In Ontario, we’re more than a year into the pandemic, with vaccines rolling out around the province. Yet, we’re still in lockdown until at least next month. This is what failure looks like.
It’s not a failure of science. Science has come through heroically. It’s not a failure of compliance. I see masks everywhere I go. Every business I enter has marked out paths and enforces social distancing. This is a failure of leadership. Epic, catastrophic, debilitating failure.
If you want to see leadership fail or fly, pay attention during meetings. Here are examples of how leadership succeeds or sinks in four meetings.
Meeting One
The first meeting is of Doug Ford’s Ontario Conservative Leadership group prior to the April 16th announcement that shut down outdoor activities including at playgrounds and allowed police to stop people to ask why they were out of their houses. Our officials walked into a room with a clear picture of the problem - the virus being spread indoors, primarily at workplaces. They had expert recommendations on how to address the problem – shut down workplaces that aren’t really needed and give paid sick leave to workers in places that are. They walked out of the meeting with actions that didn’t address any of the things causing the problem and shut down things that weren’t. How does that happen?
Meeting Two
You can find a clue in the second meeting, one I attended at work. The head of our department was dissatisfied with an inhouse survey that showed the people at the meeting weren’t happy at work. It was the second survey in a row with that result. Our department head talked for the whole meeting. At one point, about half an hour in, she invited people to speak, indicated that if they didn’t voice their opinions nothing would change, and said their silence would be the reason why. No one spoke.
After the meeting, I hung back once everyone had left. I approached the department head and suggested that there might be a way to structure a meeting that would encourage involvement. The response was “people have to stop complaining.” I didn’t push it, because the department head was clearly frustrated. Instead, I sent her an e-mail with some suggestions and offered to meet with her to discuss them. She didn’t reply to the e-mail. The problem with that meeting was focus. The meeting wasn’t about the problem, it was about her problem. This meeting didn’t solve either.
If a leader wants a problem solved, you have to engage your staff. To do that, you have to get their opinions. To get their opinions, you need to create an environment where people want to speak up. In meetings that I chair, I try to ask for opinions before I give mine, so others aren’t reluctant to disagree. Do that enough and people feel empowered to share their ideas.
Meeting Three
I learned that in the third meeting. My favourite job was at a startup company called High Fidelity HDTV. We launched the first four HD channels in Canada, and my bosses mortgaged their homes to make it happen. At one of our first meetings, 10 people sat around our boardroom table, every one of them knowing our leaders had bet their futures on this company. Ken Murphy, one of the owners, stood up and gave us direction on how we would operate. “We want you to feel empowered to make decisions on your own. If you’re ever in a position where you need the input of ownership, but we’re not around, we want you to make the best decision you can. We expect mistakes. We just ask that you learn from them.”
I walked out of that meeting with a colleague who turned to me and said “that’s the best meeting I’ve ever been in.” From that day forward, everyone spoke their mind. The staff would also run through a wall, smiling, for our ownership. The best leaders put the focus on the people who will be solving the problems. By the way, that company sold 6 years later for $85 million, making our bosses wealthy men.
Meeting Four
The best meetings I’ve ever seen though are, unfortunately, fictional. When Captain Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek the Next Generation had a big problem, he called a meeting of all his team leads. Picard started by having people identify the problem as they saw it. Then he asked for recommendations. After everyone had spoken, Picard would ask questions. There would be some debate. Then Picard decided. Those decisions were always fully informed by the experts in the room. Picard’s job was to weigh the value of each person’s expertise given the current situation, then direct people towards the solution. And lest you dismiss this as pure fiction, I saw the same process play out in the intensive care unit at Sick Kids hospital. This is how the pros do it.
The dismal failure of Ford’s leadership is that their meeting addressed the wrong problem. According to a report in the Toronto Star, the government was more concerned about alienating the people who helped them get elected than following the recommendations from health care experts. In effect, the meeting was not about the problem, it was about their problem. Their problem was managing their stakeholders, not the pandemic. Therefore, they didn’t value the right opinions. Therefore, they didn’t address, let alone solve, Ontario’s problem.
As a result, businesses are going under. Children aren’t in school. Our health is taxed, mental and physical. All of those are felt in my home. It’s going to get worse into June at least. The restrictions won’t be lifted until we’re below 1,000 cases a day and at the time I write this there are still 4,000.
The Takeaway
The takeaway from this is simple – leaders don’t have to have all the answers, but they must get the best ones. Leaders get the best answers from experts in their field. Leaders make sure those ideas are put into action. All of that happens in an effective meeting.
If you’re in a place with leaders that can’t run an effective meeting, I have another takeaway - make a change. In Ontario, we won’t get to do that until next year. It can’t come soon enough.
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Craig Colby is a television executive producer, producer, director, writer and story editor. He runs a storytelling consulting and production service for businesses.