Unreasonable hospitality - parte V

Li os trechos que se seguem do livro "Unreasonable hospitality: the remarkable power of giving people more than they expect" de Will Guidara e sorria a recordar estórias que o meu parceiro das conversas oxigenadoras me contou sobre as suas reuniões diárias no chão de fábrica.

"When initiating change, I look for the best lever, whatever will allow me to transmit the most force with the least amount of energy. And there's no better lever than a daily thirty-minute meeting with your team.

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A daily thirty-minute meeting is where a collection of individuals becomes a team. In fact, I firmly believe that if every dentist's office, insurance company, and moving company had a daily thirty-minute meeting with their team, customer service as we know it would profoundly change.

At EMP, the way we ran our pre-meal meetings set a tone that was at least as important as what we said. Attendance was mandatory. The meetings started on time, at eleven and five, and lasted exactly thirty minutes. For the first year, I ran every single meeting myself, both lunch and dinner, Monday through Friday. I wanted the team to see me, and to know I was accessible and accountable to them, and consistent-that I'd do exactly what I'd said I would do, when I'd said I would do it.

In the restaurant's previous iteration, pre-meal had been exclusively devoted to the items on the plate or in the glass: here is the main ingredient, here's how long it was aged for, here's what it's served with, and this is how you pour the sauce tableside.

This basic transfer of information was vitally important, especially because so much was changing. 

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Done right, a pre-meal meeting fills the gas tank of the people who work for you right before you ask them to go out and fill the tanks of the people they're serving.

Communicating consistent standards, with lots of repetition, was important; a good manager makes sure everyone knows what they have to do, then makes sure they've done it - that's the black-and-white part of being a leader. But a huge part of leadership is taking the time to tell your team why they're doing what they're doing, and I used pre-meal to get into that why.

I spoke to the spirit of the restaurant and to the culture we were trying to build. I used those meetings to inspire and uplift the team and to remind them what we were striving for. Those thirty minutes were our time to celebrate the wins, even the small ones, a time to publicly acknowledge when someone on the team was crushing it.

Our meetings followed the same template every day, so everyone knew exactly what to expect. We'd start with housekeeping ("Thursday's the last day to make changes to your health insurance; call Angie if you've got questions"). Then I'd move into a quick riff on a topic that had inspired me. It could be an article I'd read about another company or a service experience I'd had somewhere else.

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In order to become a team, we needed to stop, take a deep breath, and communicate with one another."

Este tipo de reuniões diárias pode ser um poderoso alicerce para PMEs que buscam alinhamento interno, formação contínua e maior consciência colectiva. Implementar um encontro de trinta minutos por dia com a equipa pode transformar um grupo de pessoas numa equipa verdadeiramente coesa e motivada.

Imagine começar cada dia ou turno com uma reunião estruturada, onde não só se passam informações práticas e logísticas, mas também se reafirma o propósito da empresa, se celebram pequenas vitórias e se realça a importância do trabalho de cada membro da equipa. Para as PMEs, este espaço diário é uma oportunidade de reforçar a formação técnica e de manter todos cientes das metas e valores da empresa, criando um sentimento de pertença.

Essas reuniões podem servir como momentos estratégicos para formações rápidas, alertas de actualizações importantes (seja de legislação, produtos ou processos) e para garantir que todos na organização estão alinhados. Além disso, é uma excelente forma de gerar accountability de forma acessível e consistente. Assim, todos sabem o que se espera e têm um fórum aberto para expressar dúvidas ou preocupações.

PMEs que adotam esta prática podem experimentar um salto na eficácia operacional, maior satisfação dos colaboradores e, por consequência, um aumento na satisfação dos clientes. 

Parte IV, Parte III, Parte II e Parte I.

Better management review meetings

When presenting the webinar "How to perform management review according to ISO 9001:2015" I use the following slide as an example:

If you look with care you can see that for each "Agenda Item" I include a question. The main question, or the main challenge under each agenda item.

Last night I started reading "How to Create the Perfect Meeting Agenda" and smiled when I found:

"Instead of designing your agenda as a laundry list of topics to be broached, consider creating your agenda as a set of questions to be addressed. In its simplest form, the meeting exists to answer a set of compelling questions in an allotted time.
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By populating the agenda with questions rather than topics, you’ll begin to think and act differently as you design the meeting. You’ll become strategic, thinking critically about the meaning of a topic and what your ultimate outcome is — the true reason to bring the collective together. In addition, this method fosters intentionality.
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Think about creating agenda questions for meeting attendees like you would go about creating goals for your employees. Why? Goal-setting theory demonstrates that goals energize, focus attention, and promote persistence, all of which lead to better performance."

Another suggestion in the article is very useful for the effectiveness of management review meetings:
"Privilege the most important questions first.
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Meeting science shows that content at the start of an agenda receives disproportionate amounts of time and attention, regardless of its importance. The implication is clear: put your most compelling questions at the start of the meeting. This will not only assure coverage of key issues; it is also a way of quickly grabbing attendee attention and conveying the value of the meeting. And while it is fine to start a meeting with 5 minutes or so of news and notes, after that concludes, go all in addressing the most challenging, important, and vexing questions.

