www.ipmsglobal.com

"I will double your bonus if you halve the duration and the volume of all meetings, every single quarter, this

year, or I'll halve it if you fail."

Jacques Marais – Executive Chairman, IPMS Global

Originally posted on LinkedIn - April 10, 2016 - 1,877 views - 130 Likes - 59 Shares Thinking in minutes makes a phenomenal difference and, once adopted, it changes everything. A brilliant CEO I work with in one the world's most successful service businesses, planned and executed this and keeps to it. He was immensely frustrated with the speed at which leaders and their teams were operating. "When will they decide, do, deliver? What exactly are we waiting for? Please tell me it isn't to fit into our calendar of meetings?" He sent out great articles to his team and the organisation. Everyone commented on how great it was to be reading about how 'others' did it but this did little to change the habits within his senior team and their divisions. So he went for it, very well prepared but he went for it: "I will double your bonus if you halve the duration and the volume of all meetings, in each every quarter, in the next year.... and halve it if you fail. By example: I will deliver our full Board and ExCo meetings in 90 minutes by the 4th quarter. I firmly believe we will be out-of-control if, by the 4th quarter, we cannot prepare, meet, decide and conclude business in 90 minutes."

Take out travel time, so per hour today start with 50 minutes and get down to 6 mins. They reacted of course: "You mean halve them, then again, then again, then again. An hour into 7.5 minutes?" "No, please take out travel time, so per hour today start with 50 minutes.." "What about innovation and conception and new thinking!" said the product, marketing and customer divisions. "Same, same" he said - "Bother yourselves, me and the divisions when you can get our attention and decision in minutes. Today, we are always too late to market, we are leading nothing because we are all collectively living through each division's challenges, issues and alternatives, on every operational and strategic matter and it is a complete waste, waste, waste of time."

A waste, waste, waste of time ! But they countered: "We need to time explain things! For each of you to understand alternatives and the benefits collectively and to each division." "I disagree" he said calmly, "Let me explain why. If you present something new and/or conceptual, and/or innovative and/or beautiful to me and relevant divisions and we need you to explain to us 'why it is beautiful' then you have failed and we have failed. For it is our job to know why it's beautiful and how it benefits us, it's your job to know that we will know this before we even see it." "That's a LOT OF KNOWING!" they said dismayed "Yes, it is, now we must get on with it. Tempus fugit."

www.ipmsglobal.com

"How? Where do we start?" they asked "With (i) when and (ii) good strategy." he said simply. "Begin with when you want a decision, when you want resources [human, physical, financial], when you want others to complete things by." Example: " At the meeting next Tuesday, we will be deciding x,y,z before we leave the room, and we have set aside 50 minutes* for the meeting so be prepared please, and know we will decide there and then = when." *like all good leaders who leave 5 mins other side for travel. "What is good strategy?" they inquired? "Let's all use Richard Rumelt's Good Strategy** guidelines, they are proven and work well on everything we are doing or could be doing. We don't need to be perfect on all our objectives if the goal is clear and we can 'all' focus on it, and we have a guiding policy that empowers us to 'do it' and subordinates everything else. We need to think near-term - 'now, now' - and stop thinking 'in the next quarter/year’ and let's emphasise and exploit the perceived advantages we have over our competitors, here is his set of steps we will follow."

1. The Challenge we are facing, diagnosing the problem 2. Examining your system, up/downstream using Chain-linked Thinking 3. Declaring a clear Goal with complete Focus 4. Setting a Guiding Policy that supports the Goal and Focus 5. Coordinating all connected systems and resources into brilliant Design 6. Rapid, capable execution to drive Near-term Feasibility 7. Clear, believable Proximate Objectives to hit milestones at pace 8. Understanding and exploiting our Advantages and Competitors Limitations

Silent for a while, one chipped in...."What's a Guiding Policy?" "It's something like a golden rule of law we all stick to, an example might be: 'Think mobile application first' so if what you are doing matches the golden rule first, carry on. Another might be: 'Use all resources on our focus strategy first', if what you are doing matches the golden rule first, carry on, if not stop and get back onto the guiding policy." Then another asked: " How do we check that what we plan to bring to meetings works or will work, or will deliver the benefits we anticipate?" The CEO smiled, all he had learned and tested for the passed 6 months was being asked for: " A great guy called Lovejoy*** developed 8 really cool tests which will help us all prepare better. We will also all commit to using these before we bring things to the table. Here is his set of tests."

1. The Customer Test – is the customer clearly identified and how will the stated objective benefit the customer?

2. The Means Test – does the objective specify the means by which it will be achieved? 3. The Identity Test – does the objective make it clear who does what? 4. The Measurement Test – is the objective measurable? 5. The Sufficiency Test – are there any circumstances in which achieving the objective

would not be enough? 6. The Side-Effect Test – could achieving the objective produce any adverse side effects? 7. The Assumption Test – are we basing our objective on any untested assumptions? 8. The Jargon Test – can everyone involved understand the objective?

Finally someone asked "Should we just have good meeting rules?"

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"No" said the CEO. "We are all competent adults. We just need to see time as scarce and use it like the measure of life it is... time is life's only currency and we need to use it wisely to both survive and thrive, starting now." So their journey began: an impossible mission or a provable, measurable, systematic way to leverage the organisation to be the differentiator in their sector? It proved so! Thank you for reading, and feel free to pass this on Further reading * xhttp://firstround.com/review/speed-as-a-habit/ ** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZrTl16hZdk *** A Systematic Approach to Getting Results’ published by Gower ISBN 0-566-07541-5