S4E12: Should We Kill 1-on-1s?

Jason discusses the Harvard Business Review article, "Why Senior Leaders Should Stop Having So Many One-on-Ones."

Leadership Voyage
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voice: by Ayanna Gallant
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Transcript

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Wherever you are on your leadership voyage, it starts here.[Music][Music] All right, everybody. Great to be back for another episode of Leadership Voyage, the podcast dedicated to your pursuit of becoming a great leader. My name is Jason Wick, your host. You can contact me anytime at startyouvoyaggmail.com and comment on the episodes, whatever you like. I I'd love to hear from you. I'm hearing from so many folks, especially with uh guests, and it's been a really fruitful season 4. So, thank you all for your participation, your ideas, and your feedback. It's been fantastic. Before we get into today's topic, this is a solo episode today, so I'm always excited to give those. It gives me a chance to stretch out and think about some things that have been on my mind and I think will be useful for you. But before we do that, a reminder to go into the show notes wherever you're listening, Spotify, Apple, or elsewhere, and scroll down to the little bit at the bottom about Instacart. If you've not tried grocery delivery yet, I encourage you to give it a try, especially when life gets hectic or people are coming over unexpectedly in a couple of days, whatever it happens to be. Um, it's really, really nice to just wake up, go to the front door, and see a bunch of bags of groceries ready for you to put away. I mean, I personally love the delegate putting it away to my kids, but doesn't always work very well. If you haven't tried it, give it a chance. There's very little to lose. You put uh you choose your grocery store and the groceries you like, and then you have a a dedicated shopper who handpicks the groceries for you. then uh it can get to your doorstep sometimes in as fast as an hour. But here's the good news. When you click uh here in the show notes and you show them the Leadership Voyage sent you, you get a free delivery for your first order of $35 or more. So give it a try. I myself am a customer, have used many, many times and uh you know very little to lose. Give it a shot. Okay, so let's see. Where are we today? We're going to talk about an article from Harvard Business Review and it is uh July 8th. Is that right? July 8th of 2025. Ron Karuchi who is a founder of a company that helps companies with transformations. It's called why senior leaders should stop having so many one-on- ons. And this episode will here's the first thing you all should know that I recorded this episode already and then when I played back the mic it was corrupted. So I'm re-recording the whole thing. So hopefully I don't seem too rushed. But if I do, call me out. Let me know. Say this wasn't your usual standard. I'm happy to hear it. But with that in mind, I'm going to try to take a breath and I'm going to try to remember that for you all, this is the first time I'm doing this, right? So anyway, reset here, Jason. Harvard Business Review article, why senior leaders should stop having so many one-on- ones. And I'm going to do two sections here. The first is summarizing what this article states. And the second is essentially my rebuttal. Okay, so here's what we got. Why senior leaders should stop having so many one-on- ons. Here's the problem, i.e. the thesis as called out by the author, uh, Ron Karruchi. The problem, as he states it, is that while even one-on-one, even though one-on- ones are often seen as necessary for alignment and decision-making, frequent one-on- ons at the senior executive level can actually work against an organization's best interests for four reasons. One, a one-on-one acts like a mini committee, which leads to little decisions made in a vacuum. Two, they reinforce departmental thinking, functional bias, and silos. I suppose if you're thinking the CEO is sitting down with head of marketing, head of HR, head of engineering, whatever you you know, whatever structure it is, CTO, um there's a a functional bias in the meeting. You waste time by having to repeat or defend decisions when they're made in private. It erodess trust, creates misalignment, and rivalries come out of this. Private one-on- ons foster competition and secrecy and insider access, which sometimes erodess trust as well. And I think all four of these are fantastic hidden costs to call out about one-on- ons, executive one-on ones. I have never been an executive uh but I have led business units and you know been pretty far up in the chain for all intents and purposes. So I don't know if this is specifically talking about seuite uh but I can understand the four costs. I would also say that there's probably an opportunity to combat any four of those without killing the one-on-one meeting, but we don't want to get there yet. Okay, so here's the deal. The problem is li is laid out and we also want to get what what's the author's idea and this is called capability meetings. So instead of using one-on- ones for operational discussions, this article proposes capability meetings which are small crossf functional gatherings that reflect how an organization actually creates