You said what? Astronomy in organisational design?

Sometimes, many times, I just can't predict where things will end up from a hum-drum starting point. You'd think I would know better by now.

There are times when what clients really want to talk about is "structure". Or think they do. I have always found it a little dull, compared to other elements. I had spent some previous hours discussing "structure" with one of my favourite clients, and I guess it was essentially about that: how to frame your organisation to respond most effectively to the strategic and operational challenges facing it.

Structure must also respond, sometimes, to people. This client still sits in the post-start-up, pre-explosive-growth stage, with 2 inspiring co-founders running different streams. Happy and willing to share the power and the accountability of leadership. Neither wanting or needing the glory of sole control.

In corporate style show-and-tell during the previous session, I had sketched on the whiteboard a wiring diagram with boxes and arrows, depicting the "program" and "operations" sides of the organisation, and "joint CEOs" at the top of each stream. Not an unknown paradigm.

Now we were running a workshop to flesh out that paradigm with the full team. I started again on the whiteboard, with the two joint CEO boxes at the top. Then I said: "We need a box for Eric."

Eric said "Do I have to be a box?" which was a question I had never been asked before, but a fair enough one, I suppose.

"No," I said, "what would you like to be?" We eventually settled on putting Eric inside a fluffy cloud.

"When you put me up there, can I be a love-heart?" said Gabby, who is about to get married. So in one stream of the structure diagram we had a cloud, and in the other a love-heart.

At that point I suspended judgement, and said "Okay Anna, what do you want to be?" Anna went up on the board as a 5-pointed star.

Of course I then had to back-track to the joint CEO boxes: Mary-Ruth went up as a crescent moon, and Kim as the sun. There were no longer any lines or arrows in the diagram, just clusters like two constellations. We spent the rest of the session in discussion around what would be happening on the "moon side", and what would be needed on the "sun side".

It was liberating and effective. So there's a new kind of organisational design structure: the astral plane version. It's wonderful to walk out of a job feeling like I have learned at least as much as I have contributed.

Running a decent meeting – it’s not rocket science

Does anyone know how to run a meeting any more?

I have recently been to 2 annual general meetings, both for strata plan bodies corporate. Each has been chaired by a representative from the strata manager. In one of the meetings, for a body corporate which I chair, the strata manager actually asked if he could chair the meeting instead of me, "because there are a lot of technical points." Okay, go for it.

In each case, people who do this for a living paid scant regard to any proper process. They will, I am sure, just purport to fix it up with a set of minutes which will attempt retrospectively to make everything sit properly.

Really, it's not that hard. Here are 5 things which you can do (none of which were done in either AGM) when chairing a meeting which has some element of statutory requirement behind it. They will not only contribute to passing valid resolutions; they should also help the orderly flow of the meeting.

• Be clear with the attendees about who is there, and on what basis, with what authority. This is particularly so with proxy holders and observers. Otherwise anyone may try to vote on the resolutions before the meeting.
  
• Pass resolutions properly – and not just via the minutes:
  
  • After discussion on the motion, if there is anything different to what is set out in the agenda, summarise it for the meeting
    
  • If not, restate what the resolution is
    
  • ASK PEOPLE TO VOTE. It's simple – "those in favour raise your hands; those against, raise your hands." Then declare the resolution passed, or not passed, as the case may be.
    
• Consider if things on the agenda make sense to be done in the order set out. If not, seek the meeting's agreement to vary the order.
  
• Be clear about what you can deal with in "any other business". If it is an AGM, you probably can't deal validly with anything if a resolution would be needed. Board meetings and committee meetings are different, and there is scope for a wide range of other business to be considered.
  
• Be aware of discussion which doesn't have anything to do with the agenda item or the resolution being discussed. Look, when people only get together once a year in a forum where discussion between them all is available, they may have plenty to say about a variety of things. It's a great opportunity for them to connect and communicate. But if it's off agenda, it is fair to the people who are there to transact the business of the meeting to say:
  "That's a very good question. Let's finish dealing with the agenda, then we can close the meeting and have a good discussion about it."
  

