We've Got to Start Meeting Like This

Standing-Room Only
Organization: The Phelps Group, a Santa Monica, Calif., marketing agency
Purpose of Meeting: To build camaraderie and cooperation

Every Monday at 9:28 a.m., Joe Phelps goes on the public-address system with a "two-minute warning." Each of his 50 or so employees heads for an all-purpose room, where most of them remain standing. The carrot for prompt attendance and the first item on the agenda: a $100 bill to the employee whose phone extension is drawn at random-- if he or she can correctly answer a question from the employee handbook.

The meetings themselves move through the same five agenda headings each week. After the drawing, the second item on the agenda is for the company's teams--advertising, direct marketing, production, and media--to show off their new work. The third is to announce important agency or client business. The title of the fourth agenda item, "Minutes," is a clarion call for brevity. Each of the teams delivers a one-minute mini-lesson, teaching the group about some key piece of expertise or perhaps handing out and summarizing a helpful article. There's also a technology minute, a grammar minute (on the use of quotation marks, for instance), and an office-machine minute (which might cover, say, copier jams).

The last agenda item: the Atta Boy/Atta Girl Award. This two-by-two-foot wooden plaque, festooned with personal effects (pennies from the company controller, a Pez dispenser), is awarded each week. The current award holder selects the next recipient and passes on the ever-more-decorated plaque, which has become a powerful company totem.

"It's great to have a group experience at the beginning of the week," says CEO Phelps. It's one counterbalance to the increasingly technology-enabled workplace, which fosters less and less face-to-face contact.

Get Ready, Get Set--Type!
Organization: Any group with $5,000 to spend on one meeting
Purpose of Meeting: To generate and select ideas

For $5,000 a day, meeting facilitator Douglas Griffen, a managing partner of D.S. Griffen & Associates, of Scottsdale, Ariz., will arrive at your doorstep with networked laptops, a server, a laser printer, and even a CD player.

At one particular meeting, the question on the table is "What new markets can we enter?" The question appears on 20 laptop screens set up around a U-shaped table. You type a suggestion and hit the submit key. Your screen clears and asks, "What else?" You can see everybody's ideas on the top half of your screen. One of those suggestions gives you an idea, which you quickly type and submit. Fifteen minutes of brainstorming passes--and nobody has said a word.

What does this get you? More ideas and quick, reliable, computer-assisted skimming of the cream, says Griffen. Lively jazz pumps up the energy level. Theoretically, all 20 people at the meeting can talk simultaneously--and anonymously. No more wasting time kissing up to the boss's idea. No more inhibitions on those reluctant to speak up.

With brainstorming in progress, Griffen watches as many as 200 ideas bubble up on his screen, as he scans for the 12 to 15 prominent themes. He projects a tentative list of those themes onto a big screen for all to see, and the group adds and subtracts ideas. Then it's back to the laptops. Participants now rank the ideas--"Tag 'em, move 'em, drop 'em"--on their screens. As soon as the last person hits the vote key, the results are instantaneous. The advantage: participants can spend time focusing on the top-rated ideas instead of wasting time shooting down the easy marks.

Tête-à-Tête
Organization: Domino's Pizza
Purpose of Meeting: To review an employee's aspirations, needs, and achievements

Tom Monaghan, founder and president of Domino's Pizza Inc., with headquarters in Ann Arbor, Mich., conducts individual job-planning and review (JP&R) meetings--each at least two hours long, and sometimes far longer--with his six executive vice-presidents, plus his chief of staff, once a month. "My first job planning and review with Tom Monaghan lasted eight hours," says Don Vlcek, who was hired in the late 1970s and ran the company's $600-million-a-year distribution subsidiary until 1994, when he left to form his own consulting firm in Plymouth, Mich. Now JP&R sessions are a key component of Vlcek's executive workshops.

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