NOEL: Hello and welcome to another episode of Meetings Done Right which is a series of podcast episodes talking about how to have better meetings in conjunction with Table XI's Inclusion Deck which is a deck of cards that you can use in your meetings to help coordinate and improve the communication in your meetings. In this episode, we are talking about the card which is called Too Much Side Chatter. That card is played by somebody who is given that role and they play that card when they think that people are not present in the meeting. We have a guest with us to help us discuss Side Chatter. Hopefully, none of us will be checking our phones during the podcast. Our guest is Annette Jensen. Annette, would like to introduce yourself? ANNETTE: Thank you, Ashley and Noel, for inviting me in today. I currently work as a Global Strategist. Recently, I have taken on Organization Development at Widen. Organization Development is about aligning people in the workplace to our business goals. So, I work for Widen, we're a software company based in Madison, Wisconsin and London, UK. We build digital asset management software. I consider us guardians of digital content and the ambassadors of the story. So, that's kind of our tag as far as what we believe in for our culture. I've worked for almost every style of organization. I've been a retail record store manager, a contractor for a state agency. I've worked for a global enterprise company, higher education. I've been a union member. I've worked for small business and family business. So, I've got like the span of career for almost every type of business you can work for. I pivoted my career many times but really the last 20 years is spent in technology as a frontend developer, IT, security management. So that's been my focus. And then more recently, last several years has been expanding our organization globally. ASHLEY: Amazing. Annette, I'm so excited that you're on the podcast because I've said, for now years, that Widen is one of my favorite companies. I usually joke that it's my second favorite company, second only to the tech company I work for. And that's been true for a couple of tech companies actually. So, I'm a big fan of the work that you do with digital asset management, as well as building culture. And of course, I love to see a powerhouse in Madison, Wisconsin which is my home, too. ANNETTE: Excellent. I'm grateful that I've had the ability to work with you, Ashley, over the years. So, I'm excited to be here. ASHLEY: Thank you. Tell us about being a freedom-centered workplace. That's something that Widen really prides itself on. Tell us more about that. ANNETTE: Those three words, right -- freedom-centered workplace - is interesting in and of themselves. Even in our own environment, the words 'freedom centered workplace' confuses people. The words come from an organization called WorldBlu. They promote this particular type of culture. And the culture is about removing fear from a person, removing fear from an organization and from the world. They have leadership programs to grow leaders to create this type of work environment. So, freedom-centered isn't about being free to do whatever you want in the workplace; it's about creating organizational democracy. Freedom at work at Widen is about your ability and your freedom to apply your skills and talents within the structure of our corporate ideology, our brand essence, and our strategy while being accountable to yourself, your team, Widen, and the world. And it's based on 10 principles of democracy. So, for us, it's about shifting behaviors, the way people think that kind of ridding employees of that baggage that has come from other organizations that have been dysfunctional. Something that we talk about is -- let me give you an example -- is our power to the edge that we currently are working on within Widen. And this structure gives these freedoms that we want 80% of the decisions to come from the employees at the edge of the organization. They make the decision. Ten percent might come from middle management because it could have legal implications. So, some of those decisions have to stay there. And some maybe 10% percent come from the executive team because it's the path forward in regards to the company. ASHLEY: Sure. ANNETTE: It's a really interesting way to get people to work differently. We get comments all the time. "Oh, I've never worked in an organization like this." And it takes some people some time to acclimate to that. ASHLEY: Incredible. NOEL: All right. So, let's talk about, I guess that implies, if there's a lot of decision making going on, that implies a lot of meetings. [Laughter] NOEL: And that's the kind of thing we're talking about here. And so, with respect to what we're talking about with the card, that's the focus of this episode, what are some of the problems that you have when you have side chatter, when people aren't present in meetings? What sort of difficulties does that cause? ANNETTE: It's so interesting. This is so timely that I'm chatting with you on this topic today. We actually have just recently gone through a meeting