To me, one of the most unproductive ways to spend your day is in meeting after meeting . . . That is, unless you are accomplishing things–stirring it up, being heard, changing paradigms or creating change. Many times, I have been in meetings feeling like I could burst because I was so frustrated with the bureaucracy, the hidden agendas, and the dictated hierarchy that I find in the typical corporation.
But I’ve often wondered, what if I could turn this on its head? What if I could use all of the things that frustrate me to my advantage? What if I could open an app on my smartphone and instantly have something really smart to say? Because many times in meetings, I know I want to say something, but I can’t quite put my finger on what it is. So I decided to find a way to changing or disrupting the conversation.
This type of disruption–no matter what is said–can change the thought process for just a second, which is enough to completely alter where the conversation is going. It could be the beginning of a new thought, a map to a new direction or most importantly, it might generate a feeling that the meeting has purpose and that something is being accomplished. This feeling of accomplishment is what I am so concerned about for the typical corporate warrior today. A sense of accomplishment makes you feel better. It’s just a basic hormonal response, but it is critical to the “happiness factor.”
Feeling like you have contributed, or accomplished something, creates hormones like Oxytocin that make you happy. This “happy hormone” is the one we want to feel, and the one we want more of in the corporate world. This is the same hormone you get when you look into your lover’s eyes, or play with your dog or cat.
When you are happy, you feel lighter… You laugh and act much differently than when you are overwhelmed by stress and the stress hormone. The stress hormone is called cortisol. Cortisol elevates your blood sugar, makes you store fat and disrupts your sleep patterns. It makes me feel toxic, and I am sure it doesn’t feel good for you either.
I have written about the importance of happiness in multiple blogs. You know I think it is very important that we have happy people in the work force, and eliminate the impact of the stress hormone. You also know that throughout my career, I have felt that happy people are less likely to pollute. Happy people are less likely to harm. Happy people just make the world a better place in which to live.
So, what if the very meetings that I – and I am sure you – loathe, start to become a new opportunity for you to have a sense of accomplishment everyday in your organization? What if these very meetings were more important to your career development and promotions than anything else you could do? What if you could laugh and be happy in these meetings?
Yes, meetings do offer an opportunity for you to build your own credibility, your own peer respect, by what you say and how you handle yourself. But stop and reflect for a moment… Many times, when I know I have the opportunity, I just don’t know what to say.
Enter the Code Blue Innovation Team.
The Code Blue Innovation Team is a group of individuals who have worked together over the last 25 years to solve issues that are important to us… From raising recycling rates, to creating the natural and organic pet food industry and forming the Association of Family Farms, plus many more.
It’s our little secret that we collectively have so much fun coming up with creative ways to address global problems that we’ve banded together to do it even more. One that we have been solving for over the last year and a half is what I was talking about earlier in this blog. The happiness factor of the global worker. The stress of our current fast-paced digitization phase of business is creating a new corporate life that is running the risk of not being fun (How’s that for an understatement). No fun means no smiles, no laughter, a world that is unsustainable.
So we asked ourselves, why can’t those constant meetings we loathe be an opportunity for employees to become happier, to stand out, to change the direction of a project or product launch? Net-net, how do we create a way for workers to feel good about themselves? This is why Code Blue Innovations has been working on an app called “Meeting Bomb.” Meeting Bomb is a tool for you to use in meetings to change the conversation, gain respect from your peers and to make meetings more productive.
Step back and realize that you are likely spending 50 hours or more per month in meetings. What if you looked at that as an opportunity to provide comments to gain status, to make stuff happen or to just have some fun 50 times per month? Imagine what it would be like to be smiling, with a tool in your pocket that you know is going to make the meeting more productive, let you have more fun and let you gain status in your organization. And, oh by the way, you can add your own Meeting Bomb quote to the app. Because once you get in the swing of contributing in every meeting, you will become programmed to come up with your own quotes to push the agenda along, to disrupt the conversation, and take the meeting to a new level. It will make life in your corporation or organization fun again.
My hope is that you take this opportunity to download and use Meeting Bomb. It’s available in the App Store and on Google Play. Let us know if you like it and if it is working for you. I want you to be happy, as does the entire Code Blue Innovation Team. Because happy people will make a difference in the world for everyone.
Meeting Bomb On!
AZ
Meeting Bomb in the App Store for iPhone and iPad: http://j.mp/meetingbomb
Meeting Bomb on Google Play for Android smartphones and Tablets: http://j.mp/meeting-bomb