value. So I suppose you know if you want to do this uh you can have uh if you're rolling out a new product you might have um the CEO and then two to three others like marketing, sales, technology, something like that, you know, who knows, right? But anyway, how do you implement these capability meetings? It's got five parts to it. First, change the one-on- ones to become development only and have them every quarter. Second, uh convene around capabilities. So, identify the value streams you've got and then um create capability councils for each of these with a few key functional leaders who are responsible for delivering each capa each capability. And then this these councils handle the decisions. I like it. Third, ensure the right people are listening. You bring together the leaders whose functions intersect around an issue, ensuring there is context and understanding. This eliminates the uh the the need to like repeat things over and over or relitigate decisions. I get that. Four, elevate executive team time. This means rather than talking about operational decisions which are now going to be owned in these capability meetings, these capability councils, the whole exec team gets together to focus on strategy, culture, and long-term planning. Agendas focus on enterprisewide issues now that only the senior team can address. And finally, minimize rivalry by moving the uh operational dis discussions and decisions into these small groups, these capability councils. You've got more transparency rather than one-on-one and accountability. And it kind of replaces this idea of I'm special. I know something because I had the one-on-one where we made this decision. And you know, we don't have to worry about that gossip and back channel stuff. I think it's it's totally valid. I I I love the all the ideas in here except the first one about one-on ones themselves. So, that's what I think is fun about this topic. Okay, so I've outlined the problem as the author states it. One-on- ones have these four hidden costs and we'll replace them with capability meetings, meaning we only have one-on- ones every quarter and they're focused on development and growth. Fine, whatever. Uh, I think all these other ideas, capability councils, getting the right people, uh, designating executive team time for certain scopes, and then reducing these rivalries. I think all four of those things are fantastic ideas. I don't understand why we have to kill one-on ones to do it. Okay. So, again, a theme I keep having on these solo podcasts, which is, you know, they're fun for me. I get to talk about something I think that's important. Hopefully, you take away a thing or two where you agree, disagree, or otherwise. And I don't know why we have to couple these ideas together. I mean, goodness, don't we know that most things start with expectations? redefine the one-on-one, create a new expectation for its content, for its scope, and say, "We won't be making decisions in here anymore." Change it as the manager. In this case, even if you are the CEO, as the manager, that is your right to redefine how the one-on-one looks because you own the meeting, right? So, this feels a little bit like a sledgehammer to uh to uh to hammer a nail into, you know, in your wall or something. I I think it's a little bit overdone. I don't disagree with the concept of the capability meetings, the decision-m, the way that it creates transparency, gets crossunctional folks involved, all of that is brilliant. Let's do it. But let's not kill the one-on-one. And I'm going to tell you why after I get a sip of coffee. So many of the studies that we cover on this show have to do with managers, their impact on others, uh, well-being, engagement, all of these things. And what I think we forget is that these studies aren't only talking about individual contributors. Managers have managers, right? Managers have someone that they report to and their manager. All this same stuff applies. What have we learned about managers? We've learned that they influence their employees well-being to the equivalent of someone's partner in 69% of the cases, right? It doesn't matter if you have the title marketing manager. Ah, that's a horrible example because the word manager was in it. Sorry. It doesn't matter if you have the title customer support agent or vice president of growth, you're still a person with a manager. I think we forget that we somehow because these are the pokes the folks uh responsible for driving the organization forward, we somehow just think that they're not people. So the the manager influences us to a significant degree. We all know that. And they control our destiny for title and pay and all this other stuff, right? What's another thing we've learned about managers? We have learned that their engagement levels are dropping quicker than your average employee. managers engagement is dropping more than your average employee. That's why we need to remember that they're people who need support too, right? Managers aren't some magical beings that show up in the workplace and have it all figured it out. Figured out, folks, right? Most of you listening are managers. You know that you're probably struggling. So, who do you look to for support? You can look to your peers, of course, right? You can look to outside resources, but I just said your