Managing Leadership^®

A WSJ editorial cartoon some time ago showed a pack of laughing hyenas sounding off. But one of them was unable to join in, confiding to another: “I don’t get it.”

Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever gotten the impression that you were supposed to comprehend what was happening, but something just wasn’t fitting in?

You understand the language, the procedures, even the faddishly sensitive approach to the issues. But there seems to be an undercurrent moving powerfully right beneath the surface, and driven by more primal instincts than the conversation there professes, which is giving the actual motive force to the shaping of events.

In fact, it may seem as though that surface conversation is mere window dressing, distracting us from what is really happening. Or, perhaps, it is simply providing an acceptable text for the formal record, and leaving the communication of the way things are really going to be done to the less politically palatable subtext.

Smoke screens. Many meetings are filled with them. They waft around the room, shaping what is seen at the same time that they shield motives and intent. Sometimes, they are secretly being managed by more than one cabal, attempting a corporate coup.

The thing about this phenomenon is that it is found especially - but not exclusively - in the boardroom and the penthouse meeting rooms of senior managers. It can and all-too-routinely does occur at every level. It doesn’t only happen when senior managers or directors want to put something over on their competing peers (or shareholders); it can also happen when a lower-level interest or power group wants to manipulate a development and represent it in a way that advances their cause. In this latter context, I’ve even seen a more-or-less throw-away comment by a chief executive seized upon by aggressively opinionated underlings and used eventually to virtually transform an entire organization.

A coup like this - whether in the palace or in the bureaucracy - can be perpetrated by a variety of means, but the principal and best way to snooker everyone into innocent and unaware complicity is the meeting. At the same time, the careful use of this venue in this way makes it unmistakably clear, to those knowingly involved in and aware of the power struggle, who won.

So, as we have seen in the past several days, meetings can, and commonly are, actually used to frustrate effective decision-making and accountability, and to to cloud the clear flow of control and power. What, then, are they good for?

We’ll take a look at that, tomorrow. We look forward to seeing you then.

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Be sure not to miss any of the posts in this series!

1. Collaboration jams
2. The swaying sword of Damocles
3. Smoke-filled rooms
4. Meetings - what are they all about?
5. How about we get together sometime?
6. Can we fit this in somewhere?
7. Making your meeting
8. Managing your meeting
9. Are you sure we were at the same meeting?

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Today’s tips: The thing about lessons is that they are only of value if you learn from them; simply being present for them - or even the subject of them - is not enough. With that in mind, please take a moment to give a careful viewing to this excellent post by Joe Raasch, author of The Happy Burro.

Next, it is worth considering the implications of our yielding control to the sort of people who prohibit shopping center Santas from saying “ho, ho, ho,” or who place digital distortion balloons over cigarettes in movies. If that sort of thing concerns you at all, please take a moment to read this short, striking essay by Michael Wade, who authors Execupundit.com. He uses the term “haters” to describe what many of us recognize as ideologues - but he may have hit closer to the truth.

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Similar Posts:

• Collaboration jams
• How about we get together sometime?
• Making your meeting
• Meetings - what are they all about?
• Can we fit this in somewhere?

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