How to Run Effective Meetings | Matt Mochary | The Tim Ferriss Show podcast

In terms of running effective and efficient meetings, I believe there are three types of meetings. Meeting one is all verbal. These are the 99% of meetings are like this, and they're usually really inefficient, and everyone sort of gets frustrated, and the only people they get to speak are the people who are bolder, and the people who are quieter and more introverted don't even speak, and so we think they don't have anything to say, but it turns out they have a lot to share, and they also don't feel bought in because they don't feel included in the conversations.

就举办高效、高效的会议而言，我认为有三种类型的会议。第一种会议是全口头的。这种会议占了99%，通常效率非常低下，每个人都感到沮丧，只有那些胆大的人才会发言，而那些内向而文静的人甚至不会开口。因此，我们认为他们没有什么可说的，但事实上他们有很多可以分享的内容，而且他们也不会觉得被尊重，因为他们觉得自己没有参与到谈话中去。

Second type of meeting, people pre-write. This is where Amazon goes. This is saying if you wanna bring something up in this meeting, you've gotta write it out, and in the beginning of the meeting, we'll all read it, and then we'll give our opinions and we'll make a decision. Those are much more effective meetings because now we have real content that can be shared and consumed, and so the conversation is not superficial. The conversation to run your decision is on a much deeper level.

第二种类型的会议是人们提前写好的。这就是亚马逊的做法。意思是如果你想在这个会议上提出一些问题，你必须把它写出来，在会议开始时，我们都会读一遍，然后我们会给出自己的意见和决策。这种会议更加有效，因为我们现在有了真正可以分享和消化的内容，所以谈话不再肤浅。讨论决策的对话在更深层次上进行。

And then the most effective meetings is the type three, which is very difficult to get to, and that is people submit in advance their issues, topics, in writing, but 24 hours in advance. Then in that last 24 hours, all the meeting participants read and comment on all of that material, so that when the meeting starts, we've now gone one level, two levels down, and the verbal portion is at the third and much deeper level. I now already know what everybody thinks, including the people that are introverted and don't like to speak up during a meeting because they don't think it's not that bold. Now I know everybody's thoughts, and now everybody is actually bought in to whatever the decision is because they participated in it. That's level three. The company that does this best is BRACS that I know of, and it requires a lot of holding people accountable. And if someone does not enter their issue by 24 hours before the exact meeting, they don't get to enter it. And if people have not commented on the issue by the time the meeting starts, they don't get to comment. It's an extreme version of accountability that drives one time people will miss, but once they miss one time, they are absolutely prepared the next time. So that to me is the quick and dirty version.

然后，最有效的会议是第三种类型，这也是最难达到的，即在会议开始前24小时，人们提前以书面形式提交他们的问题和话题。然后在最后的24小时里，所有与会者阅读并对所有材料发表评论，这样当会议开始时，我们已经下降了一级、两级，口头部分已经进入到第三个更深的层次。我现在已经知道每个人的想法，包括那些内向的人，在会议期间不喜欢发言，因为他们觉得这样不够大胆。现在我知道每个人的想法，每个人都对决策表达了认同，因为他们参与其中。这就是第三个层次。我所知道的做得最好的公司是BRACS，这需要对人们负责。如果有人在准确会议开始前24小时内没有提出他们的问题，他们就不能提出。如果人们在会议开始时还没有对问题发表评论，他们就不能进行评论。这是一种极端的问责制，会导致一些人会错过一次，但一旦他们错过一次，他们下次就会做好准备。所以，这对我来说就是一个简单明了的版本。

Yeah, I love quick and dirty, but what percentage I'm just curious of meetings get canceled once a document is created and people add all of their comments? I know maybe a precise percentage is not needed, but do they still tend to proceed with the meeting and verbal portion of that? Or are there a lot of cases where, you know what, we didn't actually need a meeting. This is resolved to what we needed to resolve. There's always a little bit of synchronous time that's required because, again, the writing doesn't fully satisfy the communication. And so, at least Pedro, I don't think Pedro at Brexit is canceling exact team meetings because the issues and the comments are so thorough, he's like, got it, got everything I need, like I don't need to see you guys anymore. That's not happening. It's, let's do the final, I've heard senior comments, now I'd like to hear verbally, you know, you and you and you please share your verbally, okay, now I get it, now I have my decision, here's my decision, let me share it with you, or I'm gonna appoint someone else to be the decision maker.

是的，我喜欢快速且简洁，但我很好奇有多少会议在文档创建并添加所有评论后被取消？我知道也许不需要精确的百分比，但他们是否还倾向于继续进行会议和口头部分？还是有很多情况下，你知道吗，我们实际上不需要开会。这个问题已解决。因为沟通不能完全依靠书面，所以总会有一些同步时间的需求。至少Pedro在Brexit的情况下，他没有取消团队会议，因为问题和评论都很详细，他会说，我明白了，我已经得到了我需要的一切，我不需要再见你们了。不会发生这种情况。他会说，让我们进行最后的讨论，我已经听到了高级意见，请你们以口头形式分享你们的意见，好吗，现在我明白了，我已经作出了决定，这是我的决定，让我告诉你们，或者我会委任其他人来做决策。

But yeah, the synchronous portion is needed to sort of finalize the decision to really make people feel heard. And then there's another portion which cannot be done asynchronously. And that is feedback. Because it's so dangerous to give feedback asynchronously because if I give you what I think is constructive feedback and you get insulted or feel defensive, and I don't see that or I don't hear that, then I can't say, oh, Tim, wait a second, I didn't mean, I meant that with love, I didn't mean to make you feel anger. So if I'm not there to catch it, you'll feel anger towards me and to get resolved. Exactly. And within a few days, because of confirmation bias, you'll have already amassed enough evidence to prove that I'm the devil, that our relationship will be destroyed forever. And so feedback must be done, I believe, in person. And I also think that's a critical component of successful meetings. Give me feedback as manager, let me give, give each other feedback as peers. I mean, that doesn't even exist in most companies. Rarely do people give feedback to the CEO, but almost never do people give feedback to each other at the exact team level. Yeah, very true.

是的，同步部分是必需的，以便最终决定确实让人们感受到被听到。然后还有另一个部分是无法异步完成的。那就是反馈。因为在异步情况下给予反馈是非常危险的，如果我给你我认为是建设性的反馈，而你感到受辱或者抱有防御心态，而我没有看到或者听到，那么我就无法说：“哦，Tim，等一下，我不是那个意思，我是怀着爱意说的，我不是想让你感到愤怒。”所以如果我没有在场，你会对我感到愤怒，并且产生解决。确切地说，只需几天，因为确认偏误的缘故，你就已经积累了足够的证据证明我是恶魔，我们的关系将永远毁灭。所以我认为反馈必须是面对面的。我也认为这是成功会议的关键组成部分。作为经理给我反馈，我们作为同事互相给予反馈，这在大多数公司中甚至都不存在。很少有人给首席执行官反馈，但几乎没有人在团队层面上互相给予反馈。是的，非常正确。

So I introduce that, certainly Brex does, and almost all the companies I coach do.

所以我介绍了这个，当然Brex也介绍了，我辅导的几乎所有公司也是如此。