Mummers’ magic
Just what your next meeting needs

If you’re lucky, you can remember outport kitchen “times” when Christmas revelers, disguised in silly costumes and pillow case masks, would bang on the door and skip, dance and sing around your kitchen as part of a Newfoundland and Labrador tradition known as mummering.

Sadly, it’s no longer a good idea, except perhaps in the tiniest of outport towns, to open your door to strangers with pillow cases on their heads - even if it is Christmas Eve. But the spirit of mummering lives vibrantly on in art, craft and music.

It’s easy to see the appeal. Mummers are colourful, magical creatures. They burst onto the scene as friendly strangers who sing and dance in a flurry of happy chaos, breaking all the rules of the house.

It might seem a stretch, but the magic of mummers could hold a lesson for the meeting room.

I recently enjoyed a chat with a new client who decided to come to Myx because she knew an upcoming important team meeting could not occur in her own workplace. Their boardroom meetings had become stagnant and lifeless and that feeling was becoming visible among team members themselves.

According to Patrick Lencioni, author of Death by Meeting and a series of other useful business books, you can judge an organization’s health by the meetings they hold. “The hard truth is, bad meetings always lead to bad decisions, which is the best recipe for mediocrity.” Read more here.

Lencioni defines bad meetings as those that lack dynamism, passion and focus. Great meetings involve a little chaos and a good measure of conflict. Rules get bent and broken as people work through ideas and solutions. The energy level in a passionate, productive meeting is palpable.

Think of your last bad meeting to see which ingredients might have been missing. Did the chair show strong leadership and guidance? Was the agenda well thought out or was it a generic list of reports? Was the discussion focused? Was there a clear expected outcome and a lively discussion to get there? Did a good debate occur? Did everyone enjoy a good laugh?

If you can’t say yes to most of those questions, your meeting could have used a little mummering spirit to shake people out of their chairs and into action. It doesn’t take much. It could be as simple as holding your meeting somewhere different - how about in the middle of the “shop” floor instead of the boardroom? Or change where people sit. Better yet, hold a stand-up meeting. You’ll quickly find out how short and productive a meeting can really be.

Your agenda also plays a vital role. Make that bit of paper useful. Instead of listing the reports to be made (recognize that reports are monologues that put everyone other than the speaker to sleep), frame your agenda around thought-provoking questions. Instead of an HR report, ask: “If staff were to fill out an employee satisfaction survey today, what would they say?”

And for those really important meetings, leave your building and go somewhere different. Stop by Starbucks at 2 pm on any given day of the week and count the number of team meetings in progress. It will shock you.

And, of course, consider coming to Myx. We’d love to help you inject a little mummering spirit into your next meeting. We won’t sing or dance - be grateful for that - but we will give you the place and service to inject a little bit of the unexpected into your session. You’ll be amazed at a what a difference it can make.

Gift of the Goose

There’s a handful of employees working in the Greater St. John’s area who, although they may not know it, are living the lessons shared in a little book titled Gung Ho.

In the book, Ken Blanchard builds a parable around a few lessons from the animal kingdom. The incessant squacking of geese, he says, is actually a flock of birds telling each other over and over, in goose language, to keep up the great work. According to Ken, today’s workplaces could learn a little from the gift of the goose.

The businesswomen who make up the Myx Mavericks Business Book Club agreed. Once a month, we huddle at Myx to digest our latest book choice and toss out business questions and stories to help make the book’s lessons stick. The result is a powerful evening of advice and peer support that would take experts days, if not weeks, to emulate in a classroom.

Our businesses may be different but we have a lot in common. We want to know: How do you find the right talent? How do you keep it? How do you turn a bit of advice from a book into sustainable real life practice?

In our last meeting, as we dissected First Break All the Rules, someone raised the idea of conducting group interviews. The process puts one or two interviewers into a room with all the job’s short-listed candidates.

It’s hard to imagine but according to businesses who’ve tried it, this group interview technique is extremely effective in finding the right talent match for your business.

Why does the technique work? Because people let down their guard. Unlike traditional one-on-one situations, where the candidate can focus on giving all the right answers, being surrounded by other candidates is distracting. And in the midst of distraction, real personalities and responses emerge.

It may not be an interview process that works for everyone but it’s certainly showing results for a few members of Myx Mavericks. And the rest of us are learning by association.

The trend of business book clubs isn’t new. Google the idea and you’ll find the Montreal Business Book Club, the Big Brain Business Book, Nancy McCabe’s Business Book Club and many others. What seems to set Myx Mavericks apart is the idea of meeting as a themed group. In this case, it’s women running businesses in Newfoundland. The other key ingredient is meeting face-to-face.

In the case of the Montreal Book Club, the initiative only lasted a year as a face-to-face gathering. After that, organizers saw the potential to reach more people with a blog. The blog turned into a podcast, which turned into an online community, which ultimately fizzled out. And guess what? They’re now working on getting the face-to-face sessions back on track. What a surprise.

Ideas and shared experiences happen best when a human connection is present, when you can do things like make eye contact and laugh out loud with each other. This might explain why face-to-face book clubs of all varieties are gaining popularity. Amidst the hype and pressures of social media, an evening with a book in your hand and a group of trusted friends or colleagues around the table, is, well, a relief.

It’s also a priceless learning opportunity. One of our group’s hot topics has been the hiring process. I know for me, the wisdom I’ve gained from the Myx Mavericks Book Club circle will make a huge difference to my next recruitment process. I also know the same advice could have cost me thousands in HR consulting fees.

Pushing my business ahead with the help of books, friends, stories, advice, and dinner? In my mind, it’s a recipe that can’t fail.

Contact us if we can help you put together your own Myx Mavericks Business Book Club.