I’ve had a few meetings I start this way. If there is dissension in the room and we’re discussing a key problem, I’ll throw out this statement – “Are we all on the same page?” If we are not on the same page, there is no reason to move forward. Everyone needs to be on the same page, to understand the problem, the reason that you are all here, before you start getting to solutions.…
Don’t fool yourself. There will ALWAYS be a Better Way. It might not be as easy to get there, but it will be better. Nothing stays the same.
There is an old story about the Carpenter’s House – the last project before he moves on. At the end, he finds out he’s been building his own house the whole time, and cut corners all along the way. So now he’s stuck with a “meh” house with lots of fixes needed for it. I don’t think you’re going to get your own cloud tenant on the last one you built for a client, but…
Competing with the louder voice is a race to the bottom (top?) to see who is the loudest. You can’t win. To compete with the loudest voice is to provide the opposite that they can’t do: remain silent, don’t say a word, and wait. A conversation and meeting cannot happen with one person, and eventually, they will realize to move forward, they will need to listen.
This is one of the hardest questions to ask at the end of a meeting: “Did we accomplish our goal?” This is why it is so rarely asked: no one wants to hear the answer. If, meeting after meeting, you were to hear the answer to this question being “No”, how demoralizing would that be? Massively. But the hard questions don’t come with easy answers, because the answers that come require work, hard work, tough…