --> 00:00:47.070
Well,
00:00:47.929 --> 00:00:50.030
let's just start out with the basics that
00:00:52.112 --> 00:00:53.453
I spent a lot of time on meetings.
00:00:53.472 --> 00:00:55.753
This is the sixth article because I think
00:00:55.774 --> 00:00:58.414
it's so important in an environment where
00:00:58.475 --> 00:01:00.435
many people are working remotely to get
00:01:00.496 --> 00:01:02.576
really inefficient about meetings.
00:01:03.156 --> 00:01:05.477
And when you put a framework around them,
00:01:07.445 --> 00:01:08.105
It helps.
00:01:08.727 --> 00:01:11.149
And you can see the artifacts.
00:01:11.269 --> 00:01:13.329
I know we'll get into this as we
00:01:13.370 --> 00:01:14.191
go along there.
00:01:14.850 --> 00:01:19.935
But I wanted folks to understand that the
00:01:20.115 --> 00:01:22.757
uglier the product that you're seeing,
00:01:23.317 --> 00:01:24.078
the decisions,
00:01:24.118 --> 00:01:25.500
the things that are written down,
00:01:25.560 --> 00:01:26.781
the things that actually come out of
00:01:26.820 --> 00:01:27.320
meetings,
00:01:27.962 --> 00:01:30.283
those are the compelling parts of what you
00:01:30.343 --> 00:01:30.483
do.
00:01:31.683 --> 00:01:34.406
CEOs make two or three decisions a week
00:01:34.506 --> 00:01:35.167
that are big.
00:01:35.867 --> 00:01:38.588
Teams make dozens and dozens.
00:01:39.129 --> 00:01:41.290
Daily huddles can make even more than
00:01:41.352 --> 00:01:41.772
that.
00:01:42.391 --> 00:01:43.912
They're smaller decisions,
00:01:43.953 --> 00:01:45.375
but they're really critical and they have
00:01:45.394 --> 00:01:46.936
to emanate out of our process.
00:01:47.376 --> 00:01:49.397
And that process is the meetings and the
00:01:49.438 --> 00:01:52.280
byproducts that they produce that I'm sure
00:01:52.299 --> 00:01:53.141
we're going to talk about here.
00:01:53.161 --> 00:01:53.240
Yeah.
00:01:53.260 --> 00:01:54.621
All right.
00:01:54.641 --> 00:01:56.043
So you opened up in your article with
00:01:56.063 --> 00:01:58.864
a VP sitting down with four artifacts.
00:01:59.364 --> 00:02:00.805
And by four forty five that day,
00:02:00.825 --> 00:02:01.346
that first day,
00:02:02.013 --> 00:02:03.293
they could know more about the
00:02:03.313 --> 00:02:06.034
organization than the annual engagement
00:02:06.075 --> 00:02:07.656
survey learned in a year,
00:02:07.676 --> 00:02:09.377
which you also go into saying you're not
00:02:09.396 --> 00:02:10.336
really learning a whole lot.
00:02:11.076 --> 00:02:11.877
Why start there?
00:02:11.917 --> 00:02:14.078
Why start with that first day and what
00:02:14.098 --> 00:02:14.818
they can learn?
00:02:15.639 --> 00:02:15.899
Yeah.
00:02:15.919 --> 00:02:17.079
So what I was trying to do here
00:02:17.118 --> 00:02:18.919
is I want to put the whole argument
00:02:19.935 --> 00:02:23.556
of the entire five-part series on one desk
00:02:23.597 --> 00:02:26.258
and one afternoon and let you watch it
00:02:26.298 --> 00:02:26.919
sort of work.
00:02:26.979 --> 00:02:30.000
So the article, she lays out four things,
00:02:30.039 --> 00:02:31.961
a photo of the morning's huddle board,
00:02:32.381 --> 00:02:34.962
the deck from Tuesday's weekly tactical.
00:02:35.022 --> 00:02:37.264
Again, those are two meeting contexts,
00:02:37.364 --> 00:02:39.504
daily huddle, weekly tactical.
00:02:39.865 --> 00:02:41.665
The third is the strategic,
00:02:41.705 --> 00:02:44.367
so the pre-read and the minutes from last
00:02:44.407 --> 00:02:46.149
month's strategic, and then the all-hands.
00:02:47.250 --> 00:02:48.270
with the Slido log.
00:02:48.852 --> 00:02:50.873
One artifact per tier.
00:02:51.615 --> 00:02:53.897
The entire stack on a single desk in
00:02:53.937 --> 00:02:55.700
front of one person who has not attended
00:02:55.741 --> 00:02:58.243
a single meeting and has not interviewed
00:02:58.463 --> 00:02:58.905
anybody.
00:03:00.611 --> 00:03:01.712
And by quarter five,
00:03:01.752 --> 00:03:03.715
she knows more than the annual survey
00:03:03.775 --> 00:03:04.794
learned in twelve months.
00:03:04.835 --> 00:03:06.276
These surveys take a long time.
00:03:06.316 --> 00:03:07.417
They're expensive.
00:03:08.737 --> 00:03:09.518
They're overdone.
00:03:09.538 --> 00:03:11.479
You're usually using a third party.
00:03:11.539 --> 00:03:16.062
People generally have survey fatigue and
00:03:16.263 --> 00:03:17.324
it just gets long.
00:03:18.965 --> 00:03:20.526
And then there's usually a campaign around
00:03:20.545 --> 00:03:20.985
the survey.
00:03:21.006 --> 00:03:22.926
And so there's a lot of artificial noise
00:03:22.967 --> 00:03:24.027
around it as well.
00:03:25.429 --> 00:03:27.050
But she took the four documents in the
00:03:27.110 --> 00:03:29.632
afternoon and really produced the truth.
