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One of the realest ‘real meetings’ I ever attended was held by a teacher and inspiration of mine, the enigmatic and bear-like Michael Breen. Pioneer of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and a great business consultant, Michael is not a man of many words but you had better listen up, because the ones he uses matter.

Michael walked to the front of the room, looked at us with a smile and simply asked: ‘Any Questions?’

That was it. As it happened, there were a load of questions and the meeting was a fascinating one. Two hours shot by in a flash. But if there hadn’t been a question, Michael wouldn’t have continued. It would have been the shortest meeting on record. But it would have been real.

I am tempted to treat this chapter the same way. Having comprehensively savaged, mocked and character-assassinated all those ‘nearly meetings’, I am hoping that the value of really meeting is self-evident. And leave it at that.

However …

I have been working in business long enough to know that there will be questions. And they are going to come at you thick and fast when you start changing meetings.

To you it’s obvious that really meeting your fellow humans in an effective, authentic and elegant way will generate more value in your company, improve relationships with colleagues and customers, resolve conflicts at home, at work and in the world. You think it’s unarguable that genuine rather than fake meetings lead to better decisions, clearer actions, more interesting products and services.

You’d think. However, the questions and challenges will come. People don’t like mediocrity, but it is amazing how hard they will argue for it when you offer a change.

One person you are going to bump into on your travels is the Rolex Warrior. He (for it usually is a he) will walk – or rather weave – up to you in the bar at some point, wearing a striped shirt that makes your eyes strobe. And he’s going to ask you, point-blank: ‘What’s the point of this really meeting stuff?’

It’s a rhetorical question. He means, ‘There is no point. Business is the way it is. It may be mediocre, but there’s no way things are going to change.’

I look him coolly in the eye. ‘The value of really meeting? Ask your wife. Sorry, ex-wife.’ That’s in my fantasy anyway, where I am played by a bullet-dodging, black-coated Keanu Reeves. Back in real life, I’m gripping my beer with a polite smile and I probably point out that:

Really Meeting makes us Smarter

Once a month I walk out onto a theatre stage in London’s West End to sing an opera I have never learned, with music I have never heard, characters that are completely new and no idea of where the story starts or ends. It’s like that recurrent nightmare people have about appearing naked in public with no script, combined with the pathological fear others have about having to sing in front of an audience.

I should say I am not alone, but part of a group of fellow thrill-seekers who make up the world’s only improvising opera company, Impropera (www.impropera.co.uk).

It’s never comfortable, but what makes it hugely valuable every time is to experience what a group of people can collectively invent when they are put under real pressure.

In the improv world it is called ‘Group Mind’, the capacity of several minds to think ‘as one’. When the show is good we each have a feeling that someone else came up with the good ideas. It’s the glue that holds together TV impro shows like Whose Line Is It Anyway? And I suggest it’s one of the key components of real meetings.

When you are really meeting, people don’t hang on to their own ideas but build on each others’. Instead of the plague of ‘buts’ that stifle nearly meetings and stop the creative process flowing, a real meeting is full of ‘yes’s’ as the participants accept what is emerging and build on it. It’s business jazz.

Ron the Consultant sounds more like a jazz improviser than a business professional when he says, ‘A great meeting is where you turn up with 20 pages but use none of them. Instead you get up, gather round the flipchart and together you deal with what needs to be done.’

There’s a stark contrast with the ‘every person for themselves’ character of the nearly meeting, as Pharma senior executive Thomas Breuer explains:

It’s a fundamental problem when you have a series of monologues happening. It’s so tempting just to leap in with your own idea. My colleagues and I have now trained ourselves to say ‘I paid a lot of attention to what you said – now let me build on this and give my view.’ You create much higher value when you really concentrate on what the previous person said, rather than go 180 degrees with a completely disconnected idea. We now make a conscious effort to create something of higher value by joining the dots. When we do this the output of the meeting multiplies.

When you are in flow like this, your individuality seems to be replaced by a group identity. The ideas don’t originate from the individuals but emerge in the space between them.