success project, just launched it. ASHLEY: You're kidding! ANNETTE: No. This is amazing. I'm going to give some facts and figures that I brought with me just for this because I think you might be a little amazed. At Widen, we collectively spend more than 46,000 hours in meetings annually, which translates to almost $2.5 million per year. ASHLEY: Oh, my God! NOEL: That seems like a lot. ANNETTE: Yeah. Forty two percent of our meetings do not start on time. Thirty four percent of our meetings do not end on time. ASHLEY: Oh! ANNETTE: Thirty five percent of our meetings are of neutral value to the attendees. So conservatively, like example, 40% of the time we spent in meetings and they're not effectively used, that's translating to a million dollars a year which has been crazy. ASHLEY: Yeah. ANNETTE: So, Noel, ask me your question again now. [Laughter] NOEL: So now, what are some of the costs of people not paying attention or not being present or having side chatter? ANNETTE: A whole lot of money. ASHLEY: Yeah. ANNETTE: The other thing is something we've been working on, as well, is everyone is taking a pledge at Widen to actually, going through a slide deck, understanding what is expected of them in meetings and signing off. And it's being held in our system that you've signed off on this meeting project that you're going to do certain things with your meetings. We're just finding people aren't paying attention, and so we're wasting time even after that meeting to go back and catch somebody up because they're busy doing something else on their computer during that meeting. So, there's a lot of churn that occurs, not all the time. I don't want to make this sound as a bad thing. But I'm thinking there's a whole lot of people out there that connect with that, that particular statement. NOEL: One thing I found is that not paying attention in meetings tends to snowball. And as people stop paying attention, other people feel like they can stop paying attention too. I remember very much a number of years ago, I was at a company where we had a lot of check-in meetings and people would spend large chunks of their day in these check-in meetings where most of the meeting was not about them. It was just information being passed to their common manager. And so, people would not pay attention. But every time somebody had a question of somebody else in the room, we had to backup five minutes because the person was invariably not paying attention. And so, you just had this cascade of time being lost, starting with the meeting maybe not being necessary in the first place and then being run sort of poorly. So, what kinds of things can you do to encourage people to be more attentive or in the moment when you're in a meeting? ANNETTE: Actually, we've changed meeting times. So, we're shortening. And actually, we use Google Calendar to shorten our time of our meetings. No longer do we have 30 or 60-minute meetings; we have 15 or 25-minute meetings or 50 minute meetings, if needed. But that really shortens that time and you have to focus because you know you're going to be out of there a lot quicker than you were before. The other thing we started as part of the pilot to create better focus is put responsibility back on the facilitator of the meeting. I would walk in and I was part of the pilot and I would say, "OK, I'm doing this pilot for better meetings." That means I have to leave at this time. So, if there's something that occurs after this time, like the last 10 minutes or we run over, they're responsible to get that information to me. So, do you really think they want to go through the extra work of now pushing information to me because they've run over on that meeting time? That actually created a better focus. They know we're going to get up and walk out, they'd better get done and they better create that focus to that meeting so we finish. It's been helpful. That has been a good trick, so to speak, or a good way to encourage focus. ASHLEY: That's really innovative. I can't wait to send you the cards, which at the time of this taping are at the printers. And I can't wait to gift them to you so that you can give us some feedback on how they're working in an environment that's so focused on doing meetings better or "meetings done right". [Laughter] NOEL: One of the issues with this kind of lack of focus or side chatter is that it breaks the focus of the meeting. And I think also in a remote context, it can be very, very hard for a remote person to follow a meeting if people have started to break off into side conversations. ANNETTE: Yes. NOEL: What do you do, as a facilitator, in that case? What do you think is the best way to call people's attention to the fact that they're distracting from the meeting or to pull them back in? ANNETTE: We use Zoom for all our meetings, Noel, which has worked well especially we have quite a few remote employees around the US, as well as our London office. I think the biggest thing was to get everyone to flip their video on and that put some accountability there to facilitate. We also use that chat channel in Zoom to get people to say, "Hey, bring the