Some people love data, other people hate it. However, it is a reality that every second our brain, eyes, mouth, ears, and fingers are engaging and deciphering massive quantities of data. Here is a great article on ways to look smarter in meetings by learning how to interpret the various chunks of information that are thrown at you in any given meeting.

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5 Ways to Look Smarter in Meetings by Learning to Interpret Data on the Fly

By Dave Johnson

March 9th, 2010

Not everyone in the business world can be blessed with the mind of a mathematician. Perhaps that’s why the crime drama Numbers is so popular — David Krumholtz is always making those clever analogies that explain complex math in simple terms which make us feel smarter. 

Unfortunately, the tendency for our eyes to glaze over at the sight of complicated charts or screens full of sales numbers can be a detriment in meetings, where we need to be able to say smart things on the fly. I’ve got some tips to help you make sense of all that data without going back to school for a math degree.

Over at FlowingData, doctoral candidate Nathan Yau lists five tips for understanding and interpreting numbers. Some of these might come in handy the next time you’re presented with a triangle chart in a strategic planning session.    

1. See the big picture. Take a step back. What is the overall chart showing? Often, all you need to take away is a trend; the details might just be noise.

2. Attention to detail. Then again, look for little blips or irregularities that could be important. If you see a fairly steady line but a weird divot in the middle, ask why that is. It could reveal an important truth that has a significant on your planning.

3. Leave the agenda at the door. Be as objective as possible. You might want the data to say something, but avoid letting that influence your interpretations. 

4. Look outside the data. Rarely do numbers, charts, or graphs mean anything on their own. You need to understand the context in which they were born — so learn how to ask questions about where the data came from and what assumptions were made to get it.

5. Ask why. Keep asking questions — especially if the numbers don’t make sense to you, ask why. [via Lifehacker]

Some of the greatest challenges and benefits in any workplace are typically related to “the people”. We spend our greatest number of waking hours in our workplaces and our colleagues often become so close that they are trusted friends. The flip side of this is that negative working relationships have an even greater impact on our lives. Unpleasant relations with people at work can make our lives miserable and force us out of that organizaiton. The number one cited reason for employees choosing to leave a workplace is simply  “the manager”.

Difficult behaviour in the workplace is certainly not limited to the meeting room, but it plays out much more obviously in the confined time and space of group meetings. As meeting participants we are more openly confronted with inter-personal issues and are forced to deal with differences in operating styles in order to express our opinions, share issues and concerns and arrive at collaborative decisions. All of this also has to take place while respecting the workplace hierarchy and the accompanying political constraints. If the behavior at issue happens to appear in our boss it’s even more challenging to deal with. I once had a boss, Bob (name has definitely been changed) whose ability to prolong any sort of conclusive decision was so well known throughout the organization that he earned himself the nickname “The Bobinator”. His tactics were legend and played out on whichever committee or team he was included. He’d faithfully record key points, look you straight in the eye and tell you he liked your idea, thought, or offer to immediately spring into action and then use a vague phrase such as “I’m going to look into this further” or “I will have to speak to Joan” (or any other long list of people not in attendance at the meeting) or  “I will remain seized on this issue” and then that was it!!!  Your concern, idea, thought, and offer were gone, never to be mentioned again in the light of day.

He was also a really nice guy. His unwillingness to make any sort of decision and to stall any sort of forward movement was known outside of his sphere of influence and people would use the term “I think I’ve just been Bobinated” to refer to any occasion when anyone nicely, and kindly, sidelined the actions or initiatives of others.  It was so hard to confront Bob and move him to a place of decision that his employees would typically just give up in frustration and solve their own issues and collaborate with colleagues when he wasn’t around.

In the Smarter Meetings language Bob would be a very Yellow analytical thinker.

He needed lots and lots of information and analysis before feeling comfortable to act. He also understood people really well and got along easily with everyone. Unfortunately his total lack of Green creative thinking and Red decision-making meant he was not open to new and innovative ideas and his discomfort with making decisions meant he would only do so if absolutely forced under the pressure of a deadline. He also lacked any sort of personal awareness and was oblivious to the impact his actions had on his direct reports and peers.

Had Bob worked to develop his Red decision-making and Green creativity skills in combination with his strong Yellow understanding skills he would have been far more successful in tapping into the intelligence of those around him. 

Which operating styles do you find most challenging in meetings?

Here is a great article that is an overview and basic argument for the power of ‘Personal Time’ in the workplace. Google does it, 3M does it, and quite honestly, any smart organization that realizes that their people are their most expensive asset should be doing it. The ‘Personal Time’ I’m talking about is allocating a nice percentage of work time, Google does 20% and 3M does 15%, to working on whatever the employee feels passionate about, thinks is a great idea, or something they find personal interest in to help progress the company forward in new directions. Call me crazy but this just might be the actual definition of ‘Innovation’…

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Mix Up the Workweek by Setting Your Own “20-Percent Time”

By Celine Roque

http://webworkerdaily.com/2010/03/12/mix-up-the-workweek-by-setting-your-own-20-percent-time/

Many large companies have policies that allow employees to spend some of their time working on their own projects. These programs are often used to entice high-caliber job applicants, as well as encourage innovation. For example, Google has what it calls “20-Percent Time”, where its employees spend one day each workweek on project they’re passionate about, while 3M calls its version “15% culture,” which “encourages technical employees to spend 15 percent of their time on projects of their own choosing and initiative.”