00:03:30.735 --> 00:03:32.515
so i started the article there on purpose
00:03:32.536 --> 00:03:35.016
because every operator's instinct is when
00:03:35.056 --> 00:03:38.078
the ceo or the ceo says figure out
00:03:38.117 --> 00:03:40.979
our meeting culture everybody tries to
00:03:41.038 --> 00:03:44.961
reach a survey or god forbid a task
00:03:44.980 --> 00:03:47.521
force or a committee that reports up okay
00:03:47.542 --> 00:03:48.921
that's just poor and professional
00:03:48.961 --> 00:03:51.962
management and that was her first instinct
00:03:52.002 --> 00:03:54.364
was a survey her second was a task
00:03:54.383 --> 00:03:56.645
force her third instinct was the right one
00:03:56.784 --> 00:03:58.126
read what the meetings
00:03:59.193 --> 00:04:01.215
actually wrote down and if you notice the
00:04:01.275 --> 00:04:04.157
detail that the artifacts came to her the
00:04:04.217 --> 00:04:07.539
huddle photo got texted to her by a
00:04:07.620 --> 00:04:11.103
site lead she didn't requisition anything
00:04:11.122 --> 00:04:13.525
the evidence you know was already there
00:04:13.564 --> 00:04:15.646
inside the building and so that's the part
00:04:15.907 --> 00:04:18.209
operators miss you're not missing the data
00:04:18.249 --> 00:04:20.831
you're not reading it it's been hitting
00:04:20.872 --> 00:04:22.752
your inbox the whole time those are really
00:04:22.773 --> 00:04:23.553
what insights are
00:04:24.110 --> 00:04:25.711
So what is that line in the article
00:04:25.732 --> 00:04:26.812
which stood out,
00:04:26.833 --> 00:04:28.274
which was the artifacts had already
00:04:28.334 --> 00:04:29.375
confessed?
00:04:29.915 --> 00:04:31.557
What does that mean if someone's reading
00:04:31.577 --> 00:04:32.237
this and going, wait,
00:04:32.298 --> 00:04:33.339
I think I know what that means,
00:04:33.399 --> 00:04:34.901
but how can they be sure?
00:04:35.622 --> 00:04:35.802
Yeah,
00:04:35.841 --> 00:04:37.944
so what it really means is that every
00:04:37.983 --> 00:04:39.805
meeting in your stack leaves a paper
00:04:39.846 --> 00:04:40.226
trail,
00:04:40.307 --> 00:04:42.309
and that paper trail is the meeting with
00:04:42.329 --> 00:04:44.091
the performance stripped off.
00:04:45.841 --> 00:04:47.884
And here's the thing about a confession.
00:04:47.963 --> 00:04:50.704
It's involuntary and it's specific.
00:04:51.266 --> 00:04:53.107
The deck from Tuesday is the deck whether
00:04:53.127 --> 00:04:54.608
or not anybody audits it.
00:04:55.288 --> 00:04:56.528
Nobody dressed it up for you.
00:04:56.569 --> 00:04:59.149
The Q&A log from the all hands shows
00:04:59.209 --> 00:05:01.432
exactly what questions got submitted and
00:05:01.451 --> 00:05:03.312
exactly which ones got answered,
00:05:03.973 --> 00:05:05.494
not the uncomfortable summary,
00:05:06.134 --> 00:05:07.014
the actual list.
00:05:07.035 --> 00:05:08.735
So the huddle checklist on the clipboard
00:05:08.776 --> 00:05:10.617
shows what actually got raised at
00:05:15.904 --> 00:05:16.605
So the artifacts,
00:05:16.625 --> 00:05:18.086
they can't lie because they weren't
00:05:18.146 --> 00:05:19.365
produced to be looked at.
00:05:19.406 --> 00:05:20.406
That's the whole trick.
00:05:21.165 --> 00:05:23.826
The moment you announce an audit and go
00:05:23.887 --> 00:05:25.067
sit in the back of the huddle,
00:05:25.107 --> 00:05:26.007
the huddle performs.
00:05:26.028 --> 00:05:27.848
The board gets run properly for the first
00:05:27.867 --> 00:05:28.627
time in months.
00:05:28.668 --> 00:05:30.449
The tactical suddenly has all kinds of
00:05:30.488 --> 00:05:32.348
good crisp action details to it.
00:05:33.069 --> 00:05:35.089
And that's the Hawthorne effect and
00:05:35.129 --> 00:05:38.170
exactly why watching tells you the least.
00:05:38.610 --> 00:05:40.771
The observed meeting is on its best
00:05:40.810 --> 00:05:41.331
behavior.
00:05:41.350 --> 00:05:42.992
It's the artifacts that come out of it.
00:05:44.372 --> 00:05:45.353
that you're caught off guard.
00:05:45.372 --> 00:05:46.673
So when I say they confessed,
00:05:46.973 --> 00:05:48.694
I mean the evidence of what your stack
00:05:48.875 --> 00:05:51.115
actually does versus what it claims to do
00:05:51.615 --> 00:05:54.577
is already written down, timestamped,
00:05:54.817 --> 00:05:55.817
sitting in a folder.
00:05:55.858 --> 00:05:56.718
You don't need a wire.
00:05:56.759 --> 00:05:58.860
You don't need to read the file.
00:05:58.959 --> 00:06:00.319
And here's an interesting tidbit.
00:06:00.360 --> 00:06:02.341
The most damning confession is usually the
00:06:02.420 --> 00:06:03.281
one that isn't there.
00:06:03.341 --> 00:06:06.644
The tier that produces no artifacts or no
00:06:06.704 --> 00:06:08.805
notes, no logs, no commitment records,
00:06:08.845 --> 00:06:09.824
just told you something.
00:06:10.324 --> 00:06:12.206
A meeting that leaves no trace was never
00:06:12.245 --> 00:06:12.807
in operating.
00:06:13.567 --> 00:06:15.949
mechanism it was a conversation that
00:06:15.988 --> 00:06:18.230
recurs and so everybody now in a lot
00:06:18.269 --> 00:06:20.490
of meetings and i do this um for
00:06:20.511 --> 00:06:23.572
accountability reasons uses a meeting
00:06:23.632 --> 00:06:26.134
software there's a million of them plod uh
00:06:26.754 --> 00:06:29.916
you know zoom has its own everybody has
00:06:29.956 --> 00:06:31.057
it so you know there's just a ton
00:06:31.077 --> 00:06:33.218
of those they can be used extremely
00:06:33.259 --> 00:06:33.959
effectively
00:06:34.779 --> 00:06:37.540
for accountability to run through AI to
00:06:37.560 --> 00:06:40.081
determine there to post, you know,
00:06:40.180 --> 00:06:41.180
the documentation.
00:06:41.781 --> 00:06:42.201
These things,
00:06:42.341 --> 00:06:44.041
these are good tools to help you.
00:06:44.122 --> 00:06:45.182
They're not replacements.
