MARK'S ARTICLES AND INSIGHTS

On summer break one year in college, I went on a mission’s trip to the Ukraine. During our time, we visited the home of one of our hosts, who proceeded to feed us small wafer cookies. Being Americans, we gobbled up the cookies in our hunger. As we were finishing up, I noticed our host nibbling on the same cookie with which he had started. While we were eating every cookie in sight, our host was carefully conserving his cookie. We had it backwards. We thought we were serving him by our presence. In reality, he was serving us. We were just eating up his cookies. As leaders of teams, we can also get this backwards.

Four years ago, my wife and I heard some mysterious noises in the attic above our bedroom, which became a good example of the importance of understanding the nature of a problem.

Meetings are where the work of the team is done, which means that they are naturally the source of frustration as well as the source of potential improvement.