I will be posting from airport lounges this week, but before I head out, I wanted to relate a lesson about decision-making that I learned (the hard way) a number of years ago.  This was prompted by a discussion with a promising early career product management professional, "Bob," that had expressed frustration at the way decisions were reached in his company. I think that the lesson still holds today.

Bob was earnestly pitching a new service offering for his firm.  This was his first time at bat and while the feedback was enthusiastic, each time he left a meeting with the people that he perceived were the key stakeholders, he had more work to do and seemed no closer to getting that "go" decision that he was after.  The questions were not negative or blocking in nature, but rather more about clarification.

"If we adopt this new service, how will we…?"

"What do you expect the impact will be on…?"

"Bob, I didn’t think of this before, but would we sell more if…?"

And so on. 

From Bob’s description, the questions seemed valid and it was clear that he had not spent enough time with each of the stakeholders to help them get their arms around the new offering and what it meant to them and to the firm.  A classic early-career blunder, compounded by the fact that Bob was using group meetings as the medium for establishing agreement and gaining approval about the new offering he was proposing.  It is this false assumption about the role of meetings in decision-making where the lesson can be found.

Earlier in my career I worked for one of the world’s great companies, Matsushita Electric (Panasonic).  I was dealing with the same scenario as Bob.  We had done our homework in the market and were convinced that we had a hot new product proposal.  Our channel partners were backing the idea and signing up for sales, and there was a wide-open window in the market.  I dutifully flew to Japan to meet with the engineers and executives that would provide approval for the investment and ran into meeting after meeting where the questions started out: "But, Art-san…?"  After about 150 "But Art-sans," I sought some advice from one of my Tokyo-based counterparts.  After he quit laughing, he shared the secret formula that I clearly hadn’t received in my training thus far.  He said:

"Art-san, (groan) you are going about it all wrong."  (OK, tell me something I don’t already know.) "The meeting is the ceremony.  All of the decisions are made individually.  You never want to show up at a meting that you called without having reached agreement with each stakeholder ahead of time." 

After thinking about his advice, I decided to put it into play and I met with each and every stakeholder to review my business plan, address their concerns, and give them time to involve their associates and in a few cases to offer some good alterations.  I called a follow-on meeting with the broader group, reviewed the proposal at a high level, answered some token questions and received my much-needed go-ahead.  Of course, I also needed to commit to sales, participate in a ceremony where I signed something written in Japanese (to this day, I’m not sure what it said, but everyone laughed when I asked, so I’m sure it was my first-born or my soul or something like that.)

While I thought I was receiving wonderful cultural advice about the "meeting is for ceremony," I managed to apply that same technique for over a decade in U.S. and European businesses, and you know what, it worked.  Fortunately, none of those companies made me sign things I couldn’t read, and I helped teach a generation of professionals how to network inside organizations for more effective and timely decision-making.

The bottom-line:

While the technique or reaching agreement with your stakeholders one by one ahead of formal approval might seem a bit like playing politics, I prefer to view it as covering the bases. Leaders invest in people they trust and have a sense for, and the ceremony of a group meeting is the wrong place to try and build your trust and credibility.  My guidance to you is to push away from the keyboard and get out in front of your internal stakeholders and start forging relationships. People might meet as groups but they think and decide as individuals.  You’ll be glad that you did.  Just don’t sign anything in a foreign language once you’ve gained group approval!