00:06:45.262 --> 00:06:47.523
And that's what I'm seeing tending to
00:06:47.543 --> 00:06:48.702
happen now.
00:06:48.723 --> 00:06:50.262
Well, so far, just in this conversation,
00:06:50.302 --> 00:06:51.764
I got a few artifacts of saying you're
00:06:51.783 --> 00:06:53.363
not a hugest fan of surveys.
00:06:54.264 --> 00:06:56.504
Why are organizations so attracted to
00:06:56.625 --> 00:06:58.084
surveys when the answers,
00:06:58.125 --> 00:06:58.944
as you just highlighted,
00:06:58.964 --> 00:07:00.985
are often sitting right in front of them
00:07:01.026 --> 00:07:01.565
somewhere else?
00:07:02.196 --> 00:07:04.358
Yeah, surveys are excuse, you know,
00:07:04.497 --> 00:07:06.358
they feel like there's some action going
00:07:06.499 --> 00:07:06.738
on,
00:07:06.819 --> 00:07:08.399
it produces a number that you can put
00:07:08.459 --> 00:07:09.420
on a slide.
00:07:10.201 --> 00:07:11.983
And, and, you know, that's,
00:07:12.062 --> 00:07:14.303
that's just almost irresistible to a
00:07:14.343 --> 00:07:15.084
leadership team.
00:07:15.105 --> 00:07:16.745
By the way, just as a side note,
00:07:18.005 --> 00:07:21.488
I'm a fan of one question surveys that
00:07:21.528 --> 00:07:24.290
go to the stakeholders of a particular
00:07:24.331 --> 00:07:27.512
department that evaluate that department.
00:07:28.492 --> 00:07:30.875
How is our accounting group performing?
00:07:31.620 --> 00:07:32.822
and have a Likert scale.
00:07:33.081 --> 00:07:34.502
Why did you answer it that way?
00:07:34.822 --> 00:07:35.324
That's it.
00:07:36.223 --> 00:07:37.944
If you do that appropriately,
00:07:38.245 --> 00:07:39.286
surveys could be good.
00:07:39.326 --> 00:07:40.346
But what we tend to do is use
00:07:40.387 --> 00:07:41.507
them as excuses.
00:07:43.463 --> 00:07:45.064
It say we listen to you,
00:07:45.983 --> 00:07:47.603
but it never really brought anything up
00:07:47.824 --> 00:07:48.403
uncomfortable.
00:07:48.423 --> 00:07:48.824
If it did,
00:07:48.843 --> 00:07:50.305
you did it in writing and you didn't
00:07:50.324 --> 00:07:51.805
have a conversation about it.
00:07:52.345 --> 00:07:54.586
And so it outsources discomfort to a
00:07:54.665 --> 00:07:55.946
vendor, you know,
00:07:55.985 --> 00:07:57.365
usually a very expensive vendor.
00:07:57.406 --> 00:07:57.865
But, you know,
00:07:57.886 --> 00:07:59.165
there's also a deeper problem.
00:07:59.206 --> 00:08:01.867
The survey measures mood, not function.
00:08:02.586 --> 00:08:04.827
A meeting could feel perfectly pleasant
00:08:04.887 --> 00:08:06.067
and produce nothing.
00:08:06.108 --> 00:08:06.387
Right.
00:08:06.507 --> 00:08:07.790
So the mood didn't matter.
00:08:08.389 --> 00:08:11.213
The dashboard recital is comfortable.
00:08:11.653 --> 00:08:14.216
The pre-screen Q&A is comfortable and
00:08:14.257 --> 00:08:14.776
polished.
00:08:15.218 --> 00:08:17.120
You never assess your revenue cycle by
00:08:17.259 --> 00:08:18.862
asking the billing team how they feel
00:08:18.901 --> 00:08:19.583
about it, right?
00:08:19.702 --> 00:08:20.884
You pull the aging report.
00:08:21.425 --> 00:08:21.865
Mark Benthien, SCEC,
00:08:21.904 --> 00:08:23.607
meetings deserve the same discipline,
00:08:23.646 --> 00:08:25.088
the question is never how the meeting
00:08:25.108 --> 00:08:26.790
feels it's what the problem produces so we
00:08:26.829 --> 00:08:29.173
like kpis because their objective,
00:08:29.192 --> 00:08:30.052
but we don't like kpis.
00:08:30.072 --> 00:08:31.014
Mark Benthien, SCEC,
00:08:31.173 --> 00:08:33.557
or results or outcomes of meetings i'm not
00:08:33.596 --> 00:08:36.178
sure why and that's why i've tried to
00:08:36.219 --> 00:08:37.801
differentiate between management
00:08:37.880 --> 00:08:39.702
leadership and operations.
00:08:40.243 --> 00:08:42.423
Because operators want that discipline,
00:08:42.464 --> 00:08:43.985
whether you're talking about an outcome
00:08:44.004 --> 00:08:46.166
from a KPI or how do you keep
00:08:46.206 --> 00:08:48.527
a meeting accountable or how do you keep
00:08:48.567 --> 00:08:51.107
people autonomous but accountability
00:08:51.168 --> 00:08:52.327
within structure.
00:08:53.408 --> 00:08:54.849
And to me, that's what it's all about.
00:08:54.908 --> 00:08:56.769
So just another little tidbit for you.
00:08:56.830 --> 00:08:58.870
Survey asked the floor to describe the
00:08:58.931 --> 00:08:59.350
building.
00:08:59.410 --> 00:09:00.772
The artifacts are the building.
00:09:01.652 --> 00:09:03.033
Why interview the witness when the
00:09:03.072 --> 00:09:04.575
security footage is already running?
00:09:04.595 --> 00:09:05.794
Right, right, right.
00:09:06.196 --> 00:09:06.416
Also,
00:09:06.456 --> 00:09:08.857
you highlighted that a lot of times you
00:09:08.878 --> 00:09:10.418
get a three point four because no one
00:09:10.458 --> 00:09:11.940
wants to be the squeaky wheel.
00:09:11.980 --> 00:09:13.020
No one wants to be the thing that
00:09:13.041 --> 00:09:14.902
says it out loud because as anonymous as
00:09:14.922 --> 00:09:15.883
a lot of surveys are.
00:09:17.129 --> 00:09:18.892
We all kind of doubt that or there's
00:09:18.932 --> 00:09:19.793
ways to figure that out.