At the webinar I also recommend:

Management review process starts with the gathering and analysis of the data, that is sent to top management. Before meeting together, top management should review the prepared information and take notice of what is going according to planned, what is having a behavior different from planned, positive or negative, and what is and may happen in the context that may affect future performance of the management system.

In the article one can find:

"After your set of questions is finalized, distribute the meeting agenda in advance so people have time to think about and prepare for the questions to be addressed. [Moi ici: Attention, my advice is more radical than this one. I recommend not only distributing the agenda in advance but also distribute the content in advance. The meeting is not for watching a presentation or analysing information. That can be done in advance] There is no “magic time” per se; vexing strategic questions likely require around a week of lead time, but for most other questions, three days lead time should suffice."

BTW, next webinar about this topic is scheduled for Thursday, March 5th.

Acerca de algumas reuniões

"At their worst, meetings are like short prison sentences that have you counting the minutes until your release. Yet there are meetings that are useful and productive, and even invigorating and enjoyable."

Trecho retirado de "How to Craft Meetings People Love (Really)"


Durante as próximas semanas o ritmo de actualização do blogue será drasticamente reduzido por vários motivos.

Entretanto tenham um bom mês de Agosto!

Que reuniões? (parte I)

Após uma reflexão estratégica surge uma estratégia, uma proposta de valor, a determinação dos clientes-alvo.

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Podemos traduzir essa reflexão num mapa da estratégia e promover iniciativas capazes de transformar a organização actual na organização do futuro, a organização capaz de gerar os resultados futuros desejados.

Contudo, a viagem para o futuro não é uma linha recta sem problemas nem desvios.

"like mission control after a spaceship has been launched to a distant destination, the enterprise needs to continually monitor and adjust its performance to achieve strategic objectives. Managers guide the enterprise by holding a structured set of meetings that deal with operational problems and improvement programs; their aim is to review the strategy and to adjust or transform it as needed."
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Surge então um problema que afecta as PME's, como as equipas de gestão são curtas, há uma tendência para realizar reuniões onde se misturam temas sobre as operações com temas sobre a estratégia.

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Como as Operações trazem preocupações imediatas, urgências que têm de ser resolvidas, previsões de vendas que não foram cumpridas e que têm de ser repensadas, avarias que demoram a ser reparadas, atrasos nas matérias-primas, taxas de defeitos demasiado elevadas, ... o prime-time das reuniões é ocupado com as Operações e não sobra tempo para a estratégia.

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"We have no time for strategy. If we miss our quarterly numbers, we might cease to exist. For us, the long term is the short term." (Quantas vezes já ouvimos esta conversa nas PME's portuguesas?)

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Tão preocupados com o imediato

Perde-se a noção para o encadeamento dos acontecimentos internos e externos, para o filme que está a acontecer e que aí vem.

A solução passa por separar as reuniões as agendas e os intervenientes.

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"Operational review meetings examine recent departmental, functional, and financial performance and address immediate problems that must be solved. Strategy review meetings examine indicators and initiatives from the unit's Balanced Scorecard to assess the progress, barriers, and risks associated with the successful implementation of the strategy. Strategy testing and adapting meetings discuss whether the strategy is working and whether its fundamental assumptions remain valid in light of data that have been collected on strategic measures. Participants at this meeting also assess changes in the competitive and regulatory environment and consider new ideas and opportunities that the enterprise can pursue.

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The three meeting types have different frequencies, different sets of attendees, and, of course, different subject matters."

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Continua.

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Trechos retirados de "The Execution Premium - Linking Strategy to Operations for Competitive Advantage", de Kaplan e Norton.

Sobre as reuniões

Nem de propósito, no mesmo dia em que este artigo de opinião foi publicado no Diário Económico, durante uma viagem de comboio, estive a rascunhar no papel, os tópicos a incluir no subcapítulo 11.5 do meu futuro livro sobre gestão ambiental alinhada com o negócio e não com a treta dos procedimentos e papéis. Esse subcapítulo aborda a preparação da informação para as reuniões periódicas de avaliação do desempenho do sistema, da organização.

Alguns dos tópicos que refiro começam com a pergunta: para que fazemos uma reunião de gestão?

Não é, não devia ser para apresentar dados, não devia ser para reflectir ou rever dados.
As reuniões são demasiado caras, para que se desperdice tempo nessas tarefas que podem ser feitas com antecedência e isoladamente, no silêncio e recato dos gabinetes. Se existirem dúvidas ao estudar a documentação, o telefone, ou o e-mail, ou o corredor, ajudam a dissipar e esclarecer.
As reuniões são para fazer a única coisa que faz sentido realizar em conjunto, em equipa: tomar decisões.
Que decisões se impõem com base nos dados? Que alternativas temos?

Como só preparamos a informação na véspera… na véspera? Na manhã anterior, nas horas anteriores…. na meia-hora anterior… na própria reunião, enquanto não chega a vez, acabamos a apresentar a informação.
O horário nobre, o tempo precioso é aproveitado a tentar perceber o que dizem as tabelas, os números queninos… é um 6 ou um 5? É um 9 ou um 8?
Como o tempo é escasso… há que o aproveitar bem! Logo, o que ganha é o sound-byte, é o evento, o “happenning”
Como o tempo é escasso, com sorte :) não há tempo para olhar para o último conjunto de indicadores (eheheh)