How to have an "electric" meeting
Perspectives from a serial company builder
Making fun of professional meeting culture is so common amongst white collar workers that is is almost a national pastime. Meetings are the subjects of all kinds of memes and are the topic of plenty of how-to books and articles. For many people, the concept of having an “electric” meeting is likely somewhat foreign. Having sat through an uncountable number of investment meetings in my career, I certainly wouldn’t say that all had electricity flowing through them. That is why I leaned in a bit when I was listening to Patrick O’Shaughnessy’s fascinating conversation with serial company builder, Brad Jacobs. Given that I have followed Brad for years and that I personally own one of the XPO spinoffs, GXO Logistics, I am biased. Still, I can’t recommend listening to this discussion enough.
Specifically, I found Brad’s comments on using technology within non-tech businesses, investing in companies where technological trends are your friend, and the value of speedy M&A integrations very insightful. But I want to zoom in on the meeting culture that Brad inculcates within his companies. Here is the exchange he had with Patrick on this topic:
Patrick: [00:57:18] Yes, you're doing my job for me. You got to tell us about the electric meetings. What are the components?
Brad: [00:57:22] So our meetings in all three of those companies are different, very different than the typical boring meeting that most companies have. Most companies have a meeting where someone is up there, and they've got a PowerPoint, or they've got a speech that they prepared, and people are sort of semi-listening to the speech.
Going back to what I was saying before, when you get my age, you only have 5,000 to 7,000 days left. You want to have every minute of that something exciting, something valuable, something rewarding. That's not the kind of way I want to spend my days going forward. The way we get those meetings very exciting and very valuable and productive is to first have the right people in the meeting. People who are very honest, who are very intelligent, who are very hardworking, who are very collaborative.
And people who understand respectfulness. People who understand how to listen and how to be open and receptive to other people's ideas, to what other people's perspectives are, and people who can think dialectically. Meaning thinking from different perspectives on the same problem, not rigid thinkers, not black and white dichotomous thinkers. Not people who think, "I've got it all figured it out, and anyone who disagrees me is wrong. I'm never going to change my mind". Because you don't get anywhere with that.
So you want to have an atmosphere where people are encouraged to disagree, but disagree respectfully. And if you can create a safe zone for people to lean in and disagree with each other in a nice way, where the person who's being disagreed with doesn't feel bad because you're not attacking that person. You're debating that idea, very different. You're not labeling the person or denigrating or demeaning the person, and there's no bullying or any of that kind of stuff.
There is passion in those meetings. There's energy in those meetings, but it's the energy of ideas. It's the energy of a shared purpose between all the people in that meeting that we want to get to the right decisions on these things. And we want to then, as leaders of the company, go back to the field and mobilize large numbers of people to create a ton of alpha. That's a fantastic meeting.
The way you run an electric meeting is the leader doesn't set the agenda for the meeting, the people set the agenda for the meeting. So what I do is I send out what would normally be the PowerPoint presentation of the agenda for the meeting ahead of time, and people are expected to read that. And then I have everybody -- we have an app and everybody has to fill out the app and put in their biggest takeaways that they learned from reading that and from being in the business on related subjects.
And secondly, they have to put in, okay, now we've read what our challenges are, what our opportunities are, what our goals are. What do you think are questions that are worth going around the room once we meet in person that's a good use of everyone's time. That's going to help us achieve goals of creating value for shareholders, for delighting customers, for improving the employee engagement and so forth.
And then we take all those. We eliminate the dupes because often you get a lot of dupes the good takeaways and the good questions. And we send them back, and everyone rates each one of those takeaways and each one of those questions on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of the importance of the value that they think discussing that in the group would add. And now we've got our agenda. We start with the ones that have the highest rankings and we go down until class is over, I'm joking class, until the meeting is over.
And that becomes an inclusive, democratic way to set the agenda that people really buy into. They really pay attention to what's going on in the meeting because they set the agenda. This is what they wanted to talk about. And that's a rule of the meeting is that there are no devices on. There are no side conversations. There are no distractions here. You have to pay attention. If you have the privilege of being invited to this meeting, you're concentrating on the one person who's speaking at a time, and you're giving that person your 100% attention.