It’s as if you are individual fingers but on the same hand. You hear sportsmen talk about this heightened team feeling. Likewise, soldiers working with comrades under testing conditions. While it’s crazy to think of the thumb and finger competing with each other, that is effectively what is happening when we nearly meet.

If you look down on meetings from an imaginary bird’s-eye viewpoint – and I recommend this perspective whenever you get stuck – participants look less like human beings and more like components of a larger network. I think of many radio telescopes combining to create an array of receivers that’s far more sensitive than a single unit. Seen from this eye-in-the-sky angle, a meeting isn’t really generating ideas, it’s amplifying the ones it picks up from ‘out there’.

‘Out there’ is where the customer is, where the business is really taking place, where the future is forming and true innovation lurks. Addicts of the inward-looking process meeting would do well to ‘turn the dish’ outwards, because that is where the value is usually to be found.

Another word for this experience of flow is ‘ensemble’, a performing arts term – from the French word meaning ‘together’ – for a group of virtuosos who agree to play, write and perform together. Though the myth of the lone genius is widely promoted in the arts world, the majority of great work is done by ensembles really meeting and creating together.

Really Meeting Creates Clarity

One of the functions of really meeting is that we leave clearer than when we arrived.

I think clarity is a Holy Grail of business. Something that people want but requires a real quest to find. Clarity is hard to achieve by yourself. If you listen, your mind is a constant swirl of signals. When the time comes to be clear, your mind hasn’t made up its mind.

‘How can I know what I think till I see what I say?’ as the little girl asked. Real Meetings help us get clearer, collectively, than we could do individually.

A common criticism of religion is that it requires you to accept dogma in an unthinking way. I am not particularly religious, but coming from a Jewish background I can’t help noticing how un-accepting Jews seem to be when they want to get clear. The process is dynamic, argumentative and usually very noisy. Scholars studying the Talmud traditionally sit opposite each other on specially constructed tables and basically argue with each other about the meaning of every word and phrase. I don’t know if this explains why there are so many Jewish lawyers, but I think I understand why our family meals were so noisy when I was growing up.

When we really meet, truths aren’t dispensed but are hammered out across a table. The sacred texts are not accepted in a pre-digested, face-value way but only gather meaning through the to and fro of discussion. You only get clear when you get collective …

Really Meeting is Inclusive

There was a great moment in music history, in around 1300, when church choirs stopped chanting in unison and burst into glorious ‘polyphony’, where lots of diverse voices singing different lines weave together into a rich, complex harmony.

Really meeting is like that. It operates in quadrasonic surround sound. It enables all voices to be heard … even the quiet ones.

As Thomas Breuer explains, it can be a challenge, but it’s worth the effort:

When you put people together from very different fields and hierarchy levels you have to spend time to make sure that everyone really speaks up and each individual contribution is recognised. Hierarchy in innovative meetings is counterproductive. I imagine it’s a bit like how an orchestral conductor has to pay equal attention to the entire brass section and the solo piccolo.

If I have a lot of people sitting around me who are senior management peers, then fine. But if you have physicians, statisticians or analysts responsible for the data management of a project it is essential to encourage them to speak up and bring them up to a level where they can contribute.

I find that these people often have crucial insights to offer that raise the conversation or bring it down to earth. If they don’t speak up and instead leave the meeting thinking ‘Too bad’, we are losing value.

Everyone is used to the cliché there are no stupid questions, but to create an atmosphere where this is really the case requires a lot from the person running the meeting. Everyone has to know there will be no punishment for so-called ‘dumb’ suggestions. The creation of a common understanding, culture, platform is important. Management has to create a common language, a licence to operate, so that people dare to speak up.

I remember a safety meeting when the imminent swine flu pandemic and the expected distribution of tens of millions of vaccine doses was going to result in an exponential growth of safety events; 20 to 25 times more than the safety department could normally handle. We were starting to think about this. Who else can rapidly join the safety team? Can we get additional resources from other functions in- or outside the company? Then all of a sudden one guy spoke up. He is not very senior but he really knows our operation. He’s what I call a quiet voice. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘resource is only one way to approach this. Another way is to look at our processes and take fat out of the system. Why don’t we engage with governmental agencies and explore ways to stagger reporting on products which have been in the market for 15 to 20 years?’

