Chris Williams serves as the Chief Operating Officer for Interaction Associates (IA). His background includes more than ten years in the professional services space in business operations, recruiting, business development, and complex research roles. Prior work includes strategy consulting for Fortune 500 clients.
Interaction Associates is best known for introducing the concept and practice of group facilitation to the business world in the early 1970’s. For over 50 years, IA has provided thousands of leaders and teams with practical, simple, and effective programs, tools, and techniques for leading, meeting, and working better across functions, viewpoints, and geographies.
As the company is hosting a special event in the Raleigh-Durham area on May 30, today we’re hosting a Q&A to learn more about the solutions that Interaction Associates provides and more about their upcoming training on “Meeting Mastery: One Session to Transform Your Meetings”.
Q: How did Interaction Associates (IA) originally get started and what is its mission in working with companies in 2024?
Chris: Interaction Associates got its start in 1969 by an individual named David Straus who was studying architecture at Harvard School of Design. Design at that time was mostly about eyesight – design based on your eyes. However, David realized they failed to teach about the process of design and often there was frustration with drafting a design on paper to only see that the design did not work. There was a realization that you could see things through a ‘process lens’ that helped you understand the use of space, the people, the approach for design.
The company’s early days were around research into human problem solving, teaching and helping groups, and facilitation. Much of the company’s intellectual property was created at this time from a grant from Carnegie Corporation to study how people work together effectively and solve problems.
Today, the explosion of information, sheer volume of meetings, and complexity of work make it even more challenging for people to work together effectively. We understand many workers are frustrated, overwhelmed, and wondering if there is a better way.
IA’s mission is to help people work better together. We do this by serving as a guide by providing practical tools and skills through workshops that help people do their work in new ways. At the core of all of our work is the Interaction Method – a process framework that improves your strategic thinking, collaborative attitude, and facilitative behaviors so that when people are together and interacting, they are focused, working in sync, and get results. Over 1 million individuals have gone through an IA learning experience.
Q: As Chief Operating Officer, could you share how you became involved with IA and your role in the company?
Chris: I became involved with IA more than ten years ago. Formerly, I was working for a strategy firm and became a bit jaded. We did excellent work and built impressive PointPoint decks, but I knew that without the people aspect, strategy on paper only gets so far. IA brings a human element, and the mindset, skillset, and toolset to the conversation. I’ve been blessed to work in a variety of roles at the company. In each role, the core focus remains the same – how might we provide excellent value, service, and tools to really make someone’s life easier and better. In my current role of Chief Operating Officer, I lead our product, marketing, business operations, and finance functions. I’m also try to keep up with new innovations and am always thinking of new ways that our core content and value can best serve the market.
Q: Millions of meetings take place in business every day, and not all of them are as productive as they could be. How significant of a business problem are ineffective meetings for productivity?
Chris: That’s a great question. We wrote the book “How to Make Meetings Work”, and it speaks directly to the many problems.
Ineffective meetings are a massive barrier to organizational and community productivity. But it’s a problem that not everyone sees, mostly because most people have never seen was an ‘excellent’ meeting might look like. When I speak with leaders today, I often hear they are spending upwards of 30-50% of their week in meetings, many which are ineffective. If you were to step back and do a calculation of the sheer volume people spend in meetings each week, month, year the total cost would be massive. This is a burden not only when it comes to organizational cost but also employee wellbeing. Many meetings people attend don’t have clear outcomes, roles, and leave without clarity of decisions or written actions. This makes their work day and work week frustrating.
I wrote an article in Forbes that shares more ideas on how you might revamp your company meeting culture.
Q: What are steps that not only executive leaders, but any professional in business can take to better manage meetings?
Chris: I have four simple but powerful recommendations that can help you better manage your meetings. All the recommendations I mention are process items because that’s what our research demonstrates changes meetings for the better. These recommendations work for any context and industry.
- Be very clear on when a meeting is actually necessary. Many meetings are not necessary. If you are running a status update meeting, how necessary is this? Is there a task management board that could do the same thing? Conversely, I often see people go back and forth endlessly on email or instant message with a large group of people on a complex issue. Sometimes a brief phone call or 15-minute meeting is all it takes. This requires intentionality and thought. When do you have a meeting, ensure you have the right people in the room and everyone is heard.
- When scheduling a meeting, consider your meeting desired outcomes. In other words, what do you want to walk away with at the end of the meeting? This is a very different mindset than a list of topics. It gets at the outcome – a decision, a plan, an agreement. What will success look like? Be specific and clear.
- Involve others when it comes to running and facilitating the meeting. As leaders, we are often content experts and decision makers in our meetings. We also try to do it all. But this doesn’t help to engage or grow others. How might we leverage the talents and gifts in the room? Give people a specific role to play such as timekeeper, scribe, technology expert. This creates a mindset and environment of shared success where we are all playing an instrumental role.
- Consider the ‘process’ you are using in the meeting itself. Think of this like the ‘play-by-play’ you’ll use to run the meeting. What is the approach you are using? What is the technology? In most meetings, I see people ‘discuss’ a list of topics. This is an ok approach, but there is a better approach. First, get clear on the topic at hand. Next consider the desired outcome of that topic – what are you trying to achieve? Finally, consider the most optimal process that will achieve that outcome. As an example, imagine you were in a meeting with 8 cross-functional people. One of topics was about the recent problems with your supply chain. The desired outcome was ‘an agreement on the top 2 problems with our supply chain’. The process we might use to get at that desired outcome could be to have each representative list out the problems in a shared document and then clarify what those items mean. We could then have individuals force-rank the list and aim to focus the bulk of our conversation on the highest priority items. By conveying and revealing the process you’ll use, it helps people understand what you expect of them, how they will contribute, and keeps people focused on the overall goal.
Q: How are effective meetings connected to achieving important company goals?
Chris: We are a meeting society. Our world is made up of small groups of people who come together to share information, plan, solve problems, make decisions, or find out what is wrong. Meetings are everywhere: business, governments, schools, religious institutions, associations, clubs.
We get together and rely on each other to function.
Effective meetings are directly linked to achieving company goals. If you are able to plan, communicate, decide, and act better as a group, you raise the probability that you’ll get to your goal.
Q: What sort of takeaways will attendees gain from your upcoming Raleigh event, “Meeting Mastery” to transform meetings in their organizations?
Chris: Takeaways include:
- Conversations that are focused and outcome based. Get results.
- Learn how to boost engagement in meetings, ensuring that important perspectives are heard.
- Leave a meeting with clear actions and next steps
Q: IA is based in Boston, but has teams located throughout the United States. Could you share more about your experience living and working in Raleigh and any work that IA has done with companies in this region?
Chris: Yes, IA has been supporting organizations for more than 50 years. Raleigh is a dynamic place to live and work due to it’s diversity, high quality of life, and high level of growth. We’ve supported organizations in the Raleigh area such as Biogen, GSK, Lenovo, NC Department of Public Instruction, Novartis, and Wake County Public School System.
Join Interaction Associates locally on May 30 to learn more about how to master your meetings, by clicking here for tickets and information.
