The Brazilian industrial conglomerate, SEMCO, is justly famous for its daring employment of numerous bottom-up management concepts. One of these is their unique approach to what they call voluntary meetings.
The only fixed things about such a meeting are the subject, location, and time. Anyone who wants to have a meeting can post one. No one is required to attend, and anyone who wants to, can. Moreover, if they lose interest at any time, they not only may, but are expected to, simply leave.
We all know that many meetings are driven, or at least influenced, by interpersonal and political dynamics that have little to do with the subject nominally under discussion. Indeed, the quasi-utopian world of the volunteer meeting will certainly not be free of these, either.
So, while there are strong arguments to be made for such an arrangement, there are strong ones to be made against it, as well; most of you will not, and should not, adopt it. But just consider the implications if you were to hold meetings never knowing if anyone would show up – or stay. What would you do differently if that were a genuine likelihood?
You would be left with a need to, in effect, market your meeting. You would need to ask yourself a number of new questions, the answers to which you either previously assumed or dismissed as unimportant:
- Is there a market for this meeting?
- Can you reach and engage the right people in that market?
- Is your meeting optimally designed and structured to satisfy both the need and the market?
- Can you execute the meeting in the necessary manner?
- Can you be sure that the necessary follow-up will be performed, making an enduringly valuable asset of your sale and delivery of your service?
The first issue involves a certain amount of contextual deliberation – even market research. We’ll take a look at it next week.
In the meanwhile, I’ll be joining my compatriots in celebrating the American holiday of Thanksgiving, starting tomorrow. For the Americans among you joining your families for the traditional feast, remember: it’s not voluntary – show up on time and stay until you’re excused! For the rest of you, thank you for bearing with us; I look forward to seeing you all again on Monday.
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Be sure not to miss any of the posts in this series!
- Collaboration jams
- The swaying sword of Damocles
- Smoke-filled rooms
- Meetings – what are they all about?
- How about we get together sometime?
- Can we fit this in somewhere?
- Making your meeting
- Managing your meeting
- Are you sure we were at the same meeting?
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Today’s tip: BusinessWeek reports that the circle is turning yet again: kids are so stressed out by the pressures that cutting-edge gadgets put on them to be productive at all of school, work, and even free time, that they’re reverting to an “analogue” break from the high-tech rut. Take a look at the piece for an interesting description of how this is playing out.
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8 Comments
Hi Jim,
First, Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family! Our connection and your writing are one of the things I am thankful for this year.
I am a great fan of the TV show West Wing. It was a show about politics in the White House. One of the lessons I took away from my experience over five years was about meetings. There was rarely a meeting where the person calling the meeting – the one with the agenda – didn’t spend a fair amount of time talking separately with key meeting attendees prior to the actual meeting.
What ended up happening in the actual meeting was usually a forgone conclusion since the agenda-setter had done so much marketing prior.
You have pinpointed a great best practice to successful meetings!
Cheers, Joe
Hello Joe,
Thank you so much for your too-generous comments, and your excellent example of a thoroughly marketed meeting! I appreciate very much, also, the enrichment of my thinking provided by your work, and look forward to reading more of it every day.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, as well!
Happy Thanksgiving, Jim. Thanks for another thoughtful post.
They seem to play business the way the Brasilians play futebol (soccer to Norte Americanos). There is s a flow that allows for good things to emerge. Meetings are a part of the game that happens where there is need for two or more players to closely coordinate activity. Or, perhaps, it’s what happens on a dance floor when two samba dancers begin to coordinate and contrast their moves.
If Brasil is a nation of soccer players or samba dancers with a culture that is free flowing and organized in small groups, we North Americans strive mightily to be a culture of engineers that tries to plan large things in great detail.
What an interesting concept — and I am so glad we are making a few breakthroughs when it comes to meetings! Great post – and thanks!
Did you know for instance that in meetings — people use less than 3 % of their brainpower. Imagine the productivity of marketing an alternative to meetings that allow people to grow, develop skills and invent! Imagine the productivity added to a firm who took the risk:-) Terrific topic. Ellen
Hello Wally,
I hope you and yours had a Happy Thanksgiving as well.
The tie in with soccer-culture – a sport that flows more than American sports, which typically unfold in linked segments – is an interesting connection to make with the SEMCO voluntary meeting concept.
I know that some American companies have experimented with SEMCO-style bottom-up management innovations, but we don’t hear too much about them, do we? Perhaps that bears some closer examination here.
Thanks again for your visit and an insightful observation!
Hello Ellen,
I must say I can’t recall too many meetings I’ve been in that offer evidence to challenge your fascinating statistic! And the connection you make between that and what I suppose we could call “involuntary” meetings is probably a strong one – a very interesting idea, as you so often produce.
That one warrants some more consideration. You and Wally both are pushing the conceptual limits in this SEMCO practice – and it’s much appreciated.
Thanks so much for your visit, your insight, and your work!
I think there’s a definite cultural component to what Semco does and that makes it harder to replicate in more buttoned-down cultures. But a big reason that Semco continues to work the way it does is Ricardo Semler. There’s a fascinating part of his book, The Seven Day Weekend, where he says that he knows he could veto any decision he disagrees with since he is, after all, the owner. But he thinks if he does that the entire house of cards will come tumbling down and no one will ever again trust him when he says they have power.
Ultimately that may mean that Semco as it is now will not outlive Ricardo Semler. We’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, Semco is worth watching as a source of ideas for experiments.
Wally,
For all the promise of many of Semler’s ideas, you hit on a key factor. Some SEMCO employees will tell you that the fundamental control function (particularly, but not exclusively, of individual behavior and performance) is peer pressure. People order their actions at least partially in the knowledge that they will be subjected to public (in the company) scrutiny and to the positive or negative sanction of their peers. That sounds great, and I’m sure that there is a lot to it. But I’m just as sure that you have identified the most influential factor being the prime peer – in this case, the owner acting as the CEO.
In fact, his presence in this role has been felt in a more traditional sense, and a repeat of that is certainly more powerful an influence than free-floating bottom-up internal policing.
I’m a fan of many of these initiatives, but I believe they must be managed.
You’ve inserted a really key point to any discussion of SEMCO and Semler’s approach to management – thanks!
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