MEETINGS WITH A PURPOSE

A RANA Case Study – A Medium-Sized Pharma Organization

The Story

Elaine Crawford, Director of the Systems and Procedures Division, reached over to her in-basket to pull out yet another Notice of Meeting. The overall organization, Modico Inc., a relatively modest Pharma at 8200 people strong, held numerous meetings as part of its management culture. The Notice of Meeting went like this:

Notice of Meeting

Agenda for Weekly Mid-Managers Meeting (MMM)

8:30 to 11:30

Introduction of new employees, Systems and Procedures Division
Briefing on new Company Procedure on Claims Management
Regional Report, Maritime Region
Product introduction to the Central Region
Company benefit package changes
Discussion on new company motto
Report from quarterly MIS

Elaine was really fed up with all the meetings she had to attend. Not only did she have to attend the weekly MMM but also, her own supervisory meeting, the Report to Senior Management meeting and two committee meetings, all in the space of a week. She felt very strongly as others did that meetings at Modico were out of control and had lost their purpose.

The Intervention

Elaine had worked in a previous organization where RANA had intervened and asked if we might be able to help. RANA Process Leaders:

Helped Elaine prepare a Business Case for making sense of the meeting structure at Modico and aimed at making meetings meaningful and appealing;
Accompanied Elaine as she presented the benefits of reducing the number of meetings to what was necessary and replacing them with increased interpersonal communications;
Supported her as the lead of a project aimed at improving meeting management;
Facilitated the custom design of a meeting structure that was scaled for the size of the organization and which highlighted the real purpose for meetings;
Provided a learning program to 16 Process Leaders from across the organization to help manage the new meeting structure, including providing facilitation services to the meetings;
Assisted Elaine in monitoring the change process and the accrued benefits to Modico;
Established the link to other processes of Modico that needed shoring up.