Back in 1994 when I was working at Nextel (when all we had was literally just a line drawing of what the first phone would look like, well before Craig McCaw got involved), we developed a relationship with NTT -  the Japanese phone company - for joint technical development.   Eight NTT product executives and engineers were to spend 6 months working side-by-side with our team at our  California "headquarters", which consisted of a few offices in a small 2-story building.   Here we were, a  20-employee start-up working alongside a team from one of the oldest, largest, most established enterprises in the world.  Needless to say, there were culture shocks all around. 

After they'd been working with the Nextel team for about 2 months, a few of the NTT team approached me after a product meeting and asked me to lunch. They told me they wanted to ask for guidance related to "meeting protocol".  (I was the lowest person on the totem pole on the Nextel side, so I suppose they were looking for a "safe" person to get guidance from.)  At the lunch, in which I was the only Nextel employee, they told me they were surprised that we would call a meeting, often with less than 48 hours notice, and within that meeting:

• have a discussion of a problem for the first time;
• develop several responses to that problem; and
• decide which solution to implement - all within the same meeting. 

At first I took their incredulousness as a complement - that famous startup flexibility and ability to move at the speed of light versus their painfully slow bureaucracy!   But over lunch they explained in factual terms -  and in such a polite manner that this New Yorker almost missed their real mission -  to tell me basically that our meetings sucked.   And after listening with an open mind, it was clear they were absolutely right.   Here was their take on our meetings which, true to Japanese form, was much more polite than this retelling: 

1)  Many times our agendas weren't fully developed - we'd throw a line in a meeting-maker like "Meeting to finalize feature functionality and ideas for feature branding".  Attached would be a few documents as reading material, like specs or other documents that the meeting organizer expected the team to read.  But even though they were sent these materials, the NTT team members felt unprepared walking in the door because they had no sense beforehand on what specifically they were being asked to prepare for the meeting.  In their world, each individual would be expected to send around, before the meeting, a short brief to share with other team members on their thoughts about the topic based on any other relevant documents to stir thought and conversation.  Why would a meeting even occur if the meeting organizer didn't expect everyone to come to the meeting with a draft plan to discuss?  Was it really necessary to develop the draft plan together?

2)  Too many people didn't come to the meeting fully prepared by even bothering to read the documents that were sent.  They saw this as disrespectful and slovenly, but even more, they were surprised at how much it was tolerated (again, these are my words - they phrased it more delicately).   In their meeting approach, every single person was expected to read all briefs before the meeting (about 10-20 pages depending on the number of people in the meeting), so that everyone was well prepared for a thoughtful discussion.   Their 'briefs' were actually very brief - so they didn't take long to distill but gave you a sense of how each team member was approaching the topic and therefore:

• Each person's views were included, no matter whether they were introverts or extroverts;
• Any member could tell whether another member needed further clarification on the goals or objectives to help make sure everyone was on the same page from the start of the meeting; 
• The meetings tended to be extremely focused and off to a quick start because the substance was laid out in advance.

3)  Within our meetings, there wasn't a clear statement of the problem first or agreement that this truly was a problem and not a symptom of something else.  In their meetings, someone was always charged with a role of asking the question - "Are we addressing the real problem?" 

4)  In our meetings, conclusions were being reached within the meeting without reflection on whether the pool of solutions was sufficient and inclusive of the best ones.  In their approach, each person would leave that meeting and have the homework of finding 2 solutions that the team didn't think of.  These would be collected and a second meeting held to go through the full list of solutions before a course of action was determined.

Yes, conducting meetings with their approach took more time, more work - and more discipline.  I'm happy to say that we opened a genuine discussion on the topic, put some firm meeting rules in place, and directly benefited as the company grew from the tiny company that competitors laughed at into a mammoth well-respected wireless provider.

Since that lunch in 1994, I've been in a number of other startups as well as Fortune 500 companies so I can say without reservation that quite often poor meeting skills are not only a startup phenomenon.  But it does tend to happen to a greater degree in startups because the culture often encourages rapid-fire responses and there is a general lack of formal processes to begin with. 

As a startup junkie, I fully understand the dread of "analysis paralysis".  But let's not use it as an excuse for lack of preparedness and discipline.  I've seen this way too many times, and the outcome is felt much more acutely when times are bad (they are masked when "all boats float").  A few months ago, when I described my 1994 revelations on decision-making and meeting style to one executive whose company is in trouble, he held up the book "Blink" and told me that my suggested steps would add "unnecessary data points".  I hadn't yet read the book, so I bought it right away and finished it that same day.  It's a great book and its author Malcolm Gladwell was right on target regarding snap decision-making - but unfortunately, the executive had interpreted the book incorrectly.   "Blink - the power of thinking without thinking", clearly showed both sides of quick judgments- the positive and the negative - yet this executive, with his company drowning, was unwilling to see that he was using this book as a shield to justify short-sighted "seat of your pants" decision-making with way too little hard information.  Since then, I've had a few other startup executives mention this book in the same vein.  I haven't met Malcolm Gladwell but I sincerely doubt he intended his book to be wielded this way. 

Now is the time to take a step back and be sure you aren't turning "ready-aim-fire" into "fire-aim-ready".    Make the absolute most of the resources you have left to see you through this turmoil.  If you need help, drop me a line.