Is it just me, living up to a nickname I once had of "that pedantic bastard"? Maybe. But if you hang out your shingle as a professional who does this kind of business, you ought to do it properly.

And if you are an accidental chair (i.e. no-one else could be conned into taking the job), then you probably need all the help you can get. If you use these 5 steps, you will have done better than at least 50% of people who run meetings.

(If you want to see a more comprehensive one page guide to running a board meeting, or running an AGM, just email me on zentricity@optusnet.com.au)

“Doing it my way” – backing yourself for satisfaction and profit

An unexpected sparkling blue-domed day. Contrarian in view of the forecast and after horizontal rain the day before, it came like a blessing. Especially on a little island off Auckland, which has a micro-climate especially suited to growing certain types of grapes.

We climbed aboard our little wine tour bus, guided by Wayne the local expert. He took us to our first vineyard, and the first lesson for the day: choosing your own path.

The vintner, call him Les, had constructed for himself one of those chequered careers which seem so typical of smaller wine-growers: originally a geologist, then morphing into a medical degree and a successful practice with a lengthy spell in Europe. Remarkable guy.

Then like so many Kiwis, the hobbit returned to the Shire; bought a few acres whose geology he could analyse and appreciate; carefully considered the history of the land including a volcanic eruption on the neighbouring island 900 years ago; planted his vines and waited.

Les only does single varietal vintages, and pretty much single paddock ones at that. He does what he reckons will work, and what he thinks he will enjoy, like:

• Deciding that just doing a single cabernet franc vintage would be interesting, and "might appeal to some cab franc geeks out there"
  
• Planting some montepulciano vines, which no-one on the island had done before, because the geography and climate of that part of the island remind him of the Abruzzi where he reckons montepulciano grows best (his wife is Italian)
  
• Assessing that the section where some syrah is planted, split by a 1.8 metre wide creek, grows with different characteristics on each side of the creek, so he bottles each sides harvest separately.
  

I talked to Les about the commercial model, versus his kind of going your own way attitude, the Field of Dreams theory – build it and they will come. Plenty of money went down the drain doing that in telecoms in the recent past.

He just backs himself, his judgement and his knowledge. Marlborough is suffering a wine glut, but Les's vintages sell out, and:

• There turns out to be a community of cab franc geeks who snap up his strict varietal output
  
• His east side of the creek harvest has produced a rich and uncopiable "rosé with attitude"
  
• His second vintage of montepulciano is not yet bottled but has a long queue of punters waiting for it
  
• One of the world's leading wine writers has said of Les's cab franc vintages that they would "club any Chinon into submission" – Chinon apparently being the cab franc geeks' benchmark.
  

Look, I know Les is doing what he's doing because he can choose to, after a long, arduous and probably lucrative career. But it's still a pretty remarkable result built on:

• Confidence
  
• Self-belief
  
• Cross-application of knowledge – geology, geography, medieval and Palaeolithic history
  
• Intuition
  
• The guts to back himself on all of that.
  

If it can work in a high-stakes, capital-intensive business like wine-growing, I reckon there's scope for your humble blogger to back himself on a few more judgement calls.

 

Accurate butchery – a footnote

I've learnt an even rougher version of accuracy. We were putting in the windows, and the plate for one of them needed to be lower for the window to sit at the right height.

Bill the builder set the Makita to the inevitable 10 mm depth and did his usual multiple cross-cut intervals along the 2 metre plate.

"You wouldn't chip that out for me, would you? Have you got a little tomahawk?"

Yes, I've got a tomahawk, but I've never conceived of it as a carpentry tool. "It'll be faster," Bill said. So there I was, chipping out the waste with vehemence. "There's another lesson for me," I said to Bill.

"You've heard of an adze, haven't you?" he said.

Yeah, I've heard of an adze, in fantasy novels or some 19^th century story like Robbery Under Arms. Still, whatever works most efficiently.

Bill did a bit of final cleaning up along the plate, then took my tomahawk home and sharpened it for me. It's not a total Makita world, not just yet.

