I’ve been re-looking at Mastering the Rockefeller Habits by Verne Harnish.  I have presented my synopsis of this incredibly practical book a number of times.  The book describes, and elaborates on, in user-friendly form, the traits and practices of John Rockefeller.   At the center of those practices was the discipline of regular meetings.

I am now ready to boil it down to a phrase.  Here’s the phrase:

We get (i.e., we accomplish) what we meet about.
and
We seldom accomplish what we never meet about.

And here’s what I mean.  We are living in a constantly distracting world.  We have so many things to do.  Because we have so much to do, we do all of that “so much” – but we frequently fail to do the one thing we most need to do.

The Harnish book basically says this:  have one priority at a time, and meet about it until it is accomplished — (meetings + execution + debriefing + next meeting + more execution).

We see this everywhere.  Do you want to know which company will win the Malcolm Baldridge Quality Award?  Look at the schedules within the winning companies.  They have constant, perpetual, consistent meetings on quality improvement over the long haul – until they genuinely excel at quality.

In the article by John Dickerson on Slate about President Obama’s focus on Bin Laden, Mission Accomplished:  How Obama’s focused, hands-on pursuit of Osama Bin Laden paid off, we learn that President Obama gave the directive early in his presidency:

In June 2009, Obama directed his CIA director to “provide me within 30 days a detailed operation plan for locating and bringing to justice” Osama Bin Laden.
and, then…
A series of meetings were held in the White House to develop aggressive intelligence gathering operations.
and
By mid-March the president was chairing the national security meetings on the operation. (In all he would chair five such meetings, including the ones on the day the operation took place.)

You get (you accomplish) what you meet about.

Or, at least, you certainly don’t accomplish what you never meet about.  Or, in other words, meetings done well may not guarantee success, but a failure to meet with a clear focus almost guarantees failure.

So, whatever your goal, ask yourself this simple question: is it genuinely your focus?  If it is, then you are meeting about it, regularly, with the people who can make it happen – until it is accomplished.

Are you meeting regularly?  With a clear focus, “one priority at a time?’  If not, it is probably time to start.