Ineffective meetings are the bugbear of many organisations. In this article, John Sutherland, Director of Strategic resource introduces and discusses the 4 P's model. He advises that setting out the 4 P's – Person, Purpose, Process and Product for any form of teamwork or organisational meetings promotes efficiency, productivity and focus.

2. www.europeanbusinessreview.com 45
Ineffective meetings are the bugbear of many organisations.
In this article, John Sutherland, Director of Strategic re-
source introduces and discusses the 4 P's model. He advises
that setting out the 4 P's – Person, Purpose, Process and
Product for any form of teamwork or organisational meet-
ings promotes efficiency, productivity and focus.
D
o you sit in meetings that just seem to ramble on, whilst
your life strolls by and other important work mounts up?
Ineffective meetings are the bugbear of many organisa-
tions. Our clients tell us that using the 4 P's adds structure, focus,
and ownership and increases productivity. On average they
report being 25% more efficient in their meetings. Interested?
The 4 P's
Of all the models I have developed in my 25 years of consul-
tancy work, to date, this is the most straightforward and the most
impactful. Whenever you are about to engage in meetings, or
any form of teamwork, it pays to set out the 4 P's.
Person
You always need to know who is 'holding the pen' for each
meeting. If the pen is going to pass between team members it
is particularly important to clarify when the pen passes and
whether it is passing back to you for the next agenda item. Just
having a clearly identified leader marshals activities enormously.
When Neil volunteered to be the Person for his team's first dis-
cussion using the 4 P's the unanimous feedback was that it was
the most productive meeting they had ever had, in 13 years, pri-
marily because there was someone designated as the main driver.
The other job for the 'Person' is to clarify who needs to be
The 4 P's: Saving 25% of Meeting Time
involved in each part of the agenda. Far too many meetings have
team members sitting around waiting for their turn to present,
when they could be getting on with other priority work. There is
a natural discomfort for many in simply stating who needs to be
involved, and therefore who does not, for fear of having people
feel excluded. My advice is to take a risk and check.
"Hey Regit this next item does not really involve you so why
don't you pop back at 12:00, when we come to the piece on
financial planning?" Not too hard to say and frees up time for
Regit. It also gives more space for discussion amongst the key
players. You want the people who can add value to this piece of
work to take up the air time. No others.
Some people are better at being the 'Person' than others. They
are more accomplished at drawing out different voices, holding
the verbal ramblers in check, keeping the work on track and
summarising where ‘we have got to’. The 'Person' does not have
to be the agenda owner, team leader or even the subject expert.
Just someone who is good at setting and keeping a focus.
Purpose
Businesses are prone to the malaise of the rolling agenda. The
common picture being that every, say, Monday at 10:00 the
team meets for an hour to go through a set agenda, working hard
to keep it to an hour. Typically, the meeting over-runs, covering
only the urgent operational matters and seldom the more trans-
formational, forward looking needs of the business. Teams fre-
quently spend too much time working in the business and not
enough time working on the business. To check this tenden-
cy the Purpose question provides a strategic analysis of what
you need to be working on, at the team level, in order to achieve
your business plan. It is a relevance check and helps to maintain
a balance in teamwork. If your meetings are not focussed on the
most pertinent questions what are they for?
Sometimes the answers the Purpose question throws up
can be surprising. Take Darryl, who decided to review the
Strategy
BY JOHN SUTHERLAND
Person
Purpose
Process
Product
Who is running the meeting and who
needs to be involved?
What are the clearly defined reasons for
working on each issue?
What team work processes will we use?
What do we expect to achieve?
Far too many meetings have team members
sitting around waiting for their turn to
present, when they could be getting on with
other priority work.
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3. 46 The European Business Review July - August 2015
Purpose of their monthly Board preparation cycle. When he
and his team fearlessly explored what they were asking the
International regions to do they realised they had been getting
the, already over-stretched, regional managers (and their
teams) to do work that would be mostly repeated a week later.
They had been doing this for 5 years. The resulting saving in
time was immense and positively impacted the wider organ-
isation. Of course, not all Purpose discussions produce such
dramatic results but, routinely, the 3-5 minutes taken to ask
'Why' helps to bring clarity, priority and a sense of ownership
into the meeting.
Process
The Process you use to achieve your Purpose will be driven
by the nature of the Purpose. And this is where most teams
go wrong. They simply 'do what they do' when working as a
team, with the vast majority using a combination of operation-
al reporting and project update Processes in all meetings, re-
gardless of the Purpose. Useful in their own right but never
designed to, for example, assess the Total Addressable Market
in your sector or identify the learning that emerges when you
look across your business division's performance. If you know
you need to come to a decision use a decision making process.
If you need to discover best practice use an inquiry process,
and so on. As an aid to thinking about mapping Purpose to
Process here are four continuums we have recently developed,
through our work with client teams.(See Teamwork Process
Map below)
Strategic-Operational
Is your Purpose more strategic or more operational? Are you
looking to set or refine direction (strategic) or report on prog-
ress or deviations against plan (operational)? Even most senior
team meetings are weighted towards an operational focus, not
giving enough oxygen to the unfolding work of strategy. And
this is why they often end up being so tedious. When challenged,
teams say that there is never enough time to debate strategy,
because of the busyness of the urgent and important operational
matters. But, of course, if the only Processes you deploy are de-
signed to focus on operational matters you will never 'find time'
to work on more strategic issues. You have not equipped your-
self with the right Process tools.
