Speaker 1: Twenty twenty two is well underway, and yeah, we're still
Speaker 1: doing a lot of virtual meetings, and despite the fact
Speaker 1: that we have all by now participated in literally hundreds,
Speaker 1: if not thousands of them, they are still pretty average.
Speaker 1: But let's not blame Zoom straightaway. Meetings as a work
Speaker 1: practice have gone unexamined for far longer than they've been online.
Speaker 1: At Lassian's head of research and development, Dom Price, saw
Speaker 1: this and thought that perhaps there might be a better way.
Speaker 1: He and his team did a deep dive into what
Speaker 1: a meeting is for and what's holding it back, and
Speaker 1: maybe not surprisingly, they found that almost nothing about the
Speaker 1: meeting as we know it was worth keeping, so they
Speaker 1: didn't keep it and they replaced some of their regular
Speaker 1: meetings with something else entirely. My name is doctor Amantha Imba.
Speaker 1: I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science
Speaker 1: consultancy Inventium. And this is how I work, a show
Speaker 1: about how to help you do your best work. On
Speaker 1: today is my Favorite Tip episode. We go back to
Speaker 1: an interview from the past and I pick out my
Speaker 1: favorite tip from the interview. In today's show, I speak
Speaker 1: with Dom Price about what led him to do a
Speaker 1: ritual reset, and how he specifically focused on meetings.
Speaker 2: I found myself in this kind of cycle of insanity
Speaker 2: at work where things were getting bigger, longer, more, but
Speaker 2: there didn't seem to be a break point. And similar
Speaker 2: to you, I was looking for the breakpoint. One of
Speaker 2: the things I did for myself and then with my
Speaker 2: team was the ritual reset. And it's just been great
Speaker 2: to kind of go, like, we have all these interventions
Speaker 2: where we kind of think about doing a sprinklean, right,
Speaker 2: you think about like seasons and you change your wardrobe
Speaker 2: and you do a sprinkling. It's like, what's the spring
Speaker 2: clean for my life? And specifically, what's the spring clean
Speaker 2: for meetings? You know, because if you think news kills
Speaker 2: your mojo, amant nothing kills my vibal mojo like lack
Speaker 2: a meeting. And so I'm like, I know they're necessary, evil,
Speaker 2: but how can I make them better? So the ritual
Speaker 2: reset was like, how do we, like, if you assume
Speaker 2: the world's changed, because it has, like my working environment
Speaker 2: is completely different than it was, So how do I
Speaker 2: reset my rituals? And so what we said was, let's
Speaker 2: list all of our rituals, which ones do we want
Speaker 2: to keep, but tweak, right, so they stay that. The
Speaker 2: purpose is the ritual still makes sense, but the way
Speaker 2: we're going to do it's different because we might be
Speaker 2: able to do it asynchronous, or might be able to
Speaker 2: do it online, or we're going to do it in
Speaker 2: a different form because the world has changed. Which ones
Speaker 2: do we want to keep? And they stay the same,
Speaker 2: I'll be honest, very few fell into that category. And
Speaker 2: then which ones? Which ones do we want to kill?
Speaker 2: Which ones just aren't required, we don't need them anymore? Whatever,
Speaker 2: and maybe we use to We use the space to
Speaker 2: time and the freedom to experiment, then try something else.
Speaker 2: And it has been like the most refreshing thing, just
Speaker 2: to go. Meetings don't own me anymore. I own them.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's cool.
Speaker 2: I think it was always true. Humans booked the meetings,
Speaker 2: so humans have always owned them, but we just let
Speaker 2: them dominators and that reset I've done with myself, but
Speaker 2: then with my team, and then what we've done is
Speaker 2: is we're genuinely using the free time it's given us,
Speaker 2: either to invest in ourselves, which is crucial, or to go,
Speaker 2: how do we experiment with new stuff? Because you know
Speaker 2: what the world's changed, and I don't know the answer.
Speaker 2: There isn't. I mean, you can google best practice Hybrid
Speaker 2: distributed teams and you'll get a hold of and BS articles.
Speaker 2: So don't do that. I do. Let's experiment our way
Speaker 2: out of it, and that in itself has been quite fun.
Speaker 1: Give me an example of a ritual law to that
Speaker 1: you've killed. Maybe in relation to meetings.
Speaker 2: There's a whole swath that got killed. So I status updates.
