It was 7 a.m., and the entire operations department was gathered in the conference room for an “urgent” meeting. The subject? “Improving Team Collaboration.”
The boss, Pope, started with a grand speech. “Alright, team, we need to brainstorm some ways to boost collaboration. Let’s hear ideas!”
Silence.
A minute passed. Two minutes. Then, NickCD, who hadn’t spoken in a meeting in months, cleared his throat.
“Maybe we could… um… have more meetings? Like, about collaboration?”
Everyone blinked.
“I’m thinking, like, we have a meeting every week to check in about how we’re collaborating,” NickCD continued. “And then maybe we could… oh, I don’t know… have another meeting to discuss the meetings?”
There was a pause, and then Pope wrote something down in his notebook. “Great idea, NickCD. Let’s add that to the action items.”
For the next 45 minutes, everyone went around the room giving more suggestions:
- “More Slack channels!”
- “We could do a weekly email reminder to collaborate!”
- “What if we all just take 10-minute breaks to collaborate in the break room?”
By the end of the meeting, Pope looked at the clock and said, “Alright, I think we’ve made some great progress. We’re all on the same page. We’ll meet again next week to discuss our collaborative progress!”
And so, the team left with absolutely no new ideas, except the profound realization that, if they all attended a few more meetings, maybe things would start working out… eventually.
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