CONDUCTING MEETING IN START-UP BUSINESS...

CONDUCTING MEETING IN START-UP BUSINESS: IS IT AN “ENTRAPMENT” OF INTIMACY GATHERING RATHER THAN PROFESSIONAL ATMOSPHERE?
Evi Thelia Sari
Universitas Ciputra, Surabaya, Indonesia
thesar2005@yahoo.co.id, evithelia@ciputra.ac.id


Abstract
Start-up business is usually built of some people who know one another before the business starts, especially if the business runs in small scale when the owner asks for some friends, relatives or family to join. The informal attitudes, behavior even words can be found in the beginning of the business, because they think they are friends or families so they do not need to be formal. In the beginning of a business, it is usual if the board hold a meeting almost everyday. Because they need to arrange things, procedures or some other cases which follow. Start-up business needs good coordination even in early stages, so in the future they can run it well. But it should be aware of entrapment of intimacy gathering in running a meeting. This can make a meeting useless and full of jokes rather than seriously discuss to meet the meeting purposes.
This paper has a purpose to remind the start-up business owner to re-arrange and re-conduct the meeting properly as it should be done in other professional businesses. Besides, this paper uses qualitative method to analyze the collected data from open-ended questions to the meeting participants, by focus group discussion, questionnaires, or other tools in collecting data.

Keywords: meeting, start-up business, intimacy gathering, professionalism


INTRODUCTION
Meeting is one of activities that must be conducted and led by managers. Meetings can be both a useful and useless activity in term of how it’s conducted. Meeting will be useful when the result can be applied in the whole business operations. But, it will be useless if we fail to arrange and conduct the meeting properly. It won’t produce even a good decision. The failure of producing a good agreement or decision in a meeting will waste the employees’ time. The employees who attend a meeting leave their work for a while t participate in making a decision and just to appreciate the invitation. If the meeting ends without producing something useful or the problem discussed is not solved until the meeting is over, of course, the time they leave behind is wasted. Further more, if the meeting is such a routine meeting, no wonder if the employees will negatively think of it, even they try to ‘escape’ from the meeting.
The reason to write a topic of conducting meeting in start-up business is because meetings are not held in big companies only, but also, especially in start-up business, because the meeting is needed to prepare and plan activities or program ahead within organization. There’s no start-up business can run well without coordination with initial employees it has. One way to coordinate is meeting, where almost all of the employees will be invited. A small business survey (Madura 2006) described how a managers run their meetings, shows that only 35% of managers who write an agenda with time frames before meeting. The meeting participants is also 48% right invited, it means that 52% of managers invite the non-essential people to a meeting.
Conducting an effective meeting in start-up business is challenging for it must be aware of an ‘entrapment’ of intimacy gathering atmosphere that is strong in start-up business because of the factual reason, most of start up business consist of friendship among the employees, especially, when we discuss about a business in Asia that contains of countries with high-context culture. The people in high-context culture (such as Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia) are closed one another. It can give the impact to the business communication. They are usually like reunion, meeting or togetherness, as they think they live in a clan, group or society that each has relationship to other. A intimacy gathering atmosphere within organization or company is good, but when it takes in improper time, it will damage the professionalism atmosphere that should be in the every business, including start-up business.
The paper has an empirical research with 10 respondents who ever worked or are working in a start-up business in Surabaya city, Indonesia and attend meetings at least once a week. We will see how they count and value the meeting attended by answering the questionnaires and open-ended questions asked to them.

PROBLEM STATEMENT
The problem that going to be discussed in this paper is on how the owner as the leader and even a manager in start up business should aware to conduct a meeting in start-up business to avoid an ‘entrapment’ of intimacy gathering and keep the professional atmosphere.

THE PURPOSE
The purpose of the paper is to enhance the quality of business communication skill in a start-up business especially in conducting a meeting as the effective way to coordinate the things related with the business needs that surely needed in the first steps.

MEETING
Meeting has always taken a large part of the average manager’s workdays. The increased number of teams means that meetings are even more frequent because they need tight coordination. Meeting itself in terms of business communication is such a gathering of people within company with a specