From Dreaded to Dynamic: Revamp Your Team Meetings

Julie South [00:00:03]:
Welcome to the Vetstaff podcast, where veterinary professionals can top up their resilience tank, get their heads screwed on straight, and get excited about going to work on Monday mornings again. This is episode 195 and I'm your show host, Julie south, certified disc trainer and resilience coach. Last week we explored how the unconscious cognitive bias of the peak end rule can negatively impact annual performance reviews and how to mitigate that effect. We looked at the juniority benefit and the swish pattern of psychological safety. If you're yet to have your annual review, even if it's months and months away, I really recommend you go back and have a listen to that episode if you haven't already, because it might save you a whole bunch of heartache and frustration at annual review time. Today we're going to have a look at how to stop wasting time and energy at meetings. The Vet Staff podcast is powered by vet staff Limited, the recruitment agency dedicated to helping vet clinics recognise, retain, and recruit dream teams. We show clinics, vets, and nurses how to create the communication code unique to them so resilience skyrockets and people want to join and stay at your clinic.

Julie South [00:01:33]:
You can find previous episodes of the Vetstaff podcast@vetstaffpodcast.com when was the last time you attended a meeting where you came out of it excited about the future, as well as all the other types of fatigues that you might be feeling right now? Is meeting fatigue one of them? If meetings aren't run effectively or powerfully, all the benefits of them are lost, and that's a crying shame. For example, communication isn't as sharp as it could be. Collaboration and collegiality doesn't happen. Brainstorming sorry. Apparently it's not okay to use the term brainstorming anymore because it's too negative. It's now idea showering, please. A storm apparently has negative connotations, whereas showers don't really anyway, brainstorming without meetings, the power of brainstorming is lost. Where people come together at a meeting and throw ideas around.

Julie South [00:02:48]:
Great things can result, but not if the meetings aren't run properly. Decisions may not get made, or they get made, but possibly without the full benefit of a wide and diverse range of opinions and personality types. There's no accountability for things getting done. There's no problem solving, no innovation, motivation, or engagement similar to brainstorming. These things just don't end up happening. Knowledge sharing falls by the wayside. Imagine if your clinic didn't have morning huddles or case handover meetings. Imagine what that would look like Ek, all of those things can have a huge impact on the culture of your clinic, as well as impacting positively or negatively on staff retention levels.

Julie South [00:03:43]:
Unless you're in a very small clinic where there's only, say, one or two vets, a couple of nurses, and maybe a practice manager, it's likely that you'll have a range of different personality types. Have I mentioned that Tanya and I are disc certified trainers? This means that when it comes to communication in teams, we're your go to people for helping your team work powerfully together. Anyway, back to different personality types. You're going to most likely end up with people who are into action oriented meetings who severely dislike wasting time and lack of control, as well as those who are into the interactive, high energy discussions who eye roll monotony and lack of participation by everyone. You'll have those who value regular, consistent, supportive meetings and those who get the heebie jeebies at any type of conflict or where things start changing too fast. And then lastly, you'll have those who are into well structured, data driven meetings and break out in hives when everything is high level with no attention to detail or any kind of what they consider to be inept organization. When you don't take all of these different aspects into account when you're running meetings, or if it's not you, whoever is running the meeting, they'll end up being a total waste of time on some level. And wastes of time mean wasting dollars, which isn't a good look for anyone or any business.

Julie South [00:05:29]:
Meetings waste time and money when there's no clear agenda, poor scheduling, and this can mean being held at stupid times, too many meetings or not enough meetings. They're unproductive because facilitation doesn't exist, which includes board, time management and or participation from everyone involved. When people are there who don't need to be or aren't there when they do need to be, when there's no prep gone into the meeting and or attendees haven't prepped for the meeting. I'm sure you've attended a few like that. I know I certainly have. Yes, everyone's busy. We're all busy, but meetings still do need to happen. How about when no one even knows why the meeting is being held or why the group even exists? Maybe they had a purpose once upon a time, but that purpose has been achieved already and the meetings still continue out of habit? What about when people get distracted? When phone calls are taken that have nothing to do with the meeting purpose and can actually wait or interruptions are allowed, or people are checking emails on their phones, or side conversations are going on.

