More teh tarik sessions please

To improve the flow of ideas in an organisation, one thing a leader can do is often have breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner or supper with the staff. If done well, the leader will get a lot of good ideas from team members. Not only that, employees will open up and a lot of problems can be solved.

Much too often, we are bombarded with approaches like the open door policy, retreats, project meetings, brainstorming sessions etc., to improve communications and to get ideas flowing in an organization.

I am not saying that they are not effective, they are, but we can get more great ideas over teh tarik and roti canai. Outside meeting rooms, people are a lot more ‘freer’ to suggest out-of-the-world ideas and with a bit of tweaking will propel an organisation to greater heights.

After more than 23 years in journalism, and leading a team of reporters and editors, I realized that journalists have to be approached in a different way if you need to get things out from them.

They look at the world differently. They are “non-conformist”. Structured meetings may not work well to get them to tell what they have in mind.

While meetings work for some, fun discussions during lunch or coffee breaks may work better for others when it comes to suggesting and presenting good ideas to improve content.

This is the exact reason why I will always set aside time for “makan-makan” with my colleagues. A lot of projects that I have worked on started from discussion over teh tarik at the mamak restaurant. They were refined further during project meetings.

But what we need most is that big idea and from my experience many big ideas came from sessions over food in very relaxed and informal settings.

As such, leaders, and also managers at all levels should have breakfast, tea, dinner or supper more often with their team members.

Some better start if they have not been doing it.