Once upon a time, kids could do really stupid things

I was standing with eyes down, hanging onto a steel beam which Bill the builder was welding; making sure to avoid looking at the glare from the arc welder. A big drop of welding rod fell to the ground in front of me and spattered a bright shower of sparks upwards in a blossom of reddy-gold.

It reminded me instantly of fireworks. Not of the exotic stage managed extravaganza of NYE (as we are apparently now supposed to call it) but of the chook pen in our old family home, and a little "flower pot" that dad was lighting beside the bonfire on Empire Day.

Yep, when we still had vestiges of the pink bits on the globe, and grown-ups did a mild bit of forelock tugging, and kids sang "Hurrah for the red, white and blue" while we waved dolly pegs with appropriately coloured crepe paper strips wrapped around them held by rubber bands. When we stood up and bawled out "God save our gracious Queen."

And fireworks and big blazing bonfires that dads would spend weeks building before the 24^th of May each year.

The Empire Day flashback didn't last long though, just like the day itself as imperial glory finally faded. It pointed me to the real fun about fireworks – Empire Day's successor, Cracker Night (nominally the Queen's Birthday in June), which became symbolic for me of all the stupid things boys like us could possibly manage to do with fireworks.

It's the baby-boomer blokes' lament, tinged with guilty recognition: our grandchildren will never be allowed to have the fun and the mayhem of doing dangerous childhood things.

Like these:

• Putting penny bungers (shaped like baby sticks of dynamite) under jam tins and seeing how high the bunger could blow the jam tin into the air
  
• Then when that excitement paled, upping the stakes to put tuppeny bungers (even more wickedly powerful explosives) under kerosene tins for even more chaotic results
  
• Realising that penny bungers fitted quite neatly down a bit of water pipe, which you could bend in dad's vice into yes, the shape of a gun; then lighting the bunger, dropping it down the pipe, following it with a marble, and knowing you have created a potentially lethal weapon
  
• Using roman candles like semi-automatic rifles in firefights running around the chook pen battleground
  
• Going progressively up the scale to see how big an explosive you could hold in your fingers while it went off: the little tom thumbs no worries; the standard sized cracker, yep, okay; the penny bunger? No, we didn't get quite that stupid, or maybe my best mate and worst influence Greg Murphy may have once.
  

1966, where are you? Oh for long backyards, far enough from the house where mothers couldn't see the potential carnage going on. I know, I know, kids lost fingers, even eyes; the good burghers of Sans Souci lost letter boxes and the odd cat lost its life, when the really mean kids took up the bunger thing.

Now instead, it's like this:

• Fireworks are inevitably banned from personal use, except for some lame ones you buy in Fyshwick and smuggle across the border.
  
• It costs me $100, and a day's worth of lectures and tests on OH&S, before I can even think of being an owner-builder.
  
• One metre high step ladders are banned from building sites because you can't have 3 points of contact while standing on them.
  
• No council could ever again put in their parks one of those well-balanced and well-oiled twirly merry-go-rounds that you could get spinning really fast and then hang out and feel the centrifugal force and be spun off, and only lose a little bit of skin from knees and elbows.
  

I blame the lawyers. My former colleagues were very successful in eliminating bad luck, misadventure and just plain shit-happens from our lives, and turning it instead into someone's fault.

With that someone, of course, and their public liability insurers, having in the interests of truth and justice to be well and truly sued. And the nanny-state stepping in to protect us accordingly in line with the precedents set.

But I'm glad, I think, at least deep down, that my grandchildren will never be able to make bunger guns.

“You are my teacher” – five lessons from being given a whacking

Sometimes people touch our lives, significantly, harshly or tangentially, as if blown towards us by one of the Buddhist worldly winds of pain, loss, shame or blame. I just had one of those touches, someone a bit lost and struggling , needing to find a focus of blame to help ease their suffering; or just needing to lash out to deflect some fleeting pain; I dunno which. Anyway, I got the whacking, and it was nicely pointed at one of my potential hotspots.

There's a temptation inevitably to respond in kind. I suppose whatever wisdom I may have gathered from various hard lessons learned in life tells me that when that temptation arises, saying "Stop!" to myself before finally going through with a response can save me some pain, and give that other person a shot at minimising their pain.