Julie South [00:06:51]:
How about lack of follow up and accountability? How many meetings have you attended when the same thing stays on the agenda because no one has taken responsibility for doing it or getting rid of it? And then there's whenever whoever's facilitation allows discussions to go way off track, which means you're likely to be at risk of bike shedding. What's bike shedding? Julie, great question. I'm so pleased that you asked it. The concept of bike shedding comes from C Northcote Parkinson's 1957 book Parkinson's the Pursuit of Progress. Parkinson observed that people often spend disproportionate amounts of time on trivial issues or trivial matters, while neglecting more important ones. This phenomenon is also known as Parkinson's law of triviality. The term bike shedding originates from a hypothetical example Parkinson used to illustrate his point. Imagine a committee tasked with approving plans for a nuclear power plant.

Julie South [00:08:06]:
You'd expect them to focus on the complexity and the critical details of the power plant. Instead, they get bogged down in a lengthy debate about what materials to use for a bike shed that's going to be built next to the power plant. Why does this happen? Because everyone feels comfortable discussing the bike shed, since it's simple and easy to understand. The nuclear power plant, on the other hand, is complicated, intimidating, so they avoid it. Now, let's bring this concept into the context of a vet clinic meeting. Imagine that your clinic is planning to upgrade its patient management system, a crucial change that could improve both efficiency and patient care at your clinic. However, during the meeting, the team spends most of the time debating the colour of the new waiting room chairs. While everyone feels comfortable discussing the chairs, the critical and significant decisions about the patient management system, which requires more thought and expertise, is left unaddressed.

Julie South [00:09:23]:
This is bike shedding. To avoid bike shedding, here are a few tips you need to ensure that your meetings have a clear agenda that prioritises important topics, so the important stuff would go first on the agenda. Have a good facilitator to steer the conversation back to the main issues. When people start to drift off, use techniques like the Eisenhower matrix to tackle high impact issues first. Go back into the Eisenhower matrix in a minute. Set time limits for discussing minor issues and this keeps things moving. Use subject matter experts because you'll have them on your team to guide discussions on complex topics so the group doesn't end up defaulting to bike shedding and more simple issues and matters by being aware of bike shedding. You can help make sure that your team's time and energy are focused on what truly matters.

Julie South [00:10:36]:
Ok, Julie, back up the bus a bit. What on earth is Eisenhower's matrix? That's another great question, and I'm so pleased you asked about that one, too. Now, I'm sure you're familiar with it. Maybe by another name, perhaps. How about the urgent important matrix? Or maybe the Eisenhower box? Or the time management matrix? The priority matrix. Maybe even Eisenhower's decision box. As you can probably tell, the Eisenhower matrix is a time management tool that helps you prioritize tasks based on their urgency and their importance. You've probably already realized it was popularized by Dwight D.

Julie South [00:11:16]:
Eisenhower, the 34th president of the US, who was known for his productivity and efficiency. It's a matrix. So therefore, imagine a two x two quadrant, urgent and important, or do first, these are tasks that require immediate attention and have significant consequences if not completed. So these are your top priorities. Then you have the important but not urgent, all the stuff that gets scheduled. These are tasks that are important but don't need immediate action, and they could be scheduled for later. Then you have the urgent but the not important or the delegate tasks. These are tasks that require immediate action but aren't crucial.

Julie South [00:12:09]:
They can often be delegated to someone else. And then lastly, you have the not urgent and not important. In other words, the eliminate or get rid of tasks that are neither urgent nor important. These are often distractions and should be minimised or preferably eliminated. To use this matrix, you start by listing all the tasks you need to complete. Next, you categorize each task into one of the four quadrants based on its urgency and its importance. Then prioritize your tasks by focusing on completing those in quadrant one first. So those are the urgent and important.

Julie South [00:12:58]:
The do firsts. After quadrant one, you follow those in quadrant two, delegate tasks in quadrant three, and then you do your best to dump or eliminate. Get rid of all those tasks in quadrant four. In the example I gave you earlier about upgrading your patient management system, tasks in the do first quadrant one would include emergency surgeries, critical patient care and urgent client calls. For quadrant two, which is the schedules you'd focus on, staff training, updating patient and management system, and long term planning. So they're still important, but they don't need to be done straight away. Tasks in quadrant three are the delegation tasks, and they might involve routine admin stuff, ordering supplies, scheduling appointments, and then finally, in the fourth quadrant, which is the dump or eliminate, you should aim to cut out unnecessary meetings, excessive social media use and trivial office gossip in the example that we've just done. As I said at the beginning, there are a number of different factors to make sure that your meetings get result and don't waste resources, which includes time, talent and money.

