Change the meetings, change the culture

At Dom Dom Lab, we want to create a safe environment to experiment practices of co-creation, and before sharing them with the community. One of the methods we use most to build a culture of collaboration and shared responsibility is Co-Management Meetings (CMM). And when we realized that many people around us are struggling with meetings as well, last August we organized the first training course to share this methodology.

“I don’t like meetings because I have had many experiences of ineffective and time-consuming meetings,” says Pham Hanh Dung, a Project Manager at Mainetti Vietnam, when asked what led her to the training. “So when I heard about a more effective meeting, I thought: ‘Oh my gosh! I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.’”

Dung usually has to chair monthly meetings between department leaders, and the meetings often run late. In the CMM training, Dung and her colleagues learned about different roles in a meeting (host, timekeeper, harvester, etc.) so that the responsibility does not fall on one person

“[After the training] That day, I assigned Lan as the host, Martin as the timekeeper. Then I realized, oh my gosh, Lan did a better job than me, very methodical. That day, because of the Vu Lan festival, the meeting started at 10am instead of 9am, but still ended at 12pm. Lan asked each department to cut 30%-50% of the presentation time, only sharing the main points they wanted others to know. So even though it started 1 hour late, it still ended before lunch.”

Besides running out of time, one of the things that makes meetings less effective is not having a clear purpose.

“In the meeting that I am the host, no matter how busy I am, I still try to take the time to write to my colleagues what the goals of the meeting are. Either I just have an announcement, or I want to hear from you. My requests are more clear.”As Do Thi Tra My, an employee of an NGO, shares: “In my office, we have to meet quite a lot. And not all meetings are effective. Sometimes I will see a meeting invitation flying into my inbox and there is only a very vague subject line, no goal, no content at all..”

Coming to the training, My was very interested in the clear structure of a CMM, which includes four components: Announcement, Feedback, Co-creation, and Decision making. Nguyen Thu Trang, co-founder of Dom Dom, explains: “Announcement means I want others to listen to me. I just need people to hear this information from me, I don’t intend to receive feedback.”

“Feedback means, I want to listen to others, and so I need to be very clear about what I want to hear from others so that the questions I ask become sharper. Co-creation means I want everyone to listen to each other. And Decision-making means we have to arrive at a certain point together.”

These components help make the goals of each meeting and each topic clearer. My has applied them in her work. She shares

“In the meeting that I am the host, no matter how busy I am, I still try to take the time to write to my colleagues what the goals of the meeting are. Either I just have an announcement, or I want to hear from you. My requests are more clear.”

In addition to the basic theories of CMM such as roles and components, the training also had specialized workshops to improve different collaborative capacities such as decision-making methods and how to craft an effective question.

Nguyen Ngan Ha, facilitator of Compassionate Communication Vietnam, says: “Normally, when I finish presenting a topic, I often ask: ‘So what do you think? Do you have any feedback?’ Now I will think about what I need from everyone to be able to continue? I can invite more ideas, or ask about the feelings of people. Or maybe I want people to join me in the work. My requests become more clear for the work to continue.”

Dung was also very impressed with the workshop on questions. “[The workshop] made me feel overwhelmed! Oh my gosh, asking the right questions is so great. It made me pay attention to the fact that I have to ask more questions. When I come back to work with my department, I ask more questions for everyone. Everyone is able to answer everything. Up until now, I have not let people answer. I just took the initiative to answer everything. That really had a big impact on me.”

“Meetings are a microcosm of the culture of our organizations and communities,” Samantha Slade, founder of Dom Dom Lab’s learning partner Percolab, writes in her book Going Horizontal. When individuals work in a collaborative environment where accountability is valued over blame and criticism, teams become more cohesive, agile, and adaptable to the constant changes that life brings.

The CMM practices are more than just about meetings, they also help build and nurture initiative, focus, engagement, and accountability in organizations, businesses, and communities.