This approach doesn’t have to only apply to corporate employees — it can apply to web workers as well. Whether you’re a freelancer or a corporate employee, if your work is measured on your performance rather than your presence, your work hours may be flexible enough to accommodate your own “20-Percent Time.”

But why do it in the first place?

• Innovation and creativity. Innovation is one of the most cited perks of 20-percent time. According to this handy infographic, half of Google’s products are a result of this employment perk. The products that have resulted from 20-Percent Time include Google Adsense and many Google Labs features. An example that might seem closer to home is cartoonist Hugh MacLeod. He drew his first gapingvoid cartoons during his downtime while he was working as a copywriter. Now he’s published a book and does commissioned art. He may not have had a firm policy on creating things outside of work, but it’s easy to lose sight of side projects when one focuses on their “real” work almost every waking hour to the exclusion of everything else.
• Exploration. By making the time to pursue personal passions, you can dabble in different areas, which sometimes results a broader understanding or a new perspective on the field you’re working in. It might even lead to a new line of work altogether. 37signals started as a web design firm, but couldn’t find collaboration tools suited to their needs so they created Basecamp. This led them to develop their own web apps instead, eventually leading to the Ruby on Rails framework.
• Opportunity. By making time for personal projects you give yourself license to act on ideas, questions and passions that you might not be able to do during your work week. You’ll have a chance to do tasks would’ve been too risky, or even seemed downright strange.
• Motivation. In a popular TED talk, Dan Pink discussed the science behind three major motivators in the workplace (which I elaborated on in a previous post). These motivators are autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Though your experience with the latter two may depend on the project you choose, giving yourself 20-Percent Time allows you to exercise your autonomy.

Setting Your 20-Percent Time

Before you schedule your 20-Percent Time, remember that the number shouldn’t be taken literally. Allocate the time that works for you. You can take one day each week, an entire weekend, or even 30 minutes each day. Personally, I like to start my day working on a personal passion project. It gives me fuel to work through the rest of the day. Plus, it eases me into a heavier workload ahead — after all, if I make a mistake on my personal project, none of my clients will suffer.

As Simon noted in a previous post, it’s easier to get burned out when you don’t work a typical 9-to-5 job. With that in mind, how can the typical web worker manage to have 20-Percent Time especially if they have a busy home life? It’s hard to squeeze in a personal project if your family, pets, and home errands suddenly require your attention.

Taking a cue from Sylvia Plath, why not work on your project before your household wakes up? This might mean waking up earlier than usual, but even 15 minutes per day spent on a passion project is better than nothing. Plus, the quiet environment might make it easier for you to work.

But here’s some more common sense: mark the end of your workday. It may not be a cutting-edge life hack, but it’s simple and, more importantly, it’s true. Only by setting actual work hours can we draw a clear line between work and the rest of our preoccupations.

Here’s a great article from BNET.com on dealing with one of the many characters that may be present in your meetings.

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How to Deal with the Office Narcissist

By Jessica Stillman

March 2nd, 2010

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Poets might be known for their higher than average incidence of depression, but the world of business is famous for attracting those with another sort of psychological disorder; “psychologists have studied narcissistic traits in actors, chief executives and politicians, where such tendencies are all but built into the job description,” reports the NY Times.

What exactly is narcissism? According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association, the diagnosis involves, “a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration and lack of empathy… a grandiose sense of self-importance.”

Of course, most cubicle dwellers are normal, empathetic people, but your chances of running into a narcissist is probably higher among high achieving business leaders than, say, at a convention of dentists or pre-school teachers. So how do you handle a narcissistic colleague or client when you meet one? A blog post by Karen Leland on Web Worker Daily offers five tips from Connie Dieken, author of the book Talk Less, Say More:

