Yves: just chatting

Hello and welcome.

It's another Monday afternoon, evening,

morning, depending on

where you are listening into.

And we are recording Yves

Just Chatting, Episode 29.

We are going to cover the topic today.

Be respectful with other people's time,

something which is very

dear to my heart, actually,

and is something which I just had a

discussion on a management

seminar the other week about.

And it's kind of funny that we seem to

actually think that it's

getting more and more the

norm and more and more the accepted

factor, that being late or

showing up late for a meeting,

delivering things late is actually

becoming acceptable or

should be more acceptable from

that perspective.

So let me start off by putting in my,

let's say, two, three,

four, five cents into this

spot.

Imagine you have ten people sitting in a

meeting and a majority of

people show up five minutes

late.

But some people are there in time where I

actually ready to start at time, which is

another very, very interesting factor,

which we see lately even

more is even though people

might show up for a meeting in

time, they might not be ready.

They first actually show up for the

meeting, then say, oh,

I'm going to quickly hit the

restroom, or I'm quickly

going to grab a coffee, or...

So the point is some other people are

actually sitting in the

room, prepared for the meeting,

took the time for it, and actually

prepare and are willing to

actually get the work done.

The challenge is that if everybody is

actually going to be

anticipating to start later, that

is actually why we see more and more in

this corporate world

that meetings get planned

longer and longer and longer because the

expectation by now is that

for the first five, ten, fifteen

minutes, nothing is going to get done

during any of these meetings.

This is something from my perspective

which we desperately need to change.

I know that one part why we are having

this issue nowadays is

still something which we

got out of the pandemic because the

pandemic made a massive change.

Before the pandemic, in many business

areas, in-person

meetings were the go-to scenario

to solve most problems.

There was more or less no simple scenario

that you could

actually get away in trying

to do everything

completely over remote sessions.

Pandemic changed that.

The pandemic changed it in a way that

people were all of the

sudden perfectly fine with

running Zoom and Teams meetings.

And with having Zoom or Teams meetings,

that is actually was the

point where people started

to actually get into the scenario that

you had to deal with the

fact that you had back-to-back

meetings which caused other problems.

So people were scheduling from 9 a.m. to

5 p.m. back-to-back meetings.

Some people even forgot to cover for

their lunch break or anything else.

And as we are walking through this and as

people were walking

through this, people then

identified as like, yeah, there is an

important meetings which

I should enable in Zoom or

Teams or anything else which blocks off

time before and after each meeting.

And that actually

partially solved the problem.

But in the end, people figured out that

they never got their work

done because they actually

spent too much time

back-to-back in these meetings.

Let me quickly jump onto one of the

questions which we just

reached from the audience.

So first and foremost, why

are there not more participants?

These are live recordings of the podcast.

So it's not primarily targeted towards

being a massive online

seminar or something like

that.

It's just something we

do to make it possible.

From an audience perspective, the Eve

Trust chatting sessions

are typically set up for

a generic audience which is interested in

entrepreneurship,

company management and things

like that.

And it's not necessarily around the

comdivision or

VMware space, but from time to

time we cover that as well.

Okay.

Back to the topic of the day.

So the pandemic actually

makes things worse and worse.

And you had more and more people actually

not show up on time for a meeting because

the last meeting went over.

So actually everything in

the following became a problem.

So what we see more and more is that as

we are actually evolving

out of the time outside

of the pandemic, is that we are actually

moving into a scenario

which finally brings us to

the point that people are showing up late

for in-person meetings.

And also as people are showing up late

for in-person

meetings, we also see delays on

other meetings, et cetera.

So one of the important things moving

forward, especially as we

are trying to fix, let's

say the corporate world, and I see this

happening in more and more

organizations from the get-go,

is that A, people start planning for more

break times in between meetings, which is

one of the important things.

And then it's actually no longer an

acceptable fact that

you're actually showing up late

for any type of meeting.

So from that perspective, you might

actually show up to a

meeting and it might actually

not be on time or something else.

So what I see more and more people

actually from a meeting

management perspective do now

is that people are actually going to

start getting into a

meeting, the attempt is, and

we actually try to create the rules

within Convivision, for

example, by ourselves as

well, where we try to set it up and

actually say, it's like,

me, you should actually be

in the meeting late just five minutes

before the meeting starts.

You should actually be prepared, ideally

close email, close

teams, as long as you're not

using it for the meeting itself, and

everything else so that

you're focused for the meeting

in person.

And for example, I also in my meeting

room or in my office

actually have a separate chair,

which when I know that I don't

desperately need my computer for the

meetings, I'm actually

going to use them.

So one of the things which we are trying

to establish and which

many other corporations

are nowadays establishing as well is that

meetings again start on

time, which also means

that as you're getting into a meeting, if

you are coming late,

you might have missed

the first few minutes.

So we started that, for example, for our

weekly standup meetings

in comdivision as well, is

that is on Friday, 8 30 a.m.

The meeting starts at 8 30 a.m.