Speaker 2: There's so many where we just gathered in the office
Speaker 2: and it was just this an archaic ritual where we
Speaker 2: just gathered and in certain days we gathered and never
Speaker 2: want to go through the updates. And I'm like, it
Speaker 2: was soul destroying in the office. At least we had
Speaker 2: tea coffee beer on each other. But when you're doing
Speaker 2: that from you, from wherever everyone's doing it from now,
Speaker 2: you're like, wow, this is really sold destroying. So we're like,
Speaker 2: hang on, Not only is it sold destroying, we're trying
Speaker 2: to do this synchronously and we're using people's like live time,
Speaker 2: which should be used for something more spontaneous or higher value.
Speaker 2: So how can we make all our data subdates asynchronous
Speaker 2: and how can we make them consumable? All around the world,
Speaker 2: so you don't have to physically be in the same
Speaker 2: place at the same time, because I have colleagues literally
Speaker 2: all over the world.
Speaker 1: So how did you do that? Was what was the solution.
Speaker 2: Well, we actually started doing it first of all using
Speaker 2: just some of our existing tools, and then realized that
Speaker 2: none of them worked for that purpose. So we built one.
Speaker 2: It's what we do it last year and we're like, ah,
Speaker 2: SoLIT let's just build one, and a team just kind
Speaker 2: of came together and like, let's solve this problem for
Speaker 2: the whole of it last yon, how do we get
Speaker 2: the network of teams to communicate with each other asynchronously?
Speaker 2: And we're like, oh, this this sounds like a fun experiment.
Speaker 2: And so what you get is there two hundred and
Speaker 2: forty character limits. So it's like Twitter and you do
Speaker 2: your update on a frid and it kind of all
Speaker 2: gets flunched together over the weekend, and on Monday morning
Speaker 2: you get a digest of all the projects you're following,
Speaker 2: and you get the two hundred and forty character update,
Speaker 2: and if you want to dig in and find out more,
Speaker 2: you click through and you can read more. But what
Speaker 2: it means is I now don't have any status meetings,
Speaker 2: which I love. Wow. What I really enjoy is on
Speaker 2: that Monday morning when I get that digest, I'm like, ah,
Speaker 2: that project's fine, that one's fine, that one's fine. I
Speaker 2: am not going to talk to you. I'm going to
Speaker 2: leave you alone to just do your work. That is cool.
Speaker 1: Now, is this product available to a Blessian customers or
Speaker 1: just listeners who might not be customers of Alessian.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've put it out there as a beta. I
Speaker 2: think out there as an Now for a beta, it's
Speaker 2: pretty raw because we're still playing with it internally, but
Speaker 2: it will make it out there eventually because we're seeing
Speaker 2: more and more people talk about this the network of
Speaker 2: teams effect and how do this is not about project management,
Speaker 2: it's about project communication. How do like I'm anthor if
Speaker 2: me and you're working on discrete pieces of work, but
Speaker 2: they're going to connect together. How can we connect in
Speaker 2: a meaningful so that I know what you're doing, you
Speaker 2: know what I'm doing, but we don't have to be
Speaker 2: in each other's pockets. So you're autonomous and free to
Speaker 2: do your work, but you're connected in the areas where
Speaker 2: you need to. And it's so far, it's been fascinating experiment.
Speaker 2: That's cool.
Speaker 1: Now, what's the link if people want to go check
Speaker 1: that out?
Speaker 2: If they're just Google Team Central, that's the working name
Speaker 2: for it right now.
Speaker 1: I hope you're feeling all inspired to do a ritual
Speaker 1: reset in your work life, and if meetings are the
Speaker 1: bane of your work life, then perhaps those are a
Speaker 1: good place to start. If you're looking for more tips
Speaker 1: to improve the way that you work. I write a
Speaker 1: short fortnightly newsletter that contains three cool things that I've
Speaker 1: discovered that helped me work better, which range from interesting
Speaker 1: research findings three to gadgets and software that I'm loving.
Speaker 1: You can sign up for that at Howiwork dot co.
Speaker 1: That's how I Work dot co. How I Work is
Speaker 1: produced by Inventim with production support from dead Set Studios.
Speaker 1: And thank you to Martin Nimber who does the audio
Speaker 1: mix for every episode and makes everything sound awesome. See
Speaker 1: you next time.