This one comment triggered an avalanche of new ideas. That’s what I mean by a really inclusive meeting.

Really Meeting allows Real Conversations to happen

‘You don’t really want to have a war, do you, your Highness?’

It’s not a phrase that you or I might use too often. But it’s the sort of conversational gambit you might need at your fingertips if you happen to be the head of a global NGO like Oxfam. Dame Barbara Stocking is a fan of really meeting. She has to be when dealing with potentially explosive international situations.

There is a head of state I can think of who thinks the world is against him. He is constantly about to go to war with a neighbouring state. So recently I got on a plane. The fact that I took the trouble to go out there and visit him was already an important step. Sometimes just showing up is the key. We had a very human discussion and in the middle of it I just asked him point-blank if he really intended to go to war. After quite a pause he replied. ‘No, I don’t want to do that.’

Nearly meeting skirts the dangerous issues. When you are really meeting, people say what they mean, mean what they say, and the conversations that need to happen take place.

This is a great example of what I call ‘taking the gorilla off the fridge’. Essentially, if there is a subject which should be talked about but isn’t, you severely compromise the quality of your meeting. Imagine having a gorilla on your fridge while you are having Sunday lunch. Everyone is carrying on as normal, but everyone knows things are far from OK. Some people call this having ‘an elephant in the room’. Different animal, equally debilitating effect. My advice is to refer to the un-talked-about beast right from the start. When you set up a meeting you can include a phrase like ‘I know some of you are thinking X …’ or ‘If I were in your shoes, I know I’d be wondering about Y.’

You don’t have to go into detail, but just mentioning the unmentionable eases tension and creates the conditions where a real meeting can occur.

Thomas Breuer points to two other key factors when he talks about the importance of ‘a common language’ and ‘a licence to operate’ in encouraging real conversations to happen. The in-depth work we have done with him and his organisation showed how important it is that everyone has a common understanding of what a real conversation means and that they know they are mandated to have them with colleagues irrespective of their level in the hierarchy. Once you have achieved these two things, real conversations start to propagate through an organisation like a healthy ‘virus’. ‘Let’s have a real conversation’ becomes a common phrase that’s no more threatening than ‘Let’s have a coffee’. You’ve turned what was an exotic and rather threatening idea into a common currency.

Very few large organisations have really done that groundwork. So it’s often up to individuals – up to you – to start the ball rolling. As we’ll see later in the book, there are many reasons we might choose to back off from and miss the opportunity for really meeting. It requires some confidence in yourself and a real trust in the value of Real Conversation.

‘It took a bit of nerve to ask him the war question’ admits Dame Barbara, and she is, I can assure you, no wallflower. ‘But it was worth it to get the subject on the table. I really do believe that all people are equal, so at one level, I don’t care.’

What touches me about the story is that once you create human connection, really meeting another human being, anything is possible.

Really Meeting is Three-Dimensional

Looking at the modern working environment I can’t help thinking we human beings have designed a world we weren’t really designed for. A few centuries of listening to the head and more or less ignoring the wisdom of the body have produced a world that makes sense to the head but bewilders the noble physical being that’s hiding beneath our business suits.

‘And here,’ they say proudly when they show you around their offices for the first time, ‘is the meeting room.’ There is the big, important-looking table, surrounded by those heavy, expensive chairs. And a bowl of mints. To the human animal inside us, that room is clearly a place of punishment not work.

Really meeting recognises that humans are three-dimensional beings designed to move as well as think. If you look through a window at a real meeting, you’ll see movement. Some people are gesticulating, making shapes in the air to communicate the shapes in their minds. Some people are pacing the room. Others have their feet on the table with their eyes closed and are rubbing their temples.

If a real meeting gets ‘stuck’, the participants know that a bit of physical movement can unstick it. You take a break, a short walk, have a stretch, call a time-out. If you need more inspiration, you literally get some fresh air; because the lithe, versatile physical being that we once were, remembers that when you refill your lungs you also recharge your mind.

Real meetings are three-dimensional because we are too.

Really Meeting is the new Work

I like to ask business audiences to look at their fingernails. Very few of them have coal dust, soil or heavy machine oil underneath them. In general, business life doesn’t include the physical labour of clawing commodities out of the earth, harvesting by hand or grappling with heavy machinery.

We are moving into a post-industrial age where knowledge and ideas are the assets. Meetings are where these assets are formed and traded. They are to our times what the steam hammer, forge and mill were to the Industrial Age.

Meetings are where value is created – or lost. When people complain that meetings are getting in the way of their work, you might want to point out that, increasingly, meetings are the work.

Information, ideas, concepts are the new commodities. Intellectual property is as valuable as bricks and mortar. The meeting is the modern mine …

Great businesses like Marks and Spencer, Procter and Gamble, Dolce and Gabbana, Ben and Jerry remind us that commerce stems from the meeting of two or more minds. The word Company (from the Old French for companions) appears in the names of millions of enterprises – another reminder that value is generated where and when people meet.

Sole proprietors are rarely that. They operate as small gatherings of friends and families. More and more people are self-employed, but that doesn’t mean people are working alone. As Tom Ball, CEO of the London-based ‘co-working’ venture Neardesk, explains:

About 13 per cent of the UK workforce now works from home for part, if not all, of the week. For many it’s an attractive alternative to the traditional commute-to-the-office life. However, people often discover that sitting at home quickly becomes boring and lonely. They can rent small offices, but they’re still alone. For this reason we are seeing a real growth in what we call co-working, where individuals gather in ‘business hubs’ so they can get the benefits of being ‘in company’ without the commuting life and all the stress that comes with it. They bump into people, have stimulating conversations, trip over business opportunities they would otherwise have missed. They get the best of both worlds. I think in a few years belonging to a business club or hub – being part of this new kind of self-creating business community – will be as common as gym membership.

Mac or Mozzarella? A question of quality

Really meeting helps us solve the problems we have and avoid bigger ones in future. It’s an engine of enterprise, past and future. It’s how we do deals, build things, make stuff happen. It makes us smarter than we can ever be by ourselves, helping us create value, better understand our world, lead richer lives and have better relationships. It’s how we can, hopefully, create common ground, resolve conflict and prevent ourselves from boiling our planet or blowing ourselves into oblivion.

But will knowing this change things?

I think the ultimate argument for real meetings – the choice between genuine and fake – is about the quality of the lives we want to lead.

They say the quality of your life reflects what you are prepared to tolerate. If you can put up with lousy, endless meetings then you are certain to get more of them. I recommend clients become intolerant of ‘nearly meeting’. Allergies are trendy these days. Everyone has one. So why not become allergic, as an entire organisation, to junk meetings? The thing about allergies (to gluten, peanuts, the fabric inside airline pillows) is that your body will let you know – in no uncertain terms – when any of that unhealthy stuff comes near. If we sneezed or broke out in a rash when someone suggested ‘nearly’ meeting, we’d quickly train ourselves to seek out ‘really meeting’ instead.

When McDonalds caused uproar by moving into the southern Italian town of Altamura in Apulia in 2001, local baker Luigi Digesu decided to make a stand. Five years later the juggernaut food chain admitted defeat and withdrew. They weren’t beaten back by protest, but by quality. Luigi had not set out to force McDonald’s to close down in any ‘bellicose spirit’. He had merely offered the 65,000 residents tasty panini filled with local ingredients like mortadella, mozzarella, basil and chopped tomatoes, which they had overwhelmingly preferred to hamburgers and chicken nuggets. ‘It is a question of free choice,’ concluded the baker.

When you try to change meetings in your company you may well face the same sort of arguments that Luigi and his slow-food companions faced. ‘Poor quality is cheaper’ … ‘It’s not ideal but it’ll do’ … ‘There isn’t enough quality to go around’ … ‘We’re too busy to make the change’ … ‘A whole industry is set up for low quality, high volume. High quality would be nice, but it’s not practical.’

The answer, as it was for Luigi, is to make your meetings so mouthwatering and wholesome that those unhealthy nearly meetings don’t get a look in.

And how do you create meetings ‘to die for’, not die from? Read on!