70 | BRAIN CHECK
to go by then people would appear to only want to have fun.
“I should point out that I’ve got nothing against humour. Humour can be an excellent way of getting close to the unpleasantness. You have to get people to drop their guard, which is why so many really good speakers use humour. To get really close to an issue you have to get people into a zone.
If you set the wheels rolling then surely you must be prepared to take care of the aftereffects?
“That is, of course, crucial, something you should always talk with the organiser about. It’s strange that people who organise meetings and events don’t consider the aftereffects. When asked to speak, I sometimes ask customers what kind of atmos-
“Instead of entering the unpleasant and problematic sphere, we take a coffee break”
Not necessarily a comfort zone, but a zone where you can show them how limited they are by ransacking things and getting them to process the message in another way. If I just stand shouting at them because they’re locked in their thinking, all I get is resistance; ‘yet another arrogant professor giving a sermon.’ You have to get around that.” What kind of meetings do you speak at?
“Events, mostly. It could be internal; an MD giving the troops a pep talk type of thing. But also customer meetings to which they invite their closest 200 customers and suppliers, or branch and organisation meetings. They basically follow the same pattern. They’re attempting to tackle a difficult issue like leadership, motivation, globalisation or cultural diversity. Difficult and problematic issues that meet with all forms of resistance. But at the same time they’re handling it with kid gloves for fear of hurting somebody’s feelings.” MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL No. 12 2013
phere they’re expecting afterwards. Do they want people to go home with a smile on their faces or to feel that they are receptive to change. In other words, what kind of mindspace do you want people to move into? The strange thing is, they seem surprised that they’ve never thought of that before. I say that if I’m at my best and people are really into it, within an hour I can give people one thought to take with them out of the room. If I’m absolutely fantastic I can get them to remember it the next day, but not the day after. That’s as far as a speech can propel them forward. I ask them what they’ve planned for the day after tomorrow. Not many think that far. You can’t just arrange an onward ho! meeting without following it up in the organisation afterwards in the hope they’ll remember the message anyway.” I spoke with a person who had worked with meetings for thirty years. He was of the opinion that
nothing much has changed with regard to meetings content.
“I understand what they mean and agree to some extent. The main purpose of a meeting is communication, and that hasn’t changed much since the ancient Greeks. It has become more common to organise our activities around meetings, but the soul of the meeting has changed very little. I once said that meetings have become more professional, but they are basically unchanged. We speak for the same amount of time, that is to say twenty, forty-five or sixty minutes. There should be a keynote-speaker, something amusing and something proactive. There should be coffee at points A, B and C. The same old … But we do it better and more professionally today.” Why is it so unchanging and why does it take so long to implement change?
“Part of the answer is that people don’t like change. We feel safe in our comfort zone and hate having to leave it. It’s a myth that people like change. They like just enough creativity and nice and cosy innovation. They show enormous loathing towards real change. When I come in and say we’re going to do something really different and suggest a few things, I get to hear stuff like ‘we have to take this up, and the MD wishes to say this’.” Have you ever suggested something that you got no response to?
“Several times. On one occasion we suggested that a large company should have a devil’s advocate popping up at a large event. It would be fun having somebody who challenged the MD and the hired guru. Somebody would give a five minute anti-speech saying everything was bullshit. They replied that it sounded really good and they would consider it for another event. That’s the type of answer we get. I can understand it