00:09:19.812 --> 00:09:20.712
So no one wants to be,
00:09:20.793 --> 00:09:22.335
that's why you get to a three point,
00:09:22.615 --> 00:09:24.937
a three point four out of five.
00:09:25.477 --> 00:09:28.100
You identified three failed approaches.
00:09:28.780 --> 00:09:30.022
The sentiment survey,
00:09:30.182 --> 00:09:31.062
just sort of talked about that.
00:09:31.104 --> 00:09:32.524
The calendar cleanse,
00:09:32.605 --> 00:09:33.586
which I alluded to earlier,
00:09:33.966 --> 00:09:35.248
and the meeting about meetings.
00:09:36.048 --> 00:09:37.950
Which one do you see most often and
00:09:38.009 --> 00:09:39.692
which one is the most damaging?
00:09:42.149 --> 00:09:42.409
Well,
00:09:42.990 --> 00:09:45.110
most often by a wide margin is a
00:09:45.171 --> 00:09:46.230
sentiment survey.
00:09:46.250 --> 00:09:47.451
You get a three point four and you
00:09:47.491 --> 00:09:47.971
file it.
00:09:48.032 --> 00:09:50.212
It's the cheapest possible motion that
00:09:50.232 --> 00:09:52.094
still looks like leadership and acts like
00:09:52.114 --> 00:09:52.614
you're caring.
00:09:53.514 --> 00:09:55.254
But the one that does the most damage
00:09:55.294 --> 00:09:57.274
in my view is the meeting about meetings.
00:09:57.315 --> 00:09:58.635
And I've watched platforms
00:09:59.571 --> 00:09:59.770
you know,
00:09:59.811 --> 00:10:01.874
try to do this with complete sincerity,
00:10:02.514 --> 00:10:03.355
but you know,
00:10:03.395 --> 00:10:04.738
which is what makes it so, you know,
00:10:04.857 --> 00:10:05.258
brutal.
00:10:05.839 --> 00:10:06.500
And so, you know,
00:10:06.539 --> 00:10:07.841
so here's how it kind of lays out.
00:10:07.902 --> 00:10:11.886
The COO commissions a task force to fix
00:10:12.047 --> 00:10:13.649
the meeting problem or a committee that
00:10:13.708 --> 00:10:14.350
reports up.
00:10:15.230 --> 00:10:17.552
The task force schedules a working
00:10:17.613 --> 00:10:17.932
session.
00:10:17.952 --> 00:10:19.094
You're burning up all this time.
00:10:19.134 --> 00:10:21.634
The working session produces, you know,
00:10:21.654 --> 00:10:22.515
in business speak,
00:10:22.535 --> 00:10:24.356
we call it a charter or a RACI,
00:10:24.537 --> 00:10:27.198
R-A-C-I, and a sub team.
00:10:27.720 --> 00:10:28.700
And within two quarters,
00:10:28.740 --> 00:10:30.662
your meeting audit has become a fifth tier
00:10:30.682 --> 00:10:32.383
in the meeting stack with its own deck,
00:10:32.842 --> 00:10:33.964
its own trailing metrics,
00:10:34.224 --> 00:10:36.164
and its own follow-ups, you know,
00:10:36.245 --> 00:10:37.706
dietly quiet, you know,
00:10:37.745 --> 00:10:40.307
dietly in the same follow-up, you know,
00:10:40.388 --> 00:10:43.090
offline cemetery I wrote about in the
00:10:43.129 --> 00:10:44.230
weekly tactical piece.
00:10:44.898 --> 00:10:46.658
You set out to cure the disease,
00:10:46.719 --> 00:10:49.561
and you incubated another strain of it.
00:10:49.581 --> 00:10:51.241
And that's why it does the most damage.
00:10:51.902 --> 00:10:54.323
The survey wastes a quarter of your time
00:10:54.344 --> 00:10:55.004
and a lot of money.
00:10:55.043 --> 00:10:56.845
The calendar cleanse maybe wastes a
00:10:56.904 --> 00:10:57.264
couple.
00:10:57.304 --> 00:10:58.306
You delete the meetings.
00:10:58.993 --> 00:11:00.214
But both are recoverable.
00:11:00.433 --> 00:11:03.514
But the meeting about meetings adds more
00:11:03.575 --> 00:11:05.755
work while claiming to remove it.
00:11:05.775 --> 00:11:08.778
And it does so with a straight face
00:11:08.817 --> 00:11:09.898
and a project plan.
00:11:09.977 --> 00:11:11.139
It's the only one of the three that
00:11:11.178 --> 00:11:12.820
makes the stack even heavier.
00:11:12.940 --> 00:11:14.980
You're just adding more stacks to a
00:11:15.020 --> 00:11:15.341
meeting.
00:11:16.201 --> 00:11:17.822
so the audit has to be the literal
00:11:18.264 --> 00:11:20.206
opposite of those three which is why i
00:11:20.267 --> 00:11:23.530
saved it for article six one person one
00:11:23.591 --> 00:11:27.576
afternoon artifacts only one page out the
00:11:27.696 --> 00:11:29.519
second it needs to be a committee or
00:11:29.558 --> 00:11:31.360
a sub team you've lost it yeah
00:11:33.004 --> 00:11:34.285
When I read meeting about meetings,
00:11:34.326 --> 00:11:36.587
it made me think about George Costanza.
00:11:37.067 --> 00:11:38.649
It felt very Seinfeld.
00:11:38.690 --> 00:11:41.253
It felt very when Costanza was working for
00:11:41.273 --> 00:11:42.033
the New York Yankees.
00:11:42.073 --> 00:11:43.355
It sounds like something Costanza would
00:11:43.394 --> 00:11:44.917
come up with, which is probably Gilbert,
00:11:44.937 --> 00:11:45.177
right?
00:11:45.197 --> 00:11:45.616
Exactly.
00:11:47.860 --> 00:11:49.100
So talk more about those artifacts.
00:11:49.201 --> 00:11:50.682
If someone's a health care leader
00:11:50.721 --> 00:11:51.361
listening now,
00:11:51.841 --> 00:11:53.123
let's go the opposite route.
00:11:53.182 --> 00:11:53.923
Normally, I would ask,
00:11:54.243 --> 00:11:56.124
what's the most important thing to pay
00:11:56.144 --> 00:11:56.703
attention to?
