Senior Leadership Team Meetings-Meetings R' Us

How would you describe senior leadership team meetings? Boring? Energizing? At times, either word may apply. Actually, upon reflection, I think that it was more energizing being a lower level presenter than being an equal participant along with other members of the leadership team.

In my experience, these meetings were usually one or two days per month lasting a full day and sometimes into the evenings. A steady stream of presenters (usually with something to sell) would come before us and state their case. In attendance would be all the senior executives that report to the Chairman or President. So, while my main interests may be people issues, and the CFO's main interests financial matters, the Engineering V.P's main interests are technical topics, etc., etc., each of us would patiently listen as speaker after speaker came forward usually with an entourage. Believe me, it is tough to give rapt attention to the algorithims of sixth order parasidics in integrated circuit design. Likewise, the more technical leaders would have to suffer through a lot of softer topics such as the creation of a child care center or the colors to use on the annual report cover. Command performance attendance is one of the prices that we pay when we are lucky enough to lead our particular function or division.

Here is how I would characterize the meetings:

BORING

* Full day meetings that sometimes run until 9 p.m. or later.
* 6-12 different presenters one right after the other.
* Topics that were incomprehensible to a non-technical mind.
* Speakers that are not well prepared and fumble their topic.
* Senior team leaders that do not pay attention to what you are saying.
* Sessions that are too time consuming when you have real work waiting for you.
* Side conversations that distract the speaker.
* Presentations that give deference to the Chairman.

ENERGIZING

* Seeing outstanding talent from throughout the organization.
* Feeling like you finally knew what was going on in the company.
* Learning what the main issues were in each part of the company besides your own.
* Hearing from leaders around the globe and understanding the working relationships.
* Traveling to various global locations for meetings.
* Interacting with some of the brightest people in the company.