Should people for whatever reason come in

later, their topics are going to be moved

further down the pipeline.

So for example, we go through the list of

projects, typically,

yeah, not necessarily

always in the open meeting order.

But if you're actually going to attend a

meeting and it's and you're

the first one being called

out for that standup item, then in that

specific scenario, I mean,

if you're not there, your

topics are going to be moved further down

to the towards the end so that others who

are there and who are in time can

actually follow along and

actually join for that meeting.

So this actually helped us to

start these meetings on time.

And while up until I think last year, we

had two meetings a

week, we actually were able

to reduce the standups down to one

meeting week so that we

can actually cover more in

one specific meeting.

So exactly a 30 that meeting starts.

And believe it or not, more than half the

people are typically in

the meeting room already.

Before the meeting starts, it's also very

common now that we

have rules in place which

actually say that if you can't actually

cover or if there is a

topic which shouldn't be

part of the meeting, then you should

actually be able to move

that topic to later to the

end of the meeting.

So what's going to happen is the your

meeting actually goes,

let's take our Friday standup

meeting.

All the topics of the

meeting are going to be covered.

If someone, let's say Gerhard or Matthias

is actually covering

something where he says,

oh, I need the

following two or three people.

If you have time, if you could stay at

the end of the meeting,

then we can quickly cover

our topic there.

These things work perfectly well,

especially as nowadays our

standup meeting is shorter

than the planned timeframe.

And so from that perspective, we cover

everything in time, then

people have some off topics

can actually come on them later.

We also integrated in our company

something which is, I

think, a three weekly or four

weekly, like virtual beers evening, which

is something where

people can come together

and just actually talk out

whatever is on their mind.

And it's not nothing work related.

It could be around other topics.

It could be around something going on in

the world or whatever else.

And I think that's great thing as well to

reduce a lot of that

chit chat talk out of

the standard meetings.

So this is something where you can

actually work with corporate meeting

culture and actually

make this a more attractive scenario and

actually get more people

into attending meetings from

that perspective.

I wouldn't go as extreme as, for example,

Amazon does it where every meeting starts

with several minutes of silence so that

people could actually read

through the meeting notes

beforehand because let's be honest, let's

face it in most corporations, even if you

send out a comprehensive document before

the meeting, in many,

many cases, people are not

going to read it up front.

Amazon also bent powerpoints

out of out of most meetings.

And to be honest, I like

the idea more and more.

We try to reduce them and get them out of

as many meetings as possible.

But also when we are doing product

demonstrations and stuff

like that, we are utilizing real

life demos.

That is far more

convincing for customers.

It's actually bringing

us faster to the point.

And this is also something which we

utilize as part of our architecture

meetings and architecture

workshops where during these architecture

workshops, we are then

automatically pulling

people in and showcase them how we have

done a reference

implementation and then discuss

around the topic.

As proven to be far more effective from a

people's time scale perspective, that you

could actually attend

from that perspective.

So all of these different topics are

helping corporations to

grow and actually be more

effective during their meetings.

The other thing is from being respectful

with other people's time,

if you are actually asking

for someone else's time, give them a bit

of a heads up of what

you want to talk about.

So something again, which we established

in our cooperation over

the last couple of years

is there is no meeting

without an agenda anymore.

It doesn't need to be a complex agenda.

For example, for me,

it makes a difference.

If someone says, hey, I have a paragraph

and a quote or SOW or

something else, which I

just want to cover, then that might be

something we can cover in five minutes.

If someone says, oh, I'm struggling with

this customer, I need

more help and I need actually

more people to visit this one, then I can

foresee this is going

to be half an hour to

an hour.

So I need a bigger time window to

actually squeeze that in my day.

What I try to avoid and what everybody

else tries to avoid

within convolution as well

is trying to get away of having meetings

with follow up meetings.

Ideally everybody comes to a meeting in a

prepared way so that

you can actually cover

everything in that meeting and then

actually don't need any

follow up meeting or anything

like that anymore from that perspective.

So again, something to be more helpful

from a timing

perspective and be more respectful

from an overall time.

The other thing which we discussed on the

management training

week or two ago was that

we covered how are we going to deal with

or what is the scenario with?

It's typically called a Gen Z phenomenon.

And I wouldn't actually call it a Gen Z

topic because I see this

very often in corporate

America as well.

So people actually show up to meetings by

intent every five minutes.

And from that specific perspective, it's

perfectly fine that

you can actually cover

that specific topic and then you can

actually start the meeting.

I have seen in corporate America very

often that once we

actually establish this, we start

the meeting on time.

People after the second or third time

will get used to the

fact and actually will show

up in time.

Otherwise, you end up in scenarios again

and again where people

just always show up five

or 10 minutes late.

If you have only a 30 minutes meeting

slot and then people

want to leave five minutes

earlier, that's not going to work from

that perspective either.

So just take the aspect which works for

you, but actually make

clear for people that wait

for meeting time is

actually very unproductive.

