Quick note before the day takes over.

What a book can change after the next meeting

It’s Tuesday morning. For the past seven months I’ve often come into the office on Tuesdays with my stomach in knots. I’m a team lead, and anyone leading from the middle knows the middle-management squeeze. I won’t go into the whole thing now.

Last week I decided to try something from The Lies That Hold the System Together, a book I had just finished. There was a part in the book about what happens to a message after a meeting, and it felt a bit too familiar.

So yesterday, at the end of our Monday meeting, I did something different. I skipped the usual motivational round and the reframing, and asked everyone to write down one sentence: what in today’s discussion do you think will need a decision? Honestly, they looked at me as if I had asked them to hand over their phones.

Then the answers came in. Three out of five people had written something different from what I had in mind. One wrote: ‘We’ll keep an eye on this.’ I had been thinking we needed a decision by Friday. Another wrote: ‘The supplier side is still taking shape.’ No name, no deadline, no cost.

Reading it was pretty grim, but at least I don’t have to rely on my hunches anymore. Hmm... Not bad. I caught where my message had been shortened. I noticed which sentence had lost the decision. It became clear who had heard risk and who had heard an admin task.

Right, people are already coming over... I’ll come back to this later. Looks like Monday’s meeting has an afterlife today.

P.S. Hard to put into words, but this is a strangely special Tuesday morning.

Have a similarly odd little Tuesday, all you leaders in the middle.

Lilien Gerlach — Notes from a behavioural analyst Author of The Lies That Hold the System Togethe

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