Processes for working with Strategic purposes are, of course,
different from Operational ones. Some are very well known,
such as the (over-used) SWOT analysis. Others are less fre-
quently used, such as a Stakeholder analysis or running a future
scenario planning exercise. Sometimes you need a process
that starts out Strategically and move down the continuum to
become more Operational. For example, the use of a KPI 'dash-
board' highlights the critical areas to dig into at the operation-
al level, in order to achieve the plan. Others move intentionally
from Operational to Strategic. For example exception reporting
means reporting only those items of current performance that
have strategic implications.
Divergent-Convergent
Does your purpose mean you need to open up debate (Divergent)
or bring a wide range of views to a single point of agreement
(Convergent)? Divergent processes are good at bringing in new
ideas, perhaps through brain-storming or inviting an external
advisor to give input. They are also ideal for wide ranging stra-
tegic debate. By contrast all forms of decision making, be it
an options paper, a consultation process or team decision, are
natural convergent Processes. Many teams are better at the di-
vergent end, spawning endless debate, than the convergent end,
bringing it all to a conclusion.
Some Purposes are best served by first working Divergently
before funnelling down to a Convergent conclusion. Many team
discussions can be described in precisely this manner. It is a
core Process. However, it helps if everyone knows in advance
what the 'game plan' is, so that when it comes time to funnel
down they start looking for connecting strands and summaries
rather than new avenues for exploration.
Informational-Transformational
Does your Purpose lead to a need to gather and share informa-
tion or is the core Purpose to transform and improve the or-
ganisation? Informational processes include sharing updates on
competitor, market, or sector activity and may require a Process
specifically designed to gather intelligence and determine the
relevant 'signal from the background noise'. Other processes,
for example running a team development session, are by design
transformational in their Purpose. As before, you may start with
an informational process, e.g. how is the team currently per-
forming, before moving to a transformational process, such as
an exploration of useful additional team work processes to drive
team work efficiency.
Strategy

4. www.europeanbusinessreview.com 47
Linear-Iterative
This is the one that catches most people
out. Over half of us are wired to organise
work through Linear structured Processes,
such as project management with clear
stage gates. The rest of us prefer to organise
work through an Iterative learning process,
getting nearer our goal through each new
phase of activity. Some Purposes lend
themselves to a more Linear approach, for
example compliance control. Others lend
themselves to a more Iterative approach,
for example software development (agile
project management). If you are like most
people you will have an in-built bias one
way or the other and will need to check
that you are flexing the Process you select
based on the actual needs of the Purpose
and not just on what suits your preference
as a person. Tricky.
A Process Exercise
• Take 20 minutes with your team to
think back over the previous 3 meetings.
What team work Processes did you use?
• Take a further 10 minutes to think
ahead to your next meeting. When you
examine the intended Purpose behind
each agenda item what new Processes
could you import that would be a cred-
ible match for the work in hand?
• Finally, think through how you
could describe the 'rules' of each Process
to your team, so that they know how to
work efficiently towards your intended
outcome. Each Process has its own set
of 'instructions'.
If you want some prompts take a look
at the team work sampler, to stimulate
your creative juices. This is not intend-
ed to be an exhaustive list; we work with
a library of over 60. But it will give you
Repeatedly achieving a clear
'Product' is incredibly motivating
and, more importantly, gets your
team into the healthy habit of
making regular tangible progress.
a reasonable starting point. The aim is to
grow your own unique library, matching
the needs of your unique organisation.
Product
The final P, and in many ways the most
important one, is having 'the end in mind'.
If the Purpose is at the strategic level (the
'Why') the Product is at the Operational
level (the 'What'). What will we achieve
as a result of this agenda item and the
meeting? If you cannot specify the
'Product' at the start of the meeting the
chances are you will not arrive at a clear
destination. Meetings can then become
a vacuum, sucking up energy, time and
morale. By contrast repeatedly achieving
a clear 'Product' is incredibly motivat-
ing and, more importantly, gets your team
into the healthy habit of making regular
tangible progress.
Putting it All Together
The power of the 4 P's is in putting them
all together. Our experience is that it can
feel awkward at first but stick with it and
very soon you and your team will start to
prompt each other on when and how to
use the model. One of our energy sector
clients has made the 4 P's into large
posters that adorn all their meeting rooms,
in their offices around the world. The
senior team lead by example and expect
to see the 4 P's in active use in all meet-
ings. They are now working on making
the 4 P's 'pop up' in the software they use
to book meetings. The more they use it the
better the results they get and the better
the results they get the more they use it.
One way to start would be to share
this article with your team and experi-
ment together. Reading about the ideas is
not enough. Then all you have to decide is
what to do with the 25% of the time you
will save. Pack more into your meeting or
finish early? Your call.
About the Author
John Sutherland is the
Director of Strategic
Resource, which assesses
and develops senior teams
in order to support them
achieving their business plan. He is also
the Director of the Leadership Initiative,
which provides bespoke in-house pro-
grammes focussed on the specific skills
required for each unique organisation.
Strategic
Transfor-
mational Iterative Divergent Operational Informational Linear
Transformational
Iterative
Divergent
Operational
Informational
Linear
Convergent
Vision
Double-
loop
learning
Strategic
dialogue
Parameter
Setting
Total
addressable
market
Business
plan
Delegated
actions
Shared
vision
Real-time
strategic
change
Total quality
Bench-
marking
Change
management
Dashboard
Brain-
storming
Agile project
management
Focus
groups
Pilot
Inquiry
Sub-group
problem
solving
Co-ordinated
research
Workstreams
Funnel
Project
update
Project
management
Priority
setting
Thinking
hats
Gap analysis Cost control
Team Process
Sampler
Feature