Are you just pretending that you want to know what’s wrong in your business that you can improve it, or do you really want to hear the hurtful truth and are ready to make the uncomfortable decisions that are necessary?

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Either your managers are conducting superficial meetings pretending that they want to learn what’s wrong in their business so that they can learn from it and fix it, or they really want to know what’s wrong but their middle managers are filtering reality and telling them only what they want to hear so they can look good in front of their bosses. Either way any necessary progress and healthy change is being made impossible.

When talking to my fiancée about her past experience as a brand manager for Proctor & Gamble, she told me that she misses the way that meetings are conducted, and the productivity and energy that comes out of it.

Unlike in any other meetings the most junior managers would talk first about what’s going in their areas of responsibility, what the current challenges are and how they believe that they could fix them. While this is completely different to the way it would be handled in most organizations, it’s working because:

1. It allows your junior managers and employees to grow & develop. Junior managers are eager to learn and take on additional responsibilities and tasks, but are often discouraged by their bosses trying to take all the spotlight for themselves and leave nothing for their team.
2. It challenges your team members to stand up and step out of their comfort zone. Having to talk about problems in front of your general manager or managing director and explain how you would fix them is certainly not comfortable at first, but will help you to grow at a much faster pace that you could ever imagine.
3. Your team members stop filtering reality. Once you ask your junior managers to talk first in front of the general manager and other senior managers in the room, they stop filtering reality and give you a clear assessment of what’s really going on in your business, and this gives you an opportunity to fix it.
4. It forces a culture and attitude that allows employees and managers to admit and learn from their mistakes. Having a meeting that discusses challenges openly without playing the blaming game and that focuses on getting better as a team is the perfect foundation for a winning culture.
5. If you would have a meeting the old-fashioned way with the general manager or director talking first, it would discourage any junior managers to voice their opinion if it would be any different from the one of their bosses, and this is most harmful to any organization.

Question: What do you think about having a meeting the P&G way, and do you think it would work in your company?