• Give them options. Beneath their bluster, narcissistic people fear being left out of the loop. They crave control. It’s far better to offer them options to choose from, rather than feeding them ready-made decisions. They’ll tear other people’s decisions to shreds. Giving them options helps them feel respected and in control. It also prevents nasty hissy fits.
• Focus on solutions, not problems. When you explain a problem or a challenge to a narcissist, direct their attention to the solution. Don’t allow them to dissect the problem over and over again. Narcissists love drama and revel in the chaos. They’re easily agitated when frustrated. Define problems and present possible solutions, so they don’t smell blood in the water and tear you apart.
• Make them the hero. Narcissists are preoccupied with power and truly believe they are special and unique. They live for attention and admiration. Want them to do something? Tell them how great they are at it and watch them perform. Better yet, praise their performance in front of others. Just keep it real, please.
• Let them think it’s their idea. Narcissists often steal the credit for ideas that aren’t theirs. Why do they do that? Strangely, they truly believe that hijacked results are their own. Grabbing credit is a driving force for them. If this gets things done, I say learn to live with it. Over time, everyone will catch on — wink, wink. Meantime, graciously transferring credit for ideas to them makes things happen.
• Manage their emotional blind spot. Egomaniacs lack empathy. They’re so caught up in their own world that it doesn’t occur to them to consider your feelings or viewpoints. It’s a huge blind spot. You must put your own feelings on the table, if you choose to do so. Just be smart about sharing feelings with a narcissist. Brace yourself for the guilt trips and disparaging criticism that narcissists often dole out when others explain how they feel.

As we battle through the pains of development delays on our world class Smarter Meetings system, we at SmarterMeetings.com have learned a thing or two about patience. The obvious is that patience is a virtue, or at least that’s what we’re told. However, patience without focus is nothing more than waiting around.

Every day we get closer to launch with the Smarter Meetings system, and the excitement surely grows, but so too does the patience and practice of ensuring ‘it’s perfect’. Unlike Microsoft, we would rather wait until it’s just right before releasing something flawed to the public. It just makes sense to us to make it right. However, when you are creating complex custom web applications that have to work on everything from FireFox to Internet Explorer, and on every kind of corporate and not-for-profit machine from the latest and the greatest to the oldest and the slowest, you definitely learn the benefits of being patient.

Meetings are very similar in many ways. They are a necessity for most any organization in the world, and yet they always seem to take more time and energy that people would like. We believe a lot of that time and energy is misused, but the reality is that meetings require patience, much like any other group endeavor. However, when you factor in personal lives, personal agendas, cultural complexities, and the fact that people don’t always get along in the work place, meetings can be a massive drain on people, teams and organizations everywhere.

We’ve all heard the various sayings such as ‘good things come to those who wait’, but much like many things in life, it’s so much easier to say than to do. With modern technological advancements like Google, and the dominant rise of the instant gratification generation, most people may say they’re willing to wait but really it’s the last thing they want to do.

As we move closer to ‘GO LIVE!’ with SmarterMeetings.com, patience has been just one of the lessons we’ve had to learn along the way.

Here is a very simple article about the power of keeping your team motivated. For many it may seem like ‘common sense’ but it’s amazing how many organizations seem to lack that very sense.

MAKE SURE YOU’RE NOT DE-MOTIVATING YOUR TEAM

By Lisa Hoover

It should come as no surprise that money is a pretty powerful motivator for workers, but an article by researchers at Harvard Business School says it takes more than cash to keep employees happy and productive.

The article suggests that managers spend too much time trying to figure out how to motivate employees—something most workers are perfectly capable of doing themselves. Instead, team leaders need to get out of the way and stop de-motivating employees with mindless policies and poor management strategies.

The authors say people have three main goals at work: 1) to be treated with respect and equity, 2) to take pride in a job well done, and 3) to have good relationships with fellow employees. If even one of these factors are missing, workers are three times as likely to be unhappy at work. Surprisingly, not even a better paycheck will make up for the loss of one of the three biggest motivators.

Inane company policies and procedures often do the most damage to employee motivation, and there’s often little middle managers can do about it:

Satisfying the three goals depends both on organizational policies and on the everyday practices of individual managers. If the company has a solid approach to talent management, a bad manager can undermine it in his unit. On the flip side, smart and empathetic managers can overcome a great deal of corporate mismanagement while creating enthusiasm and commitment within their units. While individual managers can’t control all leadership decisions, they can still have a profound influence on employee motivation.

The most important thing is to provide employees with a sense of security, one in which they do not fear that their jobs will be in jeopardy if their performance is not perfect and one in which layoffs are considered an extreme last resort, not just another option for dealing with hard times.

Check out the article for a list of ways managers can help workers achieve their goals, feel a sense of pride in their work, and build camaraderie with fellow workers. What keeps you motivated at work? Is it the companionship of your colleagues, cold, hard, cash, or something else? Share what revs your motivational motor in the comments.

References:

Why Your Employees Are Losing Motivation [Harvard Business School]

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again…I love 37signals.

Their new book is in stores March 9th.

Can’t wait to read that one!

http://37signals.com/rework/

Happy Friday everyone!

Take the Tour of SmarterMeetings.com and see why it’s The Smarter Way to Meet.

www.SmarterMeetings.com is launching very, very soon!

I know we’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again, The Smarter Way to Meet is coming.

Unlike Uncle Sam we will never demand the draft, however any critical assessment, insight, or advice you can give us on you + your meetings is all we are asking for.

As we get ready to launch our BETA version, we are looking for a small group of people to act as BETA testers.

Help us help you and your meetings!

Thank you,

SmarterMeetings.com

The SmarterMeetings.com login page!

Hope you all like it.