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Let's start with something that you know very well:
The Perfect Meeting
(A pipe dream of many organization handbooks)
All participants receive a motivating invitation and relevant documents on time.
All participants study the documents before hand, arrive on time, and stay for the whole meeting.
All participants know clearly the common objectives for every topic of the meeting.
All participants know what they are producing, for whom and why.
All participants listen carefully to what is said and develop further all stated ideas (yes…and…)
All participants are ready, willing, and able to contribute their knowledge and talents.
All participants are involved and interested in every topic discussed during the meeting.
All participants openly share all relevant information in support of the common good.
All decisions are documented in writing and distributed at the end of the meeting.
Consensus is reached for decisions in all important issues.
All participants clearly know "who is doing what by when" and support the responsible parties.
All participants are happy with their co-operation and the achieved results.
... and how do you actually experience meetings?
If you and your team succeeded in having such a "perfect" meeting, it would certainly be a considerable and remarkable achievement, and yet it would still not be the most efficient way for your team to work together. The guidelines mentioned above assume that teams are "complicated, organizable" systems. Unfortunately, this is at best a rough approximation; it is more accurately an illusion.
Teams are "complex" systems!
When teams are viewed as complex systems and apply the FlowTeam-Method, then they can co-operate more effectively, work more efficiently, produce higher quality solutions, and engender greater work satisfaction among all the team members.
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