conversation back," or, "We're off topic." And people will. That's part of our culture. That's the safeness of Widen is you could do that without being afraid to do that and to just bring somebody back. And that happens. It's happened in the past. ASHLEY: That's wonderful. ANNETTE: It just takes practice. It just takes breaking old habits and then bringing it back and people are quite responsive to that. ASHLEY: We also use Zoom. And I actually am a huge fan of Zoom because they have a face smoothing feature that you can just click on. And man, do I look amazing on a Zoom call! I look like I'm so young; I look like a fetus practically. I just adore it. ANNETTE: I'll have to try that, Ashley. Thank you. [Laughter] ASHLEY: Yeah. I actually think it's so innovative of Zoom because I get distracted if I am not wearing makeup or I feel like I look wonky, especially if I am on a Zoom call with a client. And so, it helps. And I think it just makes everything fuzzy. But isn't that how they used to do old, you know actresses? They just put soft filter on them. So, that's what Zoom know. [Laughs] ANNETTE: We like Zoom as far as communication and meetings especially with our customers. We always turn our Zoom video on. And they don't necessarily do that right away because it's not in their culture to turn the video on for meetings. We find we have such better meetings when we turn that feature on. And then maybe after a couple of meetings, all of a sudden, they'll turn their video on. So, it's really changing kind of the culture across many organizations by just putting that Zoom meeting on, even if they don't take to it right away. We found that they do eventually because they just know that's how Widen works and I'm going to meet them where they are at the table and they turn their Zoom on. NOEL: There's sort of an interesting thing I find with video in remote meetings where it feels very uncomfortable at first, that it kind of feels like everybody is staring at you because it's such a close up face image. I find that it takes a little getting used to and a little being comfortable with the group that you're in to be OK with having that turned on and not be uncomfortable. ANNETTE: Yes, Noel. That's so true. We have these huge screens up, the big kind that come down from the ceiling. We have two in one big meeting room. And there's nothing like being the first on that Zoom meeting. When you're in London and your face comes up fully on those two screens. [Laughs] ASHLEY: I remember the first time I had a video meeting, it was years ago, and I was interviewing a candidate. I spent the entire time so distracted. It was essentially like looking in a mirror. I wasn't focused on the candidate. I was really focused on me. And of course now, it's years later, I've had hundreds of video calls, maybe many more, and it's not so bad. But I remember I got off that first call and I said to the recruiter who set it up, "I have no idea what they said." ANNETTE: That's interesting, Ashley. We want to encourage better focus in meetings and using Zoom could actually disconnect people from having a good focus. ASHLEY: Yeah. ANNETTE: Because they're worried about those things. NOEL: Right. It becomes tricky because one of the classic ways to encourage focus in meetings is to tell people, "Laptops down. No technology." But of course, you can't really do that in a remote meeting because without the technology, you don't have the meeting. But then you have all of these potentially small issues that can be distracting and pull focus from the video image if somebody's lighting is weird, they're all washed out or something like that. It can be distracting. ASHLEY: Or just notifications on your laptop. In this meeting, I've seen a text message come through, a Slack notification come through. I'm sure in a little bit, I'll get a calendar thing that tells me what's up next. I mean, I'm purposefully not looking at my email. NOEL: Right. I guess it becomes incumbent on the meeting to be so useful and interesting that people are compelled to pay attention to it which I think comes back to like having shorter meetings, having fewer meetings, having an agenda like everybody knowing why they're there. ASHLEY: So, what could you do if the meeting is just boring? ANNETTE: That's a really great question. I think in the context of if it's boring, how do you get people talking without sounding like a cheerleader that just will make people shut down even more? It's interesting. Sometimes, I just stop talking. It's not a trick really, but it's just I just stopped talking and kind of like that uncomfortable quietness sometimes gets somebody to speak up just because that creates this block of no one's talking. And somebody gets so uncomfortable that they start speaking up. So, for me, it's a good way to get everyone to participate and be heard especially introverts who might not always be wanting to speak up. But if it's uncomfortable long enough, someone will speak up. ASHLEY: Oh, that's interesting. NOEL: I have been in meetings where pretty much everybody is half distracted by their laptop or phone or whatever, and