I used the scenario in one of the videos

or one of the sessions

which we did a few weeks

ago where I was working

with the larger UK bank.

And during that time, one of the things

which I noticed is any

one of these meeting rooms

had a British pound clock at the wall.

So instead of having a time clock at the

wall, they had huge

LED screens showing what

the meeting was currently costing the

company from that perspective.

So that was actually fitted with

information from the

different salaries, room meetings,

and everything else.

And then you could actually see how much

this was actually going

to cost the company from

that perspective.

And as you were actually running these

meetings, you could see

that it actually became more

and more effective for everybody to

completely attend these meetings and to

join these meetings.

And people tried to actually be done in

time and not actually

make it a coffee break.

The opposite way around, I was working

with a larger public

sector organization in Germany,

and I was trying to figure out why the

hell I was invited into

every meeting, whether

it was relating to me or not.

It took me a while until I figured out

and actually spoke to people as I said.

Why are you inviting me

to all of these meetings?

I'm actually

responsible for that project.

There is not even an overlap.

And at one point, the answer came out

very bluntly from one

of the more junior people

is that no matter what's going to happen

is if there is an

external at a meeting, it will

actually bring coffee and cookies.

So that's the other extreme.

It's like inviting people towards a

meeting just to get a

better room or specific tools

or specific food or whatever

else is also never a good idea.

So from that perspective, just be sure

that you cover really

whatever is necessary and

have only the people

attend which are necessary.

And if corporations think that it's a

good idea to punish people

for not inviting externals

or anything else,

then just do as you like.

But in the end, it's not going to help.

So these are things on how you can

actually improve that.

During the management meeting, one of the

topics was also

management training the other

week, where also one of the arguments was

everybody should actually be more relaxed

in the in the current scenario and

actually allow for people to be late.

And I think that's actually the wrong

scenario and how we could

fix the issues we have in

the corporate world at the moment,

because the issues we

face in the corporate world

is that people no longer take tasks very

serious, that releasing

things or doing things on time

is actually no longer

seen as an advantage.

And there is basically no damage done if

you're not actually

delivering on time, which is

also part of the European or especially

the culture in many

European companies is because

it's no longer easy to

fire someone for not working.

You need to have much

better reasons by now.

It is actually safe to do it as long as

you're not actually

completely misbehaving against

colleagues or the company by itself.

It's very hard to actually fire someone

with this has good parts

and bad parts, but that

leads to some of this cultural scenario.

On the other side, I can also clearly

showcase based out of

corporate America, where it's

much easier to quickly just fire someone

if you want to get rid of them by the end

of the months or whatever else, that that

would actually be an easy solution.

But in the end, the meeting culture and

the time respect for

this in the US is even worse

than we have it here in Europe.

But it's actually something which is

becoming more and more of an issue.

As we are trying to evolve corporations

and as we are talking

and as I'm talking with

startups and help startups actually be

more successful in their

cooperation or with financing

and everything else, I'm always

encouraging them to take a very, very

close look in trying

to understand what Amazon does, what Elon

Musk does at SpaceX,

partially also at Tesla,

but not at Tesla that much anymore.

And he tried to cultivate at Twitter

slash X as well is

trying to cultivate a culture

where if you don't actually have anything

to say or to bring to a meeting, stand up

and leave.

Don't even say goodbye because that's

interrupting everybody else.

I've seen this,

especially in online meetings.

Sometimes you come in and start a meeting

with 20 plus people.

Within five minutes, you're down to three

or four or five, which are the ones based

on the agenda and everything else, which

are really necessary.

And the others can

actually get their work done.

The other important part as we are moving

along is also that if

you're attending a meeting

or if you are actually with other people,

a good part of being

respectful with their

time and their presence is to not

actually play on the

mobile phone or do your emails

or anything else.

So for example, that was one of the

reasons why I said in the

beginning I would actually

close down email clients, team zooms

whatsoever, which I don't necessarily

need during a meeting

to be completely focused

on that specific meetings.

And I actually also started about a few

couple of months back when

I see and have the feeling

that people are absent during the meeting

and I have the

feeling that they are doing

the emails or anything else, then I'm

either going to pause for a few seconds.

That actually gives people the point that

they are actually looking back at you and

it's like, OK, why is he pausing?

And then once you see that everybody is

back on time, you actually start again.

Or if that absolutely doesn't help, then

calling out people for

their behavior or just calling

them out and say, it's like, oh, it seems

like that you have

something more important

to do than attending this meeting, then

maybe you should leave or something else.

That sounds very harsh, but in the end,

it's actually helping

in most corporations and

in most organizations to get people into

a healthy meeting culture.

OK, that being covered.

Thank you, Aya.

Thank you from that perspective, those

who were attending live, everything else.

The session is going to go out via a

podcast and it's going

to be streamed on all the

usual platforms from that perspective.

And that being said, thank you all for

watching and watch out for

the podcast to be released

in the next couple of days.

Thank you and goodbye.