00:11:56.943 --> 00:11:57.445
How about this?
00:11:57.565 --> 00:11:59.725
What's the artifact that they're probably
00:12:00.025 --> 00:12:02.326
underestimating and should pay attention
00:12:02.767 --> 00:12:03.187
to more?
00:12:04.727 --> 00:12:04.947
Yeah,
00:12:05.048 --> 00:12:07.229
the ones you're underestimating are sort
00:12:07.269 --> 00:12:09.389
of the boring operational exhaust you
00:12:09.409 --> 00:12:11.171
don't think of as documents at all.
00:12:11.490 --> 00:12:15.133
So let me name them.
00:12:15.153 --> 00:12:17.193
So the huddle board photo or the clipboard
00:12:17.234 --> 00:12:17.693
checklist.
00:12:18.729 --> 00:12:21.870
Operators dismiss this as too low or too
00:12:22.510 --> 00:12:24.152
low hanging fruit that it doesn't matter,
00:12:24.192 --> 00:12:26.952
but it's the most honest artifact that you
00:12:27.113 --> 00:12:28.933
own because it's filled out at seven fifty
00:12:28.953 --> 00:12:30.774
five in the morning by someone who has
00:12:30.855 --> 00:12:33.297
no idea anyone important will ever read
00:12:33.336 --> 00:12:33.437
it.
00:12:34.096 --> 00:12:35.998
They're doing it for their sole purpose of
00:12:36.038 --> 00:12:37.438
what I call working in the team.
00:12:37.458 --> 00:12:38.578
You don't work for a company,
00:12:38.599 --> 00:12:40.679
you work within the team.
00:12:41.380 --> 00:12:42.980
The commitment record from the weekly
00:12:43.020 --> 00:12:43.562
tactical
00:12:45.354 --> 00:12:47.875
or far more often the absence of one.
00:12:47.895 --> 00:12:48.956
So that would be a second one.
00:12:48.996 --> 00:12:51.259
Fourteen slides and no record of a single
00:12:51.298 --> 00:12:54.181
decision with an owner or a date,
00:12:54.740 --> 00:12:55.721
anything.
00:12:55.741 --> 00:12:57.202
The strategic pre-read,
00:12:58.277 --> 00:13:01.038
the decision documentation does show
00:13:01.078 --> 00:13:03.720
dissent on the record it literally does
00:13:04.441 --> 00:13:07.102
and the three decisions and zero recorded
00:13:07.143 --> 00:13:08.964
disagreements you know all of those kind
00:13:09.004 --> 00:13:11.304
of things and it's the all hands you
00:13:11.325 --> 00:13:13.225
know q a submission long so it really
00:13:13.245 --> 00:13:15.288
would be you know sort of those the
00:13:15.427 --> 00:13:18.369
the those four come to mind initially but
00:13:18.409 --> 00:13:20.110
what ties them all together is that none
00:13:20.130 --> 00:13:20.410
of them
00:13:21.071 --> 00:13:23.172
was written to impress you, the CEO.
00:13:23.192 --> 00:13:24.773
They were written as a function of the
00:13:24.893 --> 00:13:26.293
outcome of the meeting itself,
00:13:26.312 --> 00:13:27.913
which is what meetings are really about.
00:13:28.394 --> 00:13:29.294
That's the filter.
00:13:29.754 --> 00:13:32.015
Any artifacts produced for leadership,
00:13:32.755 --> 00:13:34.697
the QBR, the leadership deck,
00:13:35.157 --> 00:13:36.437
has already been laundered.
00:13:37.317 --> 00:13:39.359
That's not where real action goes.
00:13:40.580 --> 00:13:42.681
It goes by those who are closest to
00:13:42.701 --> 00:13:44.562
the decision-making and closest to the
00:13:44.662 --> 00:13:44.981
action.
00:13:46.061 --> 00:13:47.961
So the artifacts that tell the truth are
00:13:47.981 --> 00:13:50.062
the ones that are produced sideways as a
00:13:50.143 --> 00:13:51.323
byproduct of the work.
00:13:51.864 --> 00:13:53.284
I have a kind of rule of thumb
00:13:53.304 --> 00:13:54.065
for this, by the way.
00:13:54.105 --> 00:13:56.486
The truthfulness of a document is
00:13:56.726 --> 00:13:58.607
inversely proportional to how good it
00:13:58.628 --> 00:13:58.947
looks.
00:13:59.248 --> 00:14:00.629
The prettier the deck,
00:14:01.009 --> 00:14:02.629
the more hand smooth it is on the
00:14:02.649 --> 00:14:05.051
way up to the CEO or the COO,
00:14:05.091 --> 00:14:06.312
the less valuable it is.
00:14:06.871 --> 00:14:08.092
If you want to know what's really going
00:14:08.192 --> 00:14:09.014
on in the platform,
00:14:09.033 --> 00:14:11.096
don't read any deck that was built for
00:14:11.115 --> 00:14:11.615
the board.
00:14:12.096 --> 00:14:12.277
You know,
00:14:12.317 --> 00:14:13.998
read the thing that somebody scrawled on a
00:14:14.077 --> 00:14:15.759
clipboard at seven fifty five in the
00:14:15.799 --> 00:14:17.321
morning and mentioned to their team.
00:14:17.660 --> 00:14:17.822
Yep.
00:14:18.042 --> 00:14:20.583
The ugliness of that is the effectiveness
00:14:20.764 --> 00:14:21.825
of a great organization.
00:14:21.845 --> 00:14:22.065
Yeah.
00:14:22.105 --> 00:14:24.527
The real stuff, the stuff you mentioned,
00:14:24.547 --> 00:14:25.467
like the Hawthorne effect,
00:14:25.488 --> 00:14:27.210
the stuff that can skip and bypass that
00:14:27.250 --> 00:14:28.530
Hawthorne effect.
00:14:29.150 --> 00:14:30.591
You suggest that organizations can
00:14:30.652 --> 00:14:32.874
actually hold hundreds of meeting hours
00:14:33.735 --> 00:14:36.297
but make only a handful of what we
00:14:36.336 --> 00:14:37.577
call actual decisions.
00:14:37.618 --> 00:14:38.719
You mentioned a couple of times in the
00:14:38.759 --> 00:14:39.099
article,
00:14:39.779 --> 00:14:41.461
was this a decision made in that meeting
00:14:41.520 --> 00:14:43.503
or was this decided two weeks ago and
00:14:43.523 --> 00:14:45.423
then sort of sourced or presented at the
00:14:45.464 --> 00:14:45.745
meeting?
