Entropy, Lurking in Your Meetings
Don’t be seduced by lots of ‘activity’ that doesn’t translate to useful work
Entropy is lurking in your organization, waiting to ensnare you, your meetings, and your team’s work overall. It comes in many forms — poorly planned meetings, duplicative work, unclear and overlapping roles — and is sapping you and your team of much-needed energy.
As a coach and leadership trainer (and executive and founder) for the past 20 years, I’ve learned this the hard way. And I’ve worked with teams and leaders of all stripes, and have seen how “entropy” can render even the most enthusiastic teams frustrated and withdrawn.
Your goal, as a team leader or manager, is to deliver impact and to lead your team on a journey to achieve that impact. But the distance between the immediate needs of “today” and the desired “impact” of the future can feel vast and the way forward confusing. A key concept that nicely captures the tension between productivity today and impact tomorrow is entropy.
What is entropy and why is it important?
Entropy is sometimes used as a synonym for chaos or disorder, but for organizational purposes we want to use a definition closer to the term’s original conception. Entropy is a concept that comes from classical thermodynamics; it refers to the quantity of heat energy that is generated in a process, that cannot be converted to useful work. The light bulb is a good example. The purpose of a bulb is to use energy to make light, yet some bulbs lose up to 80% of that energy as heat, with only 20% going to make light. Used as a “conceptual” framework, entropy can help us understand how the energy that people and teams generate is and isn’t being converted to useful work.
Here’s another simple analogy from the real world. The engine in your car generates heat (a lot of it) whenever it’s running. The purpose of the engine is to turn the wheels, but in doing so it also generates excess heat energy. If this extra heat isn’t managed via cooling systems, the engine itself will fail, temporarily at first and then permanently (destroying the engine).
That is the power of entropy, and the same dynamic is at play with your teams. You may be great at setting goals and inspiring your team to dive into action, but if that energy isn’t managed and channeled (through a clear work plan, thoughtful team meetings, etc) then your people will end up doing overlapping, redundant, conflicting or unnecessary work which can ultimately lead to frustrated, even burnt out staff who feel their contribution is being wasted or isn’t being valued.
This can cause permanent disenchantment and disengagement (just think about a team you’re on where time & energy is wasted). Entropy as a concept can help us be more precise about how we deploy a team’s energy, allowing us to effectively connect “activity” to “impact” and increase everyone’s satisfaction.
How it shows up
One of the most notorious generators of entropy are poorly planned meetings, which concentrate people-energy in a single setting but often convert little of that time to moving things forward. Used in this context, entropy is not the same as uselessness, lack of activity, or even chaos. It describes energy that does not result in useful work, meaning energy is expended but that “work” doesn’t move the organization towards its goals. Many of us have been in meetings that clearly feel like a waste of time and energy, but meetings that increase entropy don’t always feel bad and thus they can be harder to catch.
Here are 3 common examples:
- A meeting where team spirit is high but there is no starting agenda, so people spend some time brainstorming and discussing what the topic of the meeting should be. This may not feel like a waste of energy because everyone (mostly) is engaged and trying to solve a problem — the problem being: what should we talk about today? Before you know it 7 minutes of a 30 min meeting have elapsed, and now you have only 23 minutes to do team work. Often the desire to solve the puzzle and get an answer makes people feel energized, but group work time spent talking about “what should we be talking about?” is a waste even if it doesn’t feel unpleasant.
- A group conversation where everyone is talking and engaging in actual problem-solving — but if that conversation isn’t structured, then the group will spend time talking in circles (didn’t we decide on that last time?). If this happens repeatedly, frustration ensues. The lack of an agenda AND well-planned conversations ultimately wastes individual and collective time. What’s tricky here is that it can feel satisfying and productive to do a bunch of “stuff” but unless it converts to useful work then it actually depletes the team.
- Entropy can be generated in all facets of the work, not just in meetings. For high capacity teams, there can be a temptation to just “dive right in” or to spend time solving the problem but not solving the execution. Once the problem is solved, the team just jumps into action to get things done, without carefully planning how the work will get done. The mistake here is that because the energy is high and people are eager to get going, they will just run off in a bunch of directions, generating entropy, like the extra heat in the car. Without a clear workplan, the entropy in your team will increase, meaning that people will be busy, but that busy-ness will not actually contribute to your desired impact. This is not to be taken lightly. The energy that is expended in “busy-ness” cannot be recaptured and even worse it may contribute to future breakdowns.