That latest salvo aimed at me landed, serendipitously, at a time when I had floated through quite a peaceful meditation, and a couple of days after having spent some life-affirming time with my consulting colleagues talking about respective personal journeys.

I was standing at the sink, washing dishes, just reflecting on that salvo, with a thought like, "Oh no, not again," when another thought followed (or was sent): "You are my great teacher," you who had made the carefully aimed attack. I gradually experienced the lessons I was being taught by my teacher:

Patience – it may be a while, if ever, before people's attitudes might change or their anger fade. That's okay, they are usually each more than worth me letting any such prospect of change have the space to blossom.

Tolerance – whatever is motivating the attack maybe has a fair basis in fact behind it, and that point of view is one for which I ought to show at least a bit of respect.

Humbleness – I have plenty of unworthy thoughts myself, and plenty of temptation to air them (to which I am sometimes known to succumb). I can easily marshal a biting return salvo which perhaps if I were a little more enlightened myself would not even form in my mind.

Restraint – there was an even chance, in this instance, that snapping back would be pointless and more likely counter-productive. A response would most likely fuel the suffering that prompted the attack. I could minimise that prospect by restraining the urge to say a bunch of things which would only feel good for a very short time.

Compassion – Jack Kornfield says "Compassion is when love meets pain." Its essence for me is a recognition that we are all in this shit-happens world together. I know what is behind some of the pain this person is feeling. Meeting that pain with love, at least vicariously, would seem to be the least I could do.

I have a different perspective on this person now, from assailant to valued teacher. And God knows I can use the lessons. There are other potential teachers that I should be looking out for and recognising, no doubt about that. And they're not all shooting at me.

Accurate butchery – when perfection doesn’t really matter

My lesson for the week is: "If it's not going to show, it doesn't have to look great, so don't waste time trying to be perfect."

I reached the next stage of my builder's apprenticeship. Bill the builder deigned to let me use real tools, that is, tools beside a mattock and a shovel.

We have been building the frames. We went down to see eight-fingered Dan (his brother accidentally cut off 2 of his fingers with an axe when Dan was 6) and bought second hand oregon.

The used wood looks a bit scruffy but it's not going to bend or warp any further, being well and truly seasoned by who knows how many decades standing in someone else's house.

We got to the stage of rebating the top and bottom plates where the wall studs go in. You set the power saw to a depth of 10mm, then do a series of lateral cuts close together so you can chisel out the excess more easily.

My job was the chiselling. I know about chiselling. You always go with the grain of the wood; if you go across the grain, you can splinter the wood.

I started chiselling my stud carefully with the grain, then Bill the builder started on his stud. He had done 3 while I was neatly finishing my first one.

"I didn't think you could go across the grain," I said. Bill was belting the chisel across the grain with gusto.

"Framing is butchery," he said, "accurate butchery anyway. It doesn't have to look great – it's all going to be covered up inside the walls anyway."

So with licence like that I got into the across-the-grain act and increased my speed of rebating two-fold. When we got to the deeper rebates for the window and door lintels, it wasn't even chiselling; you just whacked the bigger wafers sideways with your hammer and tidied up a bit afterwards.

The Buddhists say: "To be enlightened is to be without anxiety about the non-perfection of the world." There's a place for rough and ready, if you think about when.

My carefully chiselled first rebate would work no better for its intended purpose than Bill's rough-hewn ones, and doing it my way was slowing down the process considerably. It would have looked very neat and tidy, but it will be encased by a brick wall on one side of it and a gyprock wall on the other.

When else do I waste time and energy in the pursuit on pointless perfection?

• Fluffing around with PowerPoint slides – one of the great time-and-effort wasters in all creation


• Insisting that each garment I hang on the line has two matching colour pegs


• Cutting carrots into julienne strips before throwing them into the slow cooker.

I guess all those things are okay in their own right, as long as they aren't impeding some more pressing process. I'll be keeping an eye out for just the right time to employ some more "accurate butchery".

(Since writing this, I pegged some washing out, not caring what the peg colours were, and experienced a small sense of liberation.)