the meeting comes to a complete halt and nobody quite realizes it because nobody is paying attention. And everybody stops talking and nothing happens for a little bit. That's a little embarrassing. ASHLEY: I, for sure, was the one who would have started that, in fairness. I'm totally guilty. Annette, I have, again, for years, been really impressed with Widen's culture and you were the one who launched the Widen European office in London. What steps did you take to bring Widen's culture to the European headquarters? ANNETTE: Something I felt was key for both the Madison office and the London office was raising our cultural intelligence level. I wasn't only about bringing the Madison Widen culture and instilling it into the London office, but it was allowing their culture to impact the Madison office. So, both offices needed to learn to work with each other and it created adjustments in our culture. For example, anyone who's hired in the UK has come to Madison for a couple of weeks just to onboard with the Madison office. We're having a lot more people now travel overseas, as well, to the London office which is really a great thing to see. We also had to adjust our terminology. So, it wasn't so US-centric. We also had all our employees in the UK Office report up to leaders in the Madison office. We have some people in the office that didn't even have passports at the time. So, raising that cultural intelligence was really important to create some success between the two cultures. And just what naturally occurred from that is more leaders started to hire more people out of the London office instead of having that hire here in Madison. ASHLEY: That's great. ANNETTE: It also created this mindfulness of meeting times. So many all-team meetings or all-company meetings were occurring in the afternoon and those all got moved to the morning so UK people could be present for those. So, I felt that that was pretty significant for us to change. ASHLEY: Yeah, absolutely. I went through an exercise that identified what your most productive times of day are, and mine is certainly the morning. In the afternoon, I'm trying to purposefully plan work that doesn't need like an enormous amount of focus for the afternoon. So, I wonder if that -- and I think I'm not alone in having that sort of style of attention and focus -- and so, I wonder if that's been affected at all with the change of moving into the mornings. ANNETTE: Absolutely, just my own personal experience. I was taking meetings at 10 p.m. in London. ASHLEY: No! ANNETTE: Yeah, but I can't do that anymore. And so, we'd move it maybe an hour earlier. I can do 9:00 p.m. but I'm still wiped out because I'm doing a full day in the office. ASHLEY: Yeah. ANNETTE: And it still didn’t really change until we started to hire more people and I spoke up more about it because at the time, it only impacted me. But now when we're impacting a whole office, that had to change. And it did. ASHLEY: Outstanding. So, what is your go-to trick to get meetings to run better? ANNETTE: I mentioned it earlier, I stop talking. I need to stop talking in a meeting. It's not really a trick but I need to get everyone to participate and be heard. And not everyone wants to speak up, again, especially introverts who might really want to have time to think about what they want to say. Sometimes, they need to come back to it. And so, how do you get that participation in the moment? And so, sometimes, maybe sending out things ahead of time - an actual agenda to say these are the topics that could get people thinking ahead of time. So, you're not putting them on the spot during the meeting. I know I've worked for many organizations that haven't been good about putting an agenda out there. They just put a meeting time and a topic. We don't really know what that topic means. And so, that gives you no time to prep especially again, as an introvert. And that's such a huge time waster. Something I read recently is many businesses, especially in the US, are set up for extroverts. ASHLEY: Yeah. ANNETTE: Like the core culture is set up for extroverts. So, I recently read a book called Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain. Excellent book. NOEL: A couple of years ago, Table XI did a book club where almost everybody read that. ANNETTE: Yep. NOEL: To solve exactly that problem within our culture. ANNETTE: Right. How do you give everybody a voice? Because not everyone can just on the fly give you their thoughts. Different people need different ways to process information and be able to bring something forward that could be very critical to your business. So, finding a way to get information to people ahead of the meeting, so they actually have time to think about some of the things and be ready when we do sit down and chat at that meeting. NOEL: Another question that we're asking everybody is what can you tell us about the best meeting or the worst meeting that you've ever been in? ANNETTE: I love this question. I'm actually going to give two little examples. One small then I'll give you a worst meeting example. First, I haven't always worked in the