00:14:46.144 --> 00:14:48.267
Why do leaders overestimate how many
00:14:48.307 --> 00:14:50.447
decisions their organizations are actually
00:14:50.568 --> 00:14:51.068
making?
00:14:53.225 --> 00:14:55.208
So I think it's because we conflate or
00:14:55.249 --> 00:14:59.615
confuse or count discussions as decisions.
00:14:59.835 --> 00:15:00.296
They're not.
00:15:00.836 --> 00:15:02.698
They feel identical in a room and they're
00:15:02.719 --> 00:15:04.422
completely different on the artifact.
00:15:04.501 --> 00:15:06.104
And discussions make you happy.
00:15:06.485 --> 00:15:09.788
Decisions drive actions and success.
00:15:10.677 --> 00:15:11.477
Run the census,
00:15:11.557 --> 00:15:15.879
and it's violently short how well the list
00:15:15.960 --> 00:15:16.799
actually gets.
00:15:17.419 --> 00:15:20.321
You go through every artifact for thirty
00:15:20.341 --> 00:15:22.061
days and write down every decision
00:15:22.221 --> 00:15:23.062
actually made.
00:15:23.701 --> 00:15:25.701
A resource moved, a policy changed,
00:15:25.802 --> 00:15:26.582
a hire approved,
00:15:26.602 --> 00:15:28.403
a pilot got launched or killed.
00:15:29.403 --> 00:15:31.663
You had real discussion about your
00:15:31.703 --> 00:15:33.125
marketing campaign and whether it was
00:15:33.144 --> 00:15:34.024
effective or not.
00:15:35.947 --> 00:15:37.389
And you're looking at this and all the
00:15:37.970 --> 00:15:39.312
while you're counting and you're making
00:15:39.331 --> 00:15:40.793
about six real decisions,
00:15:41.313 --> 00:15:42.836
four of which you can trace.
00:15:43.857 --> 00:15:45.000
And they were actually made in the
00:15:45.019 --> 00:15:47.022
hallways and ratified by email.
00:15:47.342 --> 00:15:48.585
Meetings didn't decide them.
00:15:48.625 --> 00:15:50.027
The meeting witnessed them.
00:15:50.047 --> 00:15:51.087
They discussed them.
00:15:51.889 --> 00:15:54.171
So the reasons leaders overestimate is
00:15:54.191 --> 00:15:57.312
that a good decision feels productive.
00:15:57.793 --> 00:15:58.734
Everybody talked.
00:15:58.754 --> 00:16:00.054
Everybody was engaged.
00:16:00.115 --> 00:16:03.236
But nothing crossed the line from discuss
00:16:03.297 --> 00:16:04.518
to decided.
00:16:05.038 --> 00:16:06.879
No honor, no action, no date.
00:16:07.259 --> 00:16:08.620
Who's the responsible party?
00:16:08.679 --> 00:16:09.620
When is this due?
00:16:09.860 --> 00:16:10.721
What are we doing here?
00:16:11.302 --> 00:16:14.104
And so the feeling of productivity is
00:16:14.163 --> 00:16:16.985
conflated by discussion,
00:16:17.206 --> 00:16:19.528
and nobody wins in those situations.
00:16:22.469 --> 00:16:24.070
What I look for is the verb.
00:16:24.590 --> 00:16:26.431
Listen to how leaders describe their
00:16:26.471 --> 00:16:27.051
meetings.
00:16:27.410 --> 00:16:29.991
We discussed, we reviewed, we aligned,
00:16:30.072 --> 00:16:30.892
we touched base.
00:16:31.533 --> 00:16:32.773
Notice what's missing.
00:16:33.373 --> 00:16:35.553
We decided, we came up with.
00:16:36.195 --> 00:16:37.995
When the whole vocabulary of your
00:16:38.054 --> 00:16:40.475
operating cadence is discussing verbs,
00:16:41.056 --> 00:16:42.697
you've answered the question even before
00:16:42.716 --> 00:16:43.376
the census started.
00:16:43.437 --> 00:16:44.837
It's okay to do updates.
00:16:45.317 --> 00:16:46.577
Like I'll have one here in a half
00:16:46.618 --> 00:16:47.879
hour with my executive team.
00:16:47.899 --> 00:16:48.798
They're update meetings.
00:16:48.818 --> 00:16:50.059
It's not a decision meeting.
00:16:51.301 --> 00:16:52.642
It's more of a huddle and keeping
00:16:52.682 --> 00:16:53.663
everybody abreast.
00:16:54.524 --> 00:16:56.706
And so understanding the function of the
00:16:56.726 --> 00:16:59.750
meeting and when it's okay to have updates
00:16:59.789 --> 00:17:00.671
and discussion,
00:17:01.270 --> 00:17:04.394
but what is driving decisions and all the
00:17:04.434 --> 00:17:06.196
transparency around what's actually going
00:17:06.257 --> 00:17:07.317
on in the organization.
00:17:07.657 --> 00:17:09.319
That's the tough work of an operator.
00:17:10.413 --> 00:17:12.314
I think if someone's been reading,
00:17:12.433 --> 00:17:14.276
listening to this series about meetings,
00:17:14.635 --> 00:17:15.896
they have to understand they should be
00:17:15.936 --> 00:17:17.557
taking away that there's four different
00:17:17.577 --> 00:17:20.359
meetings and they have distinct, very,
00:17:20.400 --> 00:17:21.519
very distinct purposes.
00:17:21.901 --> 00:17:22.721
If you're running a meeting,
00:17:22.760 --> 00:17:23.882
you don't know the purpose of that
00:17:23.922 --> 00:17:25.502
meeting, that's bad.
00:17:25.962 --> 00:17:26.884
If you aren't reviewing,
00:17:27.324 --> 00:17:29.385
was this meeting purposeful, that's bad.
00:17:29.865 --> 00:17:31.146
And you had a line in this article,
00:17:31.207 --> 00:17:32.768
you're not running a meeting stack,
00:17:32.788 --> 00:17:35.128
you're running one meeting in four
00:17:35.229 --> 00:17:35.950
costumes.
