Few people love meetings. They interrupt your day, which hurts your workflow, and many could have been an email. A Harvard Business Review survey of managers found that 83% reported that meetings on their calendars were unproductive. But Nic Marks, CEO of Friday Pulse, an organization that uses a Happiness KPI to help teams build a better future, says meetings can be the key to workplace happiness.
Five components are critical to workplace happiness: connection, fairness, empowerment, challenge, and inspiration, explains Marks, a statistician and wellbeing specialist, whose TED Talk on world happiness has more 2.5 million views.
“They all have an influence, they’re all important, and for some people, some are more important than others,” he says. “We’re very socially motivated. If we get on well with our colleagues and feel supported, everything goes a lot better. I’ve surveyed people, asking, ‘How frequently do you have a team meeting?’ If people don’t have team meetings, the data we have is that they’re three times more likely to be unhappy. Good team meetings are worth about half a point on a one to five scale of happiness, so it’s quite a big effect.”
While meetings that are too long or are inefficient can be a problem, team meetings that have a clear direction and serve as a bonding experience, improve team relationships. Marks offers these tips:
Weekly Meetings
First, hold weekly team meetings. “We work in week sprints; it’s the way we organize our work,” says Marks. “Look back at how the last week went, ask people what went well, what didn’t go well. Build on what’s gone well, and tackle what doesn’t go well.”
Leaders should also call out employees’ successes, thanking them and showing appreciation. “In a group setting, it’s very resonant,” says Marks. “Not only does the person hear it, but their colleagues do. And everybody feels better.”
Team meetings also provide a good place for employees to share frustrations or things they’re stuck on. “It provides a good opportunity to flag their concerns, talk them through, and support each other,” says Marks. “Trust is built slowly. Aristotle once said, ‘Excellence is a habit.’ If you’re going to create happier teams, you’ve got to create your habits. And I think the key the core habit is a weekly meeting to talk about how things are.”
One-on-One Meetings
Instead of waiting for annual reviews or difficulties, Marks recommends that leaders hold brief one on one meetings with each employee every month or quarter. “I think the less frequently you do this, the more rigid they become,” he says. “If you do them more informally, you build a better relationship as a team leader and the more things can talk about.”
The purpose for these meetings is to discuss topics an employee may not feel comfortable raising during the team meeting. They’re also a way to build a relationship. “They’re more about asking, ‘How are you doing? What’s going well for you personally?’” says Marks. “It’s more ‘cup of coffee’ relationship than it is about work content.”
Walk and Talk Meetings
Marks also encourages teams to get outside and try walk-and-talk meetings. Even just 30 minutes outside can make so much difference for mental health, he says.
“I think one of the problems with Zoom is you’re looking straight at somebody,” he says. “I’m a big fan of not sitting down opposite each other and and talking but you know doing it informally and going for a walk if the weather’s good.”
Walking side by side provides a sense that you are supported and going in the same direction. “You’re able to say things a little bit differently,” says Marks. “Because your body is moving, you start to release things and are able to talk more freely because not looking directly in the eye. I think it just moves the conversation better.”
Getting outside also allows you to leave the office environment behind, which can help if the conversation is difficult, Marks adds. “Walking somehow deescalates it and makes it easier to talk,” he says. “Greenery calms and reassures us, too. There’s lots of data about getting outside is good for our wellbeing and our happiness. It brings that to meetings, as well.”
For all of these kinds of meetings, leaders need to talk less and listen more, says Marks. “Be facilitative, rather than prescriptive,” he says. “Be supportive. You’re trying to help ingredients in the room come together to be something more and the way you do that is draw people out. You’ll get people to engage and feel more able to be themselves.”
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There are few who would say the point of innovation is for improving the human condition. While history is pockmarked with tumultuous events, genuine progress has always been the product of innovation—be it in philosophy, public policy, science or business. Given the vast array of challenges facing our species in this new millennium—pandemics, climate change, rogue states, ethnic strife, political polarization, threats to privacy, yawning wealth gaps, and more—the need for radical innovation is more pressing than ever.
That’s why we were keen to sit down with Tim Brown, chair of IDEO, the iconic Palo Alto-based design firm where Tim has worked since 1987. Having led hundreds of innovation projects in the private and public sector, Tim knows more about the creative process than just about anyone on the planet. Tim’s own designs, it should be noted, has been exhibited at the Design Museum in London, and at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
We start by asking Tim to define “design thinking”—the conceptual pillar that underpins his work. Says Tim, “Whenever we are shaping the world to meet our needs, we’re designing. Whenever we’re being intentional about how we want to shape the world, we’re embarking on some kind of design process.” By that definition, all of us are designers, but, as Tim points out, most of us aren’t very good at it. Bad design is everywhere—design that’s not informed by user needs, that doesn’t challenge stale thinking, and hasn’t been refined through a process of relentless iteration. That’s why Tim is such a passionate apostle for design thinking—a set of principles and tools that, he argues, can help anyone to dramatically amplify their creative capacity.
We push back—more to enliven the discussion than to argue with Tim’s assertion. In Silicon Valley, the epicenter of business innovation, there’s a widely held belief that rule-busting innovators are a rare breed. Unlike mere mortals, great visionaries like Google’s Larry Page, Tesla’s Elon Musk and Netflix’s Reed Hastings have been genetically endowed with an ability to see beyond what is and imagine what could be.
Tim agrees that some individuals are inherently more creative than others, but says this shouldn’t deter anyone from working to develop their own creative gifts. “Think of writing,” he says. “There’s only one Shakespeare, but there’s a host of people who make their living by writing. If we didn’t have writing available to us, the world would be a poorer place. Similarly, if everyone had access to the tools of design thinking, and was able to bring new ideas into the world, then the capacity of humanity to advance its cause would be so much greater than if we relied solely on people like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk.
Rather than staking our hopes on a few celebrated entrepreneurs, Tim argues we need “an approach to innovation that’s powerful, accessible, and integrated into all aspects of business and society.” That’s a noble goal, but far from the reality in most organization. For example, in a recent Gallup survey, only 14% of employees strongly agreed with the statement that “I could take risks at work that could lead to important new products, services or solutions.”
Tim unpacks the problem. “Managers,” he says, “spend almost all of their time focusing on efficiency. In most of the organizations I work with, the probably of getting someone at almost any level to dedicate more than 10% of their time to a creative project in a given week is almost zero. And yet at IDEO, as people who spend all our time innovating, we know that you need to devote 90% of your time to a new project if it’s going to have any chance of succeeding.”
He continues: “People have very little time, but they also have very little confidence in their ability to innovation. My colleague, David Kelly, talks about the notion of “creative confidence,” which is the combination of the ability to have ideas and the courage to act on them. But we do very little in most organizations to develop this confidence.”
This, Tim argues, is where leadership comes in. Leaders can inject design thinking into training programs, and, just as critically, can carve out time for their teams to innovate. “As a leader,” Tim says,” you have to get involved, not because you have the best ideas, but because you need to support and enable the people who are innovating. You need to show you are committed to it.” When asked to name a CEO who does this, Tim points to Apple Chair and CEO, Tim Cook. “He’s delivered more value for shareholders than any executive in history,” Tim notes, “and he did that not by cutting costs or making big deals, but by delivering innovative products and services.”
If innovation is going to thrive, Tim believes we must rethink the role of leaders. “The notion that leaders have all the answers is toxic to innovation,” he argues. Says Tim, “We need leaders who inspire curiosity and discovery by asking insightful questions that send the organization off in new and interesting directions. I like the metaphor of an explorer who stands on the beach, looks at the horizon, and asks, ‘What’s on the other side of the horizon? What happens if we go in that direction?’ And then encourages people to get into boats and set off.”
As a leader, it’s hard to mentor innovation, Tim argues, unless you’ve been an innovator yourself—unless you’ve had to tackle a fundamentally new challenge, dig deep into the user experience, brainstorm dozens of potential solutions, and then test and refine the best ideas through rapid prototyping. We concur. In many organizations, executives can rise through the ranks without ever having to develop their own creative chops. Worse, the typical MBA program does little to develop the creative confidence of managers-to-be. Tim is right when he notes that in a typical MBA program, students analyze dozes of case studies, but are seldom challenged to actually build something—be it a product prototype, a new business model, or a new management tool or process.
Reflecting on his own experience, Tim says, “When I went to design school, I did project after project. By the time I got through, I’d worked on dozens of things.” When we ask how this might be replicated in an MBA program, Tim points to Stanford University’s d.school, an interdisciplinary center that brings students together from across the campus to tackle real-world problems using design thinking. “It’s important,” he says, “to make sure that MBA students are doing hands-on projects with other disciplines outside the business school.”
The bigger point is this: Few institutions invest systematically in building the creative skills of their members and employees. That needs to change, and in talking to Tim, you get the sense that he won’t hang up his spurs up until it does.
Editor’s note: This article is part of the video and editorial series The New Human Movement, which aims to highlight bold thinkers and doers who are reimagining work and leadership.
Gary Hamel is a business thinker, author, and educator. He is on the faculty of the London Business School and the Harvard Business Review Press best-selling book, Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them.
Michele Zanini is the co-founder of the Management Lab (MLab), where he helps organizations become more adaptable, innovative, and engaging places to work. He is the coauthor of Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them.
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