 Great photo by Grok. Credit where it’s due. Here at Copel Communications, we’re blessed to have some really great clients, and this article showcases one of them. What started out as something fairly mundane, transformed—for us, at least—into a teachable moment. And we’d like to share it with you.
The setup: We were one of many attendees to join on a 45-minute Zoom call with our client, to cover a number of in-progress projects. Others on the call included another vendor, and several internal members of the client’s team. One woman from the client company would be running the meeting. Let’s call her Sally. In case you were curious, we arrived prepared. The agenda had been shared with us in advance, and we were ready to step up, when called upon, and give our update on the various projects we were working on at the time. So. The call begins on time. There’s maybe 30 seconds of hello’s and how’s-the-weather-by-you’s. Then Sally started running it. She “went around the table,” asking everyone for their updates. Like us, they came prepared. So the responses were along the lines of “Progressing well,” or “On time,” or “I’ve had a slight delay due to X.” There was an occasional question for the group, which either the group, or the appropriate member within it, quickly answered. As it turned out, the other vendor didn’t show. Not sure why, but it’s a factor in this story. Sally completed all her check-in’s. Then she asked us all, “Is there anything else to cover?” Everyone said, “No.” And so she said, “Okay then, this meeting is over. Have a good day.” And she ended the call. If stuff like this happens to you all the time, then 1) this story shouldn’t surprise you, and 2) consider yourself lucky. That’s because 3) stuff like this almost never happened with us. And we’ve been in business, replete with meetings, for decades. The teachable moment Everyone left the meeting in great spirits. Not only was the meeting short, but it was productive. Kudos to Sally for recognizing that once all the boxes were checked, there was zero need for additional bureaucracy. Indeed, you could say that the meeting was effectively extra productive, because it gave every attendee an extra 40 minutes back in their day to do real work which was on their plates, when the meeting had started, waiting for them. Do the math: If there were 12 people in that meeting, that comes to eight person-hours recouped. An entire day. Jeff Bezos, when he was still running Amazon, was famous for requiring six-page updates from his reports. You had to be succinct. Time is everyone’s inventory, and it’s precious. Sally reminded us of Jeff Bezos. In the best possible way. Of course, if there’s 45 minutes’ worth of stuff to actually cover in a 45-minute meeting, then expend every second on it. But if not, heck, the five-minute version of the 45-minute meeting is an aspirational goal. Putting all wind-baggers on notice: This is a teachable moment. Thoughts? Pile-on ideas? We’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment below or contact us directly.
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