Drinking to Add Value
One observation that we made recently is that when we travel as a team, we have significantly more productive experiences when we share an Airbnb instead of having individual hotel rooms. The reason for that is that when we get an Airbnb we usually spend an hour or so in the common space after dinner discussing the day while it is still fresh on our minds. When we get hotel rooms, on the other hand, we tend to retire to our rooms after dinner.
In both circumstances, whether we are out in the field on a site visit for a potential deal or meeting with one of our portfolio companies, there is usually a lot to reflect on. And this isn’t to say that we do that when we get an Airbnb and don’t do it when we get hotel rooms, but rather than when we get an Airbnb, it’s a social activity and a dialogue whereas when we get hotel rooms, it’s an antisocial one and a monologue (because we draft written notes and pass them around via email or Slack).
Both of these approaches have their place, but a key learning is that we need to do both.
Back when I wrote about my process for writing Unqualified Opinions every day, I noted that that process has two phases. The first, an idea generating discovery phase with my son, is conversational and social while the second, an editing and refining phase that I do in my head while I run, is isolated and antisocial. Then I said that that makes sense because good ideas need both points of view and a point of view and added offhandedly that meetings should be organized that way as well.
More than a few people latched onto that offhand comment, with one person saying he would spend the next few days thinking about how his meetings might better employ both phases. I asked him to tell me what he figured out because to the point about Airbnbs versus hotel rooms, we haven’t hit upon a reliable, repeatable process either.
To wit, after one particularly productive conversation we had on the road recently, Mark said to the group, “I thought this conversation was particularly productive. How do we have more of them?” As we thought about that, we tried to identify the factors that contributed to that productive conversation. Here’s what we came up with:
A group that wasn’t too big, but wasn’t too small;
That had high levels of trust;
But different levels of context;
On a topic that was both recent and timely;
With nowhere to go and nothing else to do;
After having a few beers.
And when we looked at that, it seemed like a difficult set of variables to formalize without locking people in the office and forcing them to drink on short notice – which doesn’t seem like it would be productive and/or good for work/life balance.
But apparently our COO Mark is going to give it a shot, planning to schedule the first optional Permanent Equity Drinking to Add ValuE (DAVE) meeting for later this month. We’ll see how it goes.
-Tim