The Meeting Where Everyone Agreed...and Nothing Happened

You know the meeting.

It started at 10:00. By 10:07, someone had shared a 34-slide PowerPoint. By 10:22, three people had said, “That’s a great point.” Someone else promised to “circle back,” another person suggested taking something “offline,” and at least one attendee was answering emails while occasionally nodding to demonstrate continued consciousness.

But here's the funny thing: it was actually a good meeting.

A real problem was identified. People discussed it openly. Different perspectives were heard. Everyone agreed something needed to be done. There was even that magical moment when several heads nodded simultaneously and you thought:

Excellent. We’re actually going to fix this.

At 11:00, everyone left.

Three weeks later, someone asked:

"Whatever happened with that issue we discussed?"

Silence.

Someone vaguely remembered that Finance was going to look into it.

Finance thought Operations was handling it.

Operations thought it had been referred to the project team.

The project team thought management was going to make a decision.

And management?

Management thought somebody was "circling back."

Apparently, the circle was considerably larger than anyone anticipated.

Welcome to the meeting where everyone agreed...and nothing happened.

“We Discussed It” Is Not an Action Plan

Few phrases give me less comfort than:

"We discussed it."

Wonderful.

What did you decide?

Who is doing something? By when? What will actually be different when they're finished?

Discussion is important. Collaboration is important. Disagreement can be important too. Sometimes we need debate and a healthy dose of "Wait a minute, have we thought about this?" before making a decision.

But eventually somebody has to do something.

Organizations can become very good at identifying problems while being considerably less successful at moving from recognition to resolution. We hold meetings, prepare reports, create dashboards, establish committees and discuss risks.

All of those things can be useful.

None of them automatically means the underlying problem has been addressed.

There is a considerable difference between knowing about a problem and doing something about it.

Welcome to the Action Item Graveyard

Most organizations have one.

Perhaps yours lives in Excel. Maybe it's tucked away in SharePoint, Teams, meeting minutes or the mysterious shared drive where documents go to enjoy a peaceful retirement.

It contains beautifully vague statements such as:

• Management will review the issue.

• The team will consider alternative solutions.

• The process will be evaluated.

• Additional monitoring will be implemented.

• Management will continue to monitor.

That last one is a personal favorite.

Continue to monitor what?

How will you monitor it? How often? Who is doing the monitoring? What result would concern you? At what point does somebody actually take action?

“Continue to monitor” can sometimes be corporate language for:

We aren't quite sure what to do, so we're going to stare at it for a while.

Monitoring has value, of course. But monitoring without thresholds, ownership or escalation criteria can become little more than watching a problem get bigger in high definition.

Every Action Needs an Owner

Imagine the meeting ends with this:

"Finance and Operations will work together to resolve the issue."

Sounds perfectly reasonable.

Except...

Who owns it?

Finance thinks Operations is taking the lead. Operations thinks Finance is reviewing the numbers. Two weeks pass. Everyone is busy. Nobody deliberately ignores the issue; everyone simply assumes someone else has it.

This is why meaningful actions need at least three things:

An owner. A deadline. An expected outcome.

And by owner, I don't mean Finance, Operations, Management or the project team.

Departments don't wake up on Wednesday morning thinking:

"Goodness, I really must finish that action item today."

People do.

Someone needs to know:

This is mine.

That person then needs to understand when it is due and what successful completion actually looks like.

Without those things, you don't really have an action plan.

You have a wish.

Closed Does Not Always Mean Fixed

This is particularly important for Internal Audit.

We love the word CLOSED.

Finding closed.

Action closed.

Recommendation closed.

There's a lovely sense of accomplishment about it. Another item disappears from the outstanding issues report and perhaps even turns a reassuring shade of green.

But consider this.

Internal Audit identifies repeated errors in a business process.

Management agrees to provide additional training.

Training is delivered.

Attendance is recorded.

Slides are saved.

Certificates may even be issued.

ACTION CLOSED.

Fine.

But did the errors stop?

Did employees understand the process better?

Did behavior change?

Did the underlying risk actually decrease?

Or did twenty-seven people attend a webinar on Tuesday afternoon while simultaneously answering emails, after which everyone returned to doing exactly what they had been doing before?

Completing an action is not necessarily the same thing as fixing a problem.

The objective isn't to close the finding.

The objective is to address the risk.

Accountability Isn't About Blame

Sometimes organizations resist assigning clear ownership because accountability feels uncomfortable.

If Denise owns the action and it isn't completed, suddenly everyone knows Denise didn't complete it.

Much safer to say:

"The team will address it."

Now if nothing happens, we can all stand around looking puzzled together.

But accountability shouldn't be about finding someone to blame. It should be about giving someone the responsibility, authority and resources to move something forward.

A good action owner should be able to answer five questions:

• What problem am I trying to solve?

• What exactly am I responsible for doing?

• Do I have the authority and resources to do it?

• When must it be completed?

• How will we know whether it worked?

If those questions can't be answered, the problem may not be the person assigned the action.

The problem may be the action itself.

Beware the Perpetual Due-Date Shuffle

There's another creature that lives in the action-item graveyard.

The revised due date.

Original completion date: March 31.

Revised completion date: May 31.

Revised revised completion date: July 31.

New target date: September 30.

Eventually the action item has celebrated two birthdays and is considering applying for a pension.

Sometimes deadlines genuinely need to change. Priorities shift. Resources disappear. Technology projects take longer than expected. That's reality.

But repeated extensions should trigger a different conversation:

Why isn't this getting done?

Perhaps the action is unrealistic.

Perhaps the owner doesn't have sufficient authority.

Perhaps management doesn't consider it important.

Perhaps the risk has changed.

Or perhaps everyone keeps changing the date because changing the date is easier than changing the process.

A revised deadline should not become a substitute for escalation.

Before Everyone Leaves the Room...

At the end of your next important meeting, particularly one involving risk, projects, audit findings, vendors, controls or significant business decisions, spend five minutes asking:

What exactly did we decide?

What actions came out of this discussion?

Who owns each one?

When will each action be completed?

How will we know the action actually solved the problem?

Those five minutes may be more valuable than the previous fifty-five.

Because another meeting doesn't reduce risk.

Another spreadsheet doesn't reduce risk.

Another dashboard doesn't reduce risk.

Another beautifully written set of minutes certainly doesn't reduce risk.

Action does.

And Please...Stop Circling Back

I have nothing personally against circles.

They're lovely shapes.

But if we keep “circling back” long enough, eventually we're simply going around in circles.

Sometimes we need to stop circling and land somewhere.

Make the decision. Assign the owner. Set the deadline. Follow up. Check whether it worked.

Then, by all means, schedule another meeting.

We wouldn't want everyone's calendar getting lonely.

Learn. Act. Follow Through. Grow.

At LG3, we believe learning shouldn't end when the webinar closes, the playbook is downloaded or the meeting finishes.

Learning should change something.

Perhaps it changes the question you ask. Maybe it changes how you approach a risk, manage a project, investigate an anomaly or lead your team. Sometimes it simply gives you enough confidence to say:

“Hang on. Who actually owns this?”

That's when learning becomes useful.

That's when knowledge becomes action.

And that's how we Learn and Grow with LG3.

Your turn...

Think about the last important meeting you attended.

Can you name the decisions made, the actions assigned, the owners responsible and the deadlines agreed?

If not...

You may have had a very good meeting.

You just might need another one to figure out what happened at it.