W When the team engages in activity — any activity — energy will always be expended. The question is, how much of that energy will be converted to work versus converted to entropy that may pollute the team. A meeting where everyone is doing nothing generates less entropy than a meeting where everyone is doing a bunch of “stuff” that actually pulls you further and further away from the organizational goals. It’s unlikely that the team’s activity will generate zero entropy, so your aim as a manager is to reduce the entropy to as little as possible. The implications for meeting preparation is profound — if you cannot run a meeting that generates useful work (and forward progress), then it might not be worth holding it and risking the buildup of disengagement and resentment that can result from purposeless meetings.
This situation can ensnare anyone who is leading anything, whether it’s a Fortune 100 organization or a team project to plan Phil’s birthday party, so it’s worth understanding no matter where you are in the organizational structure.
IIt is an especially common affliction among leaders who haven’t fully made the mindshift that comes with managing a team. On the surface, running the regular staff meeting can seem like a simple operation, but it can also be a daunting responsibility knowing that people’s boredom threshold is probably low and the meetings really need to advance the work. In many cases managers don’t know how to run an effective and engaging meeting, so anxiety causes them to put off prepping for it and instead putting energy into all the other work they have to do.
This is a totally understandable response, it may feel easier to just sink your time into the work you know best (after all that’s what got you to where you are today), but unfortunately it squanders team impact in the immediate and in the long run. Most people actually want to do a good job, so they will expend energy doing so, but if that energy isn’t thoughtfully directed then it will simply convert to entropy, rather than work that can have real impact. Do not be seduced by the lure of productivity without ensuring it leads to impact.
But Don’t Get Too Extreme
To be sure, not every bit of people energy can be, nor should be, converted to “work.” Being a micro-managing drill sergeant who is always hovering over people to make sure they aren’t generating entropy is a recipe for distrust and disaster. Again, entropy is about energy that cannot be converted to useful work. So activities that, on the face of it, seem orthogonal to “useful work” may in fact increase team capacity in certain cases.
Taking the team out for an ice cream after they’ve been working hard all week, or doing a virtual happy hour where people get to order their favorite takeout (and the organization pays for it) can be an activity that provides a much needed break that allows the team to release some steam, get refreshed and refocused, and therefore be more effective at their work. Team retreats, relationship building, and other team renewal activities are essential for building trust and camaraderie, which in turn are critical for getting work done. Think of those as tune-ups that repair and strengthen the team for the work ahead.
As with all leadership principles, entropy can be a useful concept to help guide how you manage your team but it shouldn’t be used as an inflexible rule — too much rigidity in any context will lead to breakage. Your goal as a manager is to drive for impact, and ensure that the team is getting the repair and development that it needs for long-term sustainability and high performance. The concept of entropy can help you navigate that tricky terrain.
3 Simple Hacks to Reduce Entropy
The aim is to ensure that all energy expended by your team can (and will) be converted to useful work as well as to stop doing those activities that clearly will never be converted to useful work. Note that the “conversion time” may be different for different types of activities — for example as noted above, activities like team bonding strengthen relationships which over time reduces friction and improves trust.
Use these simple hacks to preserve your team’s energy and reduce entropy:
1 Ask yourself these two questions, before you engage an activity AND while you are in the activity:
- Is this activity moving the work forward?
- Is this activity increasing the capacity for the team to do the work better and faster?
Keep in mind that activities that build capacity or remove obstacles all count towards helping to move the work forward. However, if the answer to either of the above questions is “no” then it’s worth assessing if the activity is worth doing at all … and this includes activities that are already underway. Great managers recognize that high levels of activity might simply mean high levels of entropy with no conversion to results and impact.
2 Prepare for your meetings and conversations. Remind yourself of the larger organizational goals AND the goals for the meeting. If it’s a meeting that you are running, make sure you are clear about what should be accomplished in that meeting, and keep tracking against it. If you aren’t running the meeting, ask what the goals of the meeting are, as in “by the time this meeting is over, what do we hope will have been accomplished?”
This is a great way to make sure there is clarity about what the meeting is for AND to make sure everyone is on the same page. This practice will help stop you from wasting time at the beginning of meetings or from running off in wrong directions during the meeting. Never enter a meeting without clarity on what the meeting is supposed to accomplish and how it will move the work forward.
3 Think through the execution. This refers to all levels of execution. For big problems, think through the operational logistics and how they will be implemented. For problem-solving team sessions, think through the method for discussion — brainstorm, problem tree, SWOT, pre-mortem? Taking a few minutes beforehand can help the team get a jumpstart on the problem-solving and can spur innovative thinking by using new methodologies that break groupthink. No matter the activity, always make sure you and others have clarity about what the next steps are; this reduces the friction of startup and helps you hit the ground running.
With these simple tips and a bit of vigilance, you can harness your team’s energy for full impact.
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