There are millions of meetings being held every day. You
might be part of one of these meetings. They could be at work, at your
volunteering organization, at your condo board....really everywhere.
I am sure that many of you had this feeling - how many
times, during your long or short meeting, you really didn't know what you were
doing there? You felt dumb. You felt and actually you knew you were wasting
your time. There were no agenda, nobody was chairing the meeting, some of
people took all time they could, some people dominated every conversation, some
people kept interrupting others, some people browsed their hand held
devices......You get the picture.
Imagine how much productive time is wasted every day and
every hour, during these ineffective meetings? Millions of hours that could be
used for something productive and useful. This is not fun. This also might
sound negative, as it brings the truth, but I am sure that everyone has felt
this way at least once in his/her life. On the other hand, to add a positive
spin to this, I did participate to some
very effective meetings too. I know that you did too. That's where I want to
focus. I want to find out why these meetings were efficient, productive and
effective. I want to find it out from you.
Backwards Meeting
I will explore this next time, as my real intention today
was to talk about backwards meeting. This is probably something that cannot be
applied in a business setting, but I believe, it still should be explored as it
develops a different way of thinking and challenges us to adopt to something
that our Euclidean brain doesn't support. It also creates so much fun that
you'll definitely want to do it more than once. It is more likely that this
could be explored in a setting that supports structured meeting with defined
agenda. For example, we had Backwards meetings at my Toastmasters club, and
when I witnessed it and participated for the first time, I found it quite
challenging, but so much fun. Thanks to my colleague Wang Yip who introduced it
to the club, we had that privilege of experiencing something that was really
demanding. That really connects to my way of thinking that emphasizes on
constant learning and challenging of each other.
What is a backwards meeting? Well, simply, it is a meeting
that starts from its end and finishes at point where it should start. So, we
start with closing remarks ("Thank you for being here today, our next
meeting is next week.") and progresses through agenda items going towards
the start of the meeting. If you are a chairman, your last words will probably
be:"Good afternoon everyone and welcome to our meeting". Some, and
actually I believe, many people would ask: "What are the benefits of
backwards meeting? What do I get from it?" Short answer is: "To teach
your brain to think in a different way, to take a road less traveled and help
yourself to become more complete and more diverse person.
Everyone who participates in this meeting can gain enormous
benefits by exploring this other, "opposite" way of thinking. For
example, if Evaluator mentions in his/her evaluation that the speaker:
"Showed us push-ups in such a great way", the speaker should try to
incorporate these push-ups in his/her speech or presentation. If Timer marks
that Table Topics Speaker (TTS) spoke 2 minutes and got clapped down, the TTS
has to speak for 2 minutes, and actually has to start after applause. This also
means that everyone else has to participate by clapping. This also means that
person in charge has to lead this applause, and actually to be focused 200% of
the meeting flow. Each role is done backwards, so everyone has to prepare in
advance. Everyone has to think. Everyone has to listen.
In order not to make this complicated I am publishing my
Backwards Meeting logistics that I developed, as I was responsible for our 2nd ever backwards meeting. Note that this work is based on
original backwards meeting material published by Wang Yip. I intend to record
my next Backwards Meeting and publish it, so that people could see it, instead
of reading it.
Who knows, maybe some of them will organize backwards
meetings and ultimately put yourself out of their comfort zone.
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