Death by Debate
Leadership
Patrick Lencioni’s classic fable, Death by Meetings, captures all the challenges of meetings and provides some very practical solutions. In the story’s big climax, the team conducts a highly engaging and productive meeting when the stakes are high. The result is choosing one option over another and moving towards an action plan. One of the complaints about meetings is that firm decisions are seldom reached and everyone leaves the meeting either frustrated or with unclear assumptions about what was decided.
In Lencioni’s example, the team conducted research and identified two attractive but opposing options. Sometimes, decision-making is enhanced by narrowing the choices, conducting a rigorous debate, and then asking for a vote or having the leader make the choice. Lencioni rightly suggests meetings that don’t mine for conflict are both boring and unproductive. Having multiple options enables a deeper dive and forces people to choose.
However, another complaint about meetings is they often center around binary choices. In many situations, decision-making is enhanced not by forcing the team to debate between limited options but by encouraging them to generate new ones around the already identified pathways. This can lead to more collaborative group work as the team tries to create a novel pathway. In the process, the team will often recognize where an idea works and where it does not. It changes the dynamic from two sides trying to win an argument to the whole team trying to build a better solution.
Obviously, not every decision-making situation requires the team to engage in integrative or generative decision-making. But too often, leaders feeling the pressure of time and the need to leave the meeting with a tangible outcome, push too quickly to narrow options and take votes.
The other primary insight from Lencioni’s book is that teams need to hold different types of meetings based on the purpose of the meeting. That purpose dictates the length and frequency of the meeting. For example, check-in meetings are less than 10 minutes and happen daily, and tactical meetings are closer to an hour and happen weekly. Perhaps the most important meetings are strategic ones that may occur monthly, quarterly or as the need arises.
An important question for strategic meetings is whether the goal should be to make a final decision or not. In Lencioni’s story, that was an important accomplishment for a team struggling for clarity and building momentum. That may not be the case for every team and every situation. Sometimes the best decision may be to recognize the team needs to engage in more research, imagination, or constructive conflict. Tools like scenario planning help teams engage in more “possibility thinking” rather than pressing too hard to determine what is right and what is wrong with each person’s analysis.
Boring meetings caused by an absence of conflict should be avoided but when differences can be channeled to creative collaboration rather than advocating a particular position, most people will show up ready to enthusiastically engage. Despite a leader’s best intentions, it is difficult for some people to completely separate intellectual arguments from more personal ones. The best teams who have journeyed together for a long time can create psychological safety where differences are well received. But in most cases, there will be some on a team, either by temperament or lack of time spent together who will struggle with a debate-and-vote approach. Meetings that emphasize learning, sharing of ideas, and opportunities to prototype and experiment will create a more natural and effective strategic development process.