manager is the one who has the biggest impact on most of your well-being other than your partner if you have one. Third, what are people looking for from their leaders? Yes, they love streamlined decision-making. Yes, they love uh transparency around work. Yes, they love um having the right agendas for their team meetings. Of course, they like that. But do you know what Gallup told us in its global leadership report? I think this was just back in February. Uh global leadership report, what followers want. Do you know what people are looking for from their leaders? There are two things above all. Everything else is far below it. hope and trust. They're not looking for a killer strate I mean, yes, of course they're looking for a killer strategy, but it's not among the two most important things people are looking for. And it feels to me a lot like this capability meeting idea would work great as long as you have a very solid foundation in your business. But even then, why kill the one-on- ones? So, my argument back, my counterargument is do all the stuff this article says. Sounds fantastic, but there's one red line I've got. You don't you don't make the one-on ones only for development. You don't make them only for the every quarter. You've got to build hope and trust with your employees. I don't care if you are supervisor of whatever or CEO. You need to build trust with them. You need to give them hope around the vision that we all have. And that doesn't happen from only focusing on execution, decision-m and strategy. It comes from building a strong foundation between each other as people. having a strong foundation onetoone and one to your team that doesn't happen overnight. Those things are not transactional behaviors. I know that it makes it seem like they're expensive or time wasteful or I won't see a first order benefit from asking John, "How was your kids soccer game this weekend?" Right? But the second order benefits of building these relationships and having the trust and hope for your team that they want to see. You give them that hope and trust. It's built over time. It's an investment and that foundation is what leads to employee engagement and employee engagement is what leads to effective organizations and effective organizations are what lead to happy customers. And that is a cascade we cannot escape. There's not a shortcut. We can't skip it. A strategy doesn't do that for us. Capability councils don't do that for us. These are all fantastic ideas, but let's not skip over the hard work on the soft skills or people skills side of things. That's my take. But Jason, Jason, we need results yesterday. If we don't get the results we needed yesterday, we're going to lose our next round of funding. Yeah, I mean, what can I say? That's probably a reality for some of you. That's probably a reality for some of you. But is there a way that you can steal back 25 minutes every two weeks to talk to your employee still? Because when your employees know that you're there for them and they trust you and they find hope in what you're bringing to the table for them and for the team, that is when you find the great results and hopefully that is when the revenue comes. I know it sounds like I'm, you know, maybe I'm preaching to the choir with this audience, but I will just say right here are a few things to quickly cite for those of you who are ultra businessminded, as you should be. It's a business. But for those of you who are ultra businessminded and thinking, you know what, I just don't have the time. This sounds great. Let's skip the one-on- ones and let's move to this other concept. I've got three things to tell you that are all coming from research. The employee manager relationship is the key to employee engagement. That is cited in Gallup's 2024 state of the global workplace. There is a significant relationship between engagement and organizational effectiveness. That's from an article in July of 2024 called the relationship between employee well-being and organizational effectiveness. So employee manager relationship is key to engagement. There's a relationship between engagement and effectiveness. Employee experience, this is the third thing. Employee experience drives revenue and profit. And that's from Harvard Business Review Research. If you want to drive revenue and profit, focus on your employee experience. Sounds difficult, sounds time consuming because it is, but it will set you apart from other teams, other products, other organizations when you invest in it. And that's why very strongly disagree with the idea of moving the one-on-one to quarterly and making it only about growth. But I want to hear what you think. Maybe I'm just shouting from the mountaintop some ideal vision that isn't realistic with the demands that you face at your company. I want to hear about it. Let me know. Startyouvo@gmail.com. Comment on the episode. Whatever you have to think about, uh, I want to hear about it, okay? I'd love to hear contrary opinions. But in the meantime, I'm going to stick with my thoughts in the belief that a one-on-one relationship between manager employee that's strong is the foundation of great teams and great results. And that's what leads to the rest. It's been my honor to be with you today. Season 4 of Leadership Voyage. Until next time, everybody. Take care.[Music]