This week I was in a training session with an IT developer. We got talking about an IT solution he is working on, to track actions from meetings.
The developer told me the story of how actions agreed in their team meetings rarely got done, as people raised ideas ‘to impress the boss’ rather than with any intention of doing anything with them. To address this issue, they have developed an application that tracks and chases actions agreed in their meetings.
My immediate reaction to this was, ‘this sounds like a technical solution to a people problem!’ However, on reflection, I am reminded of a book I once used when I was a Training Manager, called ‘making training pay’. This book refers to employee behaviours being a result of their knowledge, skills and attitudes, as well as the environment / infrastructure of the organisation.
Taking the approach from this book and applying it to meeting facilitation, leads me to think that, in order to get actions followed through after meetings, we must
BOTH
Facilitate people through to commitment
AND
Provide infrastructure to support the execution of actions afte the meeting.