Your eyes are right on that person. You're ears are listening right to moving from that person's mouth, and you're feeling what they're feeling, and you get really in tune with the person. And it's such an exhilarating experience for the speaker and for the people who are listening. For the person speaking, imagine how validating that is, Patrick. That you're in a meeting, you got 20 of your colleagues of your peers there. And everyone is just looking right at you and really genuinely interested in what you have to say.
It just builds up your confidence. It also gets you in the flow, gets you in the zone. And you also feel a certain inspiration and motivation to say important things, because you've got all these people paying attention to what you're saying. So it gets you really in the zone. And then all the people are listening, and it cultivates a flexible mindset, which is so critical in leadership in business where you're constantly reevaluating your hypotheses based on new evidence, new information. And that's what those meetings are like and people really want to be in those meetings.
There is a lot to unpack in these paragraphs but, taking a step back, it is important to note that the idea that a meeting should be electric is somewhat novel. My sense is that most people see meetings as utilitarian at best and necessary evils at worst. The premise that they should be exciting and empowering is an important re-framing in my mind. The nuances of how to achieve those goals and break through people’s inherent biases regarding meetings is another topic altogether. But how about we all start off with the collective goal of leaving a meeting feeling like it was not only valuable but also fun?
Another thing that stood out was the Bridgewater-like crowdsourcing and polling regarding the most important takeaways and questions to ask. One of the issues with meetings, especially as the group becomes larger, is that the topic may not be extremely relevant to everyone in the room, virtual or physical. That inevitably leads people to zone out, to check their phones (not allowed in an XPO meeting) and to not feel like there is any reason to participate. It is not hard to argue that that dynamic makes meetings a time waster for a lot of people, many of whom have a high perceived opportunity cost of their time. As an antidote to that, by having people read the material beforehand, contribute questions and vote, it is easy for the attendees to feel invested. My guess is that feeling of involvement improves the quality of the conversation and elicits participation that would have been absent otherwise. Plus, it virtually ensures that everyone is prepared for the meeting and is knowledgeable about what their colleagues are working on. Within the context of a specific meeting, that might not immediately benefit the entire organization. But over time, having marginally more productive and empowering meetings must lead to better financial outcomes and a more healthy company culture.
Next, as Brad hinted at above, I am a huge supporter of having a devil’s advocate in every meeting. That person’s job is to pose thoughtful questions and push back if there is anything that doesn’t make sense. That may sound simple and logical, but my experience has taught me that there is a delicate cultural balance required to consistently generate respectful debates among colleagues without devolving into raised voices, hurt feelings, and extreme defensiveness. For anyone thinking about building in respectful disagreement, my advice is to take it slow. Even within the investment industry where there is often vigorous debate about stocks and companies within meetings, introducing a dedicated “short” analyst can be tricky. I have said many times that Cove Street’s founder did a remarkable job of creating an investment culture where people were quite comfortable both giving and receiving constructive feedback. But it takes time and periodic policing from leadership. New people have to be carefully inoculated into that culture, potentially after spending time at firms where there wasn’t as much focus on creating a safe place for people to disagree and battle it out. However, similar to how making people feel like they belong in meetings gives a boost to the culture, so does incentivizing lively debate.
Lastly, the notion that meetings should also be empowering confidence builders for the presenters is intriguing. It’s a nice platitude to say that, as a firm, we host meetings where our people leave feeling invigorated or refreshed or validated. But we all know that, intent aside, it is often not the outcome of most meeting experiences. Frankly, most meetings are obligations that to at least some extent distract or waylay us from the things we believe we need to get done. In the investing context, analysts and PMs have other stocks to focus on and it can be challenging to get everyone to give the proper focus and attention to the topic and presenter du jour. Banning laptops and phones is a good start. But it occurs to me that the whole premise of meetings has be re-thought to establish the goal of lifting up and supporting the presenter. I will sheepishly admit that I don’t think I have ever walked into a meeting with the expressed intent of building up one of my colleagues. Maybe I should change my own perspective on what meetings are for and what can be achieved.
The big takeaway from listening to the interview with Brad is that the usefulness of meetings can be fundamentally altered by being intentional and setting objectives that previously were likely not even within most people’s consideration set. That is easier said than done but it is hard to argue with the success Brad’s companies have had over time, and across industries.
Really hoping to lead an electric meeting in the near future,
Ben