Julie South [00:14:32]:
But let's just focus on three things to make it easy. First, you need to make sure that you've got clear objectives and agenda preparation. You need to define your meeting's goals. Why are you meeting? Clearly outline the purpose of the meeting and what needs to be achieved as a result of this specific group of people meeting. One way to get clear on this is to think about exactly what amount of resource is being utilised at your meeting. For example, if there are ten people present and the meeting goes for an hour, that's the equivalent of 10 hours. Resource and talent being utilised, that's a lot. That's one whole shift for one person.

Julie South [00:15:22]:
Make sure your meeting achieves a great ROI, a return on investment of the resources being used. You can create a detailed agenda. So develop a structured agenda that outlines topics, time allocation, how long is this going to. How long are we going to talk about this particular topic and objectives for discussion? And make sure that you share the agenda in advance with enough time beforehand so that people can prep and align with what they need to do. Then the second thing is encourage active involvement. This is under the heading of engagement, participation and attendance. So you need to create a culture of participation and encourage, maybe even mandate, all attendees contribute their insights and perspectives. And you can do that by going around the table to make sure everybody contributes.

Julie South [00:16:25]:
Ensure the right people are present. Make sure that the people whose expertise and input are essential for the meeting's success are part of that meeting. And then also promote open communication. Create a welcoming environment it sounds obvious, but please. And this will mean that ideas, or is more likely to support ideas that are freely shared and openly discussed. And then finally, you need to be accountable. You need to have some kind of accountability in place. So assign responsibilities as you are working through the agenda.

Julie South [00:17:07]:
Make sure that tasks are clearly assigned and action items are given to people that can do them during the meeting, not afterwards, but at the meeting. And then you need to follow up on the action items to ensure that the progress on the assigned tasks is tracked and discussed in subsequent meetings. Otherwise, you'll have the same things on the agenda time after time after time after time. And you'll just keep going around in circles and then hold people accountable. Encourage accountability by having the expectation that people are there and they will fulfill their commitments and deliver on agreed upon actions. So let's just recap because we've gone through a bit, have clear objectives and agenda preparation. Make sure those who need to be there are there and those who don't aren't. Make sure everyone gets the opportunity to participate and contribute.

Julie South [00:18:11]:
And make sure every item on your agenda has someone being held accountable for its outcome and completion. Remember, you're not attending the meeting to build a bike shed or spend time talking about the new chairs in your waiting room. Bike shedding. Please bring everyone's attention to this because it happens. It really does happen. Can I ask you to do me a favour, please? Can you share this podcast with three of your colleagues, especially those who are responsible for meetings at your clinic so time isn't wasted and people start to feel valued? Thank you. The more clinics who start putting into practice what we talk about on the vet staff podcast, the more clinics will respect their staff and more vets and nurses will get excited about going to work on Monday mornings. Again.

Julie South [00:19:08]:
All you have to do is ask them. Tell them to visit the vetted. Easy peasy. So let's just recap. We've talked about the significance of running efficient meetings to prevent time and or resource wastage. Set clear objectives. Make sure you've got active participation and accountability so that you have successful meetings. And remember, it's essential to prioritize agendas.

Julie South [00:19:39]:
The things on the agenda, the important stuff, goes at the top. Make sure everyone is engaged and participate and make sure that decisions are followed up on that you've got accountability. Make sure this is so obvious. Make sure that only those who need to be at the meeting are invited so you don't waste unnecessary resources and end up frustrating people because they feel like they're wasting their time, because they know they don't need to be there. Beware of bike shedding. That's where trivial matters overshadow important discussions. Instead, focus on driving powerful outcomes by creating the culture of accountability. And you'll find that that accountability will flow into areas beyond meetings as well, which is what you want.

Julie South [00:20:35]:
I hope that this has helped you with meetings at your clinic. I'm interested, seriously interested to know. So please feel free to get in touch with me Julietstaff dot co dot NZ and thank you for spending the last 20 minutes or so of your life with me. I really do appreciate it. This is Julie south signing off and inviting you to go out there and be the most fantabulous version of you you can be. The Vet Staff podcast is proudly powered by vetclinicjobs.com comma the new and innovative global Job board reimagining veterinary recruitment connect in veterinary professionals with clinics that shine online. Vetclinicjobs.com is your go to resource for finding the perfect career opportunities and helping vet clinics power up their employer branding game. Visit vetclinicjobs.com today to find vet clinics that shine online so veterinary professionals can find them.

Julie South [00:21:42]:
Vetclinicjobs.com.