best environments. I'll admit that. You can see at the beginning, I gave you this whole slew of almost working in every type of environment. One example of something that's humorous in not really a bad meeting, but we had a pre-meeting for a pre-meeting for a meeting. ASHLEY: Oh, no! ANNETTE: It actually happened. The pre-meeting was scheduled to talk about how we were supposed to behave in the meeting. It wasn't even actually meeting on the goals of the meeting. I'm not sure why we had to be told how to behave. But there, you have it. That was a quite interesting event that happened. ASHLEY: [Laughs] ANNETTE: The worst meeting was, it's like, "OK. I'm going to put this out there and we'll see what happens." It was with a former manager a long time ago. I had actually been critical and verbal about a particular topic that included actions taken by my manager. And it got back to my manager. It shouldn't have been a surprise because they had already addressed my concerns with no acknowledgment. Again, a really unhealthy work environment where employees would be thrown under the bus by leaders even if they were not involved in the project. I saw it happen several times. So, my manager and I had a meeting to discuss the topic with my colleagues. I thought, "I'm so excited. We finally get to sit down and talk about this." I was prepped, all ready to go, had all my topics ready. I stepped into the meeting, I realized it was just going to be the two of us. ASHLEY: No! ANNETTE: Yeah. I was like, "Oh no. OK, here we go." I actually can't even remember the topic now. I just remember the feelings that came out of that because the meeting was really about my criticalness and the undertone of telling me to no longer complain. That's how I felt coming out of it. The meeting proceeded. This is the best part about it, is she pulled the wastepaper basket and put it up on the table and said that we were going to fake, write down the thing I had complained about. So, I actually did that. I pretended to write on a piece of paper the thing I had complained about. We crumpled it up, again fake, really no paper, tossed it into the real bucket and then we physically walked the garbage up to the hallway. ASHLEY: No! ANNETTE: Yeah. Shortly after that, I moved to a new department where I spent a few more years at the workplace before finally moving on. So, it's interesting how events, even as small as a two person meeting, can impact how you move forward in life. ASHLEY: That's alarming, Annette. [Laughs] ANNETTE: Yeah, I know. NOEL: It's a distressing story. ANNETTE: It is a distressing story. It is humorous, though. I mean it to be a little funny, right? ASHLEY: It's so horrifying. [Laughter] ANNETTE: Yeah. It's just there is a whole lot of bad in all of that, but I think my message was if you're going to have a meeting, don't make it under the guise of like reprimand or something. Make sure the topic matches what you're actually going to be meeting on and be honest about what you're going to talk about. So, that was quite horrifying, and slightly funny now as I look back on it. ASHLEY: You know Annette, I worked in one of those environments that was so terrible that everybody who left sort of thought of it now as like bootcamp. And then still, I credit it for teaching me all sorts of things and it's really where I paid my dues and cut my teeth. But the environment was so bad that now when we get together to talk about it, people who weren't there are horrified at the things that we are recounting as hilarious stories like, "Don't you remember that time, blah…blah…blah." "Oh, that's terrible. I would've quit on the spot." Well, I didn't. I worked there for a long time. ANNETTE: I think it brought us all closer together as a group of colleagues that worked together. It really united us in this way of protecting each other because that's all we had, was each other. But it was quite difficult to make sure you protected the people around you because you knew that outside of that, you could get kicked at any moment. ASHLEY: I'm glad we're both out of that, Annette. [Laughter] NOEL: Yeah. I'm glad we're out of that situation. And thank you for being with us here today to tell us about that. We're glad you were able to join us. ASHLEY: Thanks, Annette. Thanks, Noel. ANNETTE: Thank you. NOEL: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Meetings Done Right podcast. If you would like to learn more about the Inclusion Meeting Cards, order a set of your own. To find out about other episodes of this podcast, go to MeetingsDoneRight.co. You can also find out more about this podcast by searching for Meetings Done Right wherever you listen to podcasts. Leaving a review on Apple Podcasts will help people find the show. The Inclusion Meeting Cards and the Meetings Done Right podcast are produced by Table XI. Table XI is one of Inc. Magazine's Best Workplaces and a top-rated custom software development company on Clutch.co. Learn more about Table XI at TableXI.com. Meetings Done Right is hosted by Ashley Quinto Powell and Noel Rappin, and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening.