What is a good meeting?
What do you think makes for a good meeting? Is it to make a decision? Is it to have a debate? Is it about learning something new? Is it to get all the different perspectives heard and taken into consideration? What makes a good meeting for you and your culture?
I have found that what constitutes a good meeting, and how well community is integrated into meetings, is exclusively dependent on company culture. Mind you there is a rather big cultural component involved either way. What makes a good meeting as described in the book “The Culture Map” by Erin Meyer nicely outlines what the expectation, and how meetings operate and flow depending on the cultural backgrounds.
Community can sometimes be seen as the ‘annoying’ ones, the ones that point out concerns, or request something really complicated to be taken into consideration. It’s important to understand that this does not come from a place of pessimism, negativity, or ‘being complicated’. It comes from a place where we aim to ensure the player is taken into account when making decision. We may feel strongly about something, but it always is aimed to ensure the player experience is a positive one, and that we do not trigger the proverbial “shi*t storm”. I have seen community being excluded from ongoing conversation, because we made it “more complicated than it needs to be”, only to be sheepishly reinvited after things have gone wrong. An appeal to the non-community folks reading, try to see us as the canary, we aim to keep our current players, and grow with new ones, while making sure we avoid the potential crises.
For the community folk reading this, keep in mind that unless a company culture clearly defines meeting culture, to tread carefully. To approach topics not with a competitive mindset or a “us vs them”, but from a place of we’re in this together, and we want to make the boat as sturdy and save for all of us on it, as we can. Ultimately all we want to achieve is that a) the player has been considered, and b) all variables are taken into account when making a decision. Our corner is the player, and as long as player topics are taken into consideration, are addressed, and prepared for, that’s all we can ever ask for.
It is rare for a company to have a defined meeting culture. And even rarer to have an understanding in a multicultural setting what each person in the meeting would consider a good, or successful meeting. We all spend a lot of our time in meetings, so wouldn’t it be nice to spend that time in a positive way, that makes the best use of the time spent? I think so, and that’s what we call internal community building here at Com-Unity consulting. Community is culture, and those apply both for our player base, and our second community, the studio. If you’d like to find out more, you can contact us here!
