Why, how, and when a global media conglomerate uses the Meeting Canoe

“The more you use the Meeting Canoe, the more you understand its power,” says Chuck Mallue, an organization development consultant for a global media giant. “We started out by using the Meeting Canoe as a design template for work sessions, meetings that can run anywhere from two hours to several days. Now the approach even influences everyday meetings.”

Here are four reasons why, in Chuck’s own words:

1. Our leaders recognize a good meeting when they see it. People approach meeting effectiveness thinking about agendas, time management, norms, and ground rules. These are all meeting elements, but they’re all very tactical and short-term. The Meeting Canoe gives you a set of meeting design principles that provide a holistic system. Meeting planners design agendas. When you work with the Meeting Canoe, you design a complete experience.

2. Innovation and creativity are hallmarks of our organization. We try to be creative, we try to be innovative, we tell stories; we use the Meeting Canoe because it fits our culture. The Meeting Canoe image, its simplicity and smooth flow, make sense to us. People get it. They can apply it immediately.

3. The Meeting Canoe has changed the way we design virtual meetings so they’re more like face-to-face meetings. The problem with virtual meetings is you’re missing the personal, authentic, visceral experience that happenswhen you meet with somebody using all your senses. It’s so much more difficult to understand what is going on with people when you meet virtually. The Meeting Canoe forces you to make sure you’re paying proper attention to each stage of the meeting.

4. These virtual or in-person gatherings connect people around the globe and are an expensive proposition. Periodically, we need to bring people together to think about what is going on today and what is happening in the world. Whether we meet virtually or in person, for two hours or several days, there is work to do and people need to feel productive doing it. You have to get the design right. That happens when we use the Meeting Canoe. (Mallue 2013)

How does Chuck use it?

Some work sessions are local and some are global. We use the Meeting Canoe to design work sessions for creating new organizations and to address a variety of business issues.

When I’m working with an HR partner to design a work session, we talk explicitly about each element of the Meeting Canoe as we go through the design process. If I’m working with line clients, it’s fifty-fifty as to whether we talk explicitly about the canoe. If they like metaphors, are creative, and are visually oriented, it’s easy to talk them through the canoe and even draw it for them. I’ll say, “Hey, this is how we’re thinking about the major elements of this work and how the sequence might be.”

If they’re a little less oriented toward metaphors and graphics, then the Meeting Canoe becomes a conversation checklist that identifies the things we want to consider to make sure everybody’s comfortable and engaged in the work. Some of our internal clients never know we are using the Meeting Canoe. What they do know is that their meetings are better when they work with us. (Mallue 2013)

When does he use it?

The funny thing is that once you get this model in your head, you begin to apply it to everyday meetings as well. You may not apply all the elements in every meeting. You might spend a meeting connecting people to each other and the task or discovering the way things are. But over time, you cover the whole canoe. (Mallue 2013)

Just put your canoe in the water and start paddling. That’s Chuck’s advice.

In the coming pages, you will learn how the Meeting Canoe’s components work as we devote a chapter to each canoe element. See you there.