00:17:36.269 --> 00:17:38.151
So how do organizations accidentally
00:17:38.191 --> 00:17:39.271
collapse fourfold?
00:17:39.332 --> 00:17:41.693
four different meetings into the same
00:17:41.733 --> 00:17:43.214
meeting that happens over and over again.
00:17:43.875 --> 00:17:44.135
Yeah,
00:17:44.756 --> 00:17:46.978
it happens through the path of least
00:17:46.998 --> 00:17:49.579
resistance, one trailing metric at a time.
00:17:50.381 --> 00:17:52.903
Nobody decides to collapse the deck.
00:17:52.923 --> 00:17:55.124
They collapse it by accident by letting
00:17:55.163 --> 00:17:57.746
the same, you know, comfortable number,
00:17:58.007 --> 00:17:59.667
you know, colonize every tier.
00:17:59.748 --> 00:18:00.828
So here's the mechanism.
00:18:01.288 --> 00:18:02.910
Same store production is the number of the
00:18:02.951 --> 00:18:04.090
CEO checks first.
00:18:04.332 --> 00:18:05.132
That's what I want to know.
00:18:05.152 --> 00:18:06.452
What is the same store production?
00:18:06.913 --> 00:18:08.134
So it shows up on the huddle board
00:18:08.154 --> 00:18:08.634
in the morning.
00:18:09.346 --> 00:18:11.686
Then it anchors the weekly tactical deck.
00:18:11.727 --> 00:18:13.567
It becomes a priority because that's what
00:18:13.587 --> 00:18:15.528
they think the CEO wants or that is
00:18:15.548 --> 00:18:16.429
what the CEO wants.
00:18:16.449 --> 00:18:18.569
Then it leads to the monthly strategic
00:18:18.609 --> 00:18:19.170
pre-read.
00:18:19.210 --> 00:18:21.750
Then it's the late opening slide at the
00:18:21.851 --> 00:18:22.530
all hands.
00:18:23.030 --> 00:18:25.011
It's been reviewed four times.
00:18:25.352 --> 00:18:26.133
No decisions.
00:18:26.192 --> 00:18:27.232
It's just been reported.
00:18:27.772 --> 00:18:29.473
Four meetings that were each built to do
00:18:29.513 --> 00:18:32.295
a different job surface everything.
00:18:32.414 --> 00:18:34.916
decide, debate, connect.
00:18:34.957 --> 00:18:36.297
Surface, decide, debate,
00:18:36.336 --> 00:18:38.358
connect are now all doing the same job,
00:18:38.378 --> 00:18:40.059
looking at the same trailing metric,
00:18:40.099 --> 00:18:41.240
and nothing has changed.
00:18:41.740 --> 00:18:43.682
And that's the redundancy map,
00:18:43.701 --> 00:18:45.563
and that's the whole series was based on
00:18:45.583 --> 00:18:48.325
that thesis on one sheet of paper.
00:18:48.785 --> 00:18:50.685
You mark every metric that appears at
00:18:50.726 --> 00:18:51.567
three or more tiers,
00:18:51.606 --> 00:18:53.087
and the costumes come off.
00:18:53.587 --> 00:18:55.769
The huddle was supposed to surface what
00:18:55.788 --> 00:18:56.809
the floor knows,
00:18:56.930 --> 00:18:58.250
but nobody was discussing.
00:18:58.891 --> 00:19:00.912
The tactical was supposed to produce this
00:19:00.951 --> 00:19:01.872
week's decision.
00:19:01.892 --> 00:19:04.211
That's what a tactical means.
00:19:04.692 --> 00:19:06.472
The strategic was supposed to host the
00:19:06.512 --> 00:19:08.574
five questions and have dissent and
00:19:08.614 --> 00:19:09.153
debate.
00:19:09.673 --> 00:19:11.153
How are we going to do this marketing
00:19:11.173 --> 00:19:11.614
campaign?
00:19:11.673 --> 00:19:13.335
How are we going to get more lead
00:19:13.375 --> 00:19:14.035
generation?
00:19:14.075 --> 00:19:16.135
How are we going to work with retention?
00:19:16.155 --> 00:19:17.336
Okay,
00:19:17.355 --> 00:19:18.816
the all hands was supposed to let the
00:19:18.855 --> 00:19:20.176
platform talk to itself.
00:19:20.237 --> 00:19:21.237
It's a culture meeting.
00:19:22.421 --> 00:19:24.265
When all four have quietly become the
00:19:24.365 --> 00:19:26.328
metric review of same store sales,
00:19:26.348 --> 00:19:29.275
you've had one meeting wearing four
00:19:29.315 --> 00:19:31.338
different outfits and a calendar that
00:19:31.378 --> 00:19:32.481
looks very, very busy.
00:19:33.496 --> 00:19:35.376
And the fix isn't deleting the meetings.
00:19:35.997 --> 00:19:37.778
That's the calendar cleanse and the work
00:19:37.817 --> 00:19:38.357
grows back.
00:19:38.397 --> 00:19:40.118
The fix is reassigning the jobs,
00:19:40.138 --> 00:19:41.878
having assignable parties that are
00:19:41.898 --> 00:19:42.420
accountable.
00:19:42.819 --> 00:19:45.181
Give each tier one job alone that it's
00:19:45.201 --> 00:19:47.362
allowed to do and name what specifically
00:19:47.682 --> 00:19:49.041
does not get discussed there.
00:19:49.061 --> 00:19:50.883
That's why you have to have a meeting
00:19:50.903 --> 00:19:51.163
czar.
00:19:51.583 --> 00:19:53.923
The discipline lives in the execution of
00:19:53.943 --> 00:19:54.785
that meeting czar.
00:19:55.424 --> 00:19:57.626
A tier can't name what it refuses to
00:19:57.666 --> 00:20:00.128
discuss when it's been separated from the
00:20:00.209 --> 00:20:00.489
others.
00:20:00.548 --> 00:20:03.131
It's just the same meeting in a new
00:20:03.211 --> 00:20:04.711
wine costume, right?
00:20:04.751 --> 00:20:09.355
An old wine bottle with the same wine
00:20:09.395 --> 00:20:09.695
label.
00:20:09.756 --> 00:20:11.076
So you have to be very,
00:20:11.116 --> 00:20:12.778
very careful around all these things.
00:20:12.877 --> 00:20:15.079
And what I hope comes out of this
00:20:15.140 --> 00:20:16.201
is a lot of discipline.
