Using a “tatakidai” can help improve productivity of meetings

I’ve just come out of two back-to-back conference calls feeling guilty. On the first one I continued the work I was already doing, composing an email to a colleague on a totally different topic until my name was suddenly called and I had to quickly start paying attention again. Fortunately it then became apparent that we could not discuss anything further until a crucial new member of the global team was involved.

For the second one I became so bored because most of the content did not concern me in any way, I was flicking through my emails and eventually hung up. It didn’t help that the line was bad, with a nasty echo for some of the speakers.

I know I should have been paying attention, but without a clear agenda, and some visual material to look at, my focus wanders. According to other co-workers who came up to me afterwards, they had the same problem.

To my horror, after the calls, I received an email from the first call’s convenor, asking to have the call all over again, with the missing team member. There was still no agenda or visual material offered, other than a series of open ended questions to be discussed.

Fortunately, none of these calls involved non-native English speakers. It is of course far more productive if any meeting, particularly a conference call, has a proper agenda. If non-native English speakers or people like me, who are more visual than aural, or prone to multitasking, are participating, then in addition to an agenda, a set of bullet points with the key facts that are going to be covered helps us to keep track of what is going on, and pick up the thread if we have been distracted.

I am trying to get my courage up to respond to the meeting request with a demand. Instead of a series of questions “to be discussed” during the call, I want to propose that the convenor comes up with a “tatakidai”. This is a Japanese concept, literally meaning “beating board” or perhaps “chopping block”. In English “corporate speak”, the nearest equivalent would be a “straw man”.

In other words, the person requesting the meeting has to do a bit more work. It’s not a formal proposal or something that necessarily fully represents what the convenor wants, just a starting point. A plan that has been beaten up on a tatakidai, until consensus is reached, has a far better chance of success in execution, particularly if the participants are remotely located, than an open ended discussion, where he who talks most and loudest tends to win through.

It does require the convenor to leave their ego behind though, and be willing to take criticisms and contributions on board. My sense is that Japanese colleagues will also feel a lot more comfortable contributing and even criticising, if there is something concrete from which to work. That way, comments are not directed at the person, as they would be in an open discussion, but more at the tatakidai proposal.

For more on this topic, download our free bilingual e-book on effective cross-cultural meetings.