Mike Bloomberg on Meetings

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Here’s the story of the most unusual meeting I had with Mike Bloomberg.

It was early 2014. Mike had recently rejoined the company after spending 12 years as Mayor of New York City. He seemed like someone who arrived home to find a house redecorated with new furniture.

As part of his effort to get reacquainted with the people and processes of the company he founded, he would wander around and poke his head into rooms to see what was going on.

Then, as now, there was a meeting for the sales department every morning at 8 a.m. It’s called the Monday Morning Meeting, or MMM. It has had broadly the same outline for many years.

People arrive as pop or rock music plays. There are a few product announcements, some sales testimonials and maybe an HR update. Speakers are limited to three minutes.

One day I was presenting a new application and when I got on stage, I noticed Mike had quietly slipped in the door and was standing in the back. The audience was unaware. He left before the meeting ended.

A few weeks later I got an invitation from Mike’s executive assistant to dial into an audio conference call. There was no agenda and no list of attendees.

I arrived to discover a dozen people on the line. I recognized the head of sales and a few others, but most were unfamiliar. It seemed like a random lineup.

Mike joined and explained he had attended the Monday sales meeting recently and he decided to invite the people who had spoken that day to ask about it.

His tone was curious. Why did we do the meeting? Who organized it? How was it arranged? What were the goals? What was accomplished? Should it be different?

Everyone froze for a minute, unsure of the “correct” answer. This meeting had gone on for decades. I doubt anyone asked those questions in years.

The head of sales jumped in to say that the focus was to present and explain new terminal functions to the sales force so they could share them with clients.

Mike asked why, if that was the case, were the demos so short. Three minutes didn’t seem like enough time to convey much nuance.

I learned a lot from that exchange.

I realized every CEO makes decisions. But not all executives ask questions.

And, the intelligence you get from questions depends on how you ask.

On that call at least, Mike did three things that I would recommend all executives do more often:

–He booked the meeting with no agenda to avoid pre-gaming

–He invited the direct participants, including junior level people

–He projected a tone of curiosity and enthusiasm for the work

And lastly, and not insignificantly, he created an indelible memory.

Anyone who attended that brief call almost certainly shared the story with colleagues.

I’m still sharing it a decade later.

That’s how companies create successful cultures.

(Part of a series of management lessons learned from three decades I spent at Bloomberg)

BRIEF OBSERVATIONS

POLITICAL SHIFT: The idea that Gen Z men and women are diverging political with men becoming more conservative and woman more liberal was surprising.

DATA ANALYSIS: We are still in the first inning of leveraging already available data to understand business performance. Also, go creperies!

WHY YOU SHOULD BE ONLINE: This is the most insane example to show how the visibility of writing online confers tremendous career benefits.

WROTE NOTHING. BAD!: I feel the same way many days, Franz.

PRESIDENTIAL PAPERS: We once had a president who required fourteen volumes to write his life story.