00:20:16.621 --> 00:20:19.182
When I moved the series from a lot
00:20:19.222 --> 00:20:21.125
of physical therapy topics to more
00:20:21.204 --> 00:20:22.605
business-y, operational,
00:20:22.625 --> 00:20:23.405
it was intentional.
00:20:24.442 --> 00:20:26.523
And attacking meetings was, you know,
00:20:26.644 --> 00:20:28.403
something I needed to write about for my
00:20:28.483 --> 00:20:29.364
own edification,
00:20:29.384 --> 00:20:31.204
for our own organizational cleanse,
00:20:32.164 --> 00:20:33.325
because I started to see these same
00:20:33.365 --> 00:20:35.746
patterns in several healthcare platforms
00:20:35.766 --> 00:20:36.526
that I work with.
00:20:36.566 --> 00:20:38.247
So I hope people got a lot out
00:20:38.287 --> 00:20:38.507
of it.
00:20:38.567 --> 00:20:39.727
Now we're going to, you know,
00:20:39.787 --> 00:20:41.728
migrate and transition to a lot more fun
00:20:41.748 --> 00:20:42.067
topic.
00:20:42.087 --> 00:20:43.248
We're going to go back to call to
00:20:43.288 --> 00:20:45.009
care and talk a little bit more about
00:20:46.269 --> 00:20:47.328
not clinical excellence,
00:20:47.348 --> 00:20:49.349
which is understood not customer service
00:20:49.430 --> 00:20:49.789
excellence,
00:20:49.809 --> 00:20:51.750
but compassion and care excellence and how
00:20:51.789 --> 00:20:53.550
that can have operational impact on a
00:20:53.590 --> 00:20:53.871
company.
00:20:54.444 --> 00:20:55.125
Good forward tease.
00:20:55.144 --> 00:20:55.565
I like it.
00:20:56.065 --> 00:20:56.586
Big finish.
00:20:57.286 --> 00:20:57.945
Tactics.
00:20:58.226 --> 00:20:59.246
If someone's going to walk out of the
00:20:59.266 --> 00:20:59.746
door today,
00:20:59.766 --> 00:21:00.846
if they're listening to this on the way
00:21:00.866 --> 00:21:03.846
into the office and they had one hour,
00:21:04.446 --> 00:21:06.988
what's the single audit you'd tell them to
00:21:07.067 --> 00:21:09.969
run today or Monday morning to review
00:21:10.009 --> 00:21:10.969
everything you talked about,
00:21:11.028 --> 00:21:11.989
not just in this article,
00:21:12.009 --> 00:21:14.109
but in this series of articles?
00:21:14.369 --> 00:21:15.789
Yeah, I would go both bookends.
00:21:16.009 --> 00:21:17.029
If they only had an hour,
00:21:17.130 --> 00:21:19.371
I'd say visit a few clinics and ask
00:21:19.391 --> 00:21:21.371
to look at the scribbled notes of the
00:21:21.411 --> 00:21:22.051
daily huddle.
00:21:22.672 --> 00:21:23.571
That'll tell you a lot.
00:21:24.144 --> 00:21:25.684
And then I'd look at the agenda and
00:21:25.726 --> 00:21:27.847
I'd look at the outcome,
00:21:27.988 --> 00:21:29.548
maybe even listen to part of it on
00:21:29.588 --> 00:21:33.272
something you recorded on the all hands.
00:21:33.653 --> 00:21:35.034
What percentage of the people actually
00:21:35.054 --> 00:21:35.674
showed up?
00:21:36.174 --> 00:21:37.876
How many of the questions were unfiltered
00:21:37.916 --> 00:21:38.817
and unscripted?
00:21:39.519 --> 00:21:41.641
Did the meeting take its entire half hour,
00:21:41.721 --> 00:21:43.521
hour, whatever it was allotted to?
00:21:43.602 --> 00:21:44.884
Or did you give time back?
00:21:45.463 --> 00:21:46.224
That's what I would look at.
00:21:46.771 --> 00:21:47.511
Yeah.
00:21:47.692 --> 00:21:47.893
All right.
00:21:47.913 --> 00:21:50.934
Most organizations think fixing meetings
00:21:51.115 --> 00:21:54.115
starts with another survey or committee or
00:21:54.537 --> 00:21:55.897
another meeting about meetings.
00:21:56.298 --> 00:21:58.679
This article hopefully goes into detail
00:21:58.699 --> 00:22:00.680
and shows you why that evidence already
00:22:00.720 --> 00:22:01.300
exists.
00:22:01.401 --> 00:22:02.862
The artifacts already know what's wrong.
00:22:02.902 --> 00:22:04.982
The question is whether you're looking for
00:22:05.002 --> 00:22:06.124
them or if you're willing to, I think,
00:22:06.203 --> 00:22:08.924
also pause and take a look at yourself
00:22:08.964 --> 00:22:09.506
and say,
00:22:10.145 --> 00:22:12.106
the thing we're doing is part of the
00:22:12.146 --> 00:22:12.807
problem as well.
00:22:12.827 --> 00:22:14.087
And that's not usually an easy
00:22:14.127 --> 00:22:14.749
conversation.
00:22:15.249 --> 00:22:16.569
But if it made you uncomfortable and
00:22:16.630 --> 00:22:18.330
rethink how your organization operates,
00:22:18.530 --> 00:22:19.391
that's sort of the point.
00:22:19.932 --> 00:22:21.531
Subscribe to The Operator on Substack
00:22:21.593 --> 00:22:22.593
using the link in the show notes.
00:22:22.653 --> 00:22:23.913
And if you're about to schedule a meeting
00:22:23.933 --> 00:22:25.094
to figure out why there are so many
00:22:25.114 --> 00:22:25.615
meetings,
00:22:26.515 --> 00:22:28.155
maybe send that person this episode.
00:22:28.215 --> 00:22:29.277
Maybe do it anonymously,
00:22:29.636 --> 00:22:30.916
but don't have a survey about it.
00:22:31.998 --> 00:22:32.999
Subscribe on Substack.
00:22:33.019 --> 00:22:33.239
Larry,
00:22:33.259 --> 00:22:34.298
thanks so much for the time and doing
00:22:34.318 --> 00:22:34.479
this.
00:22:34.499 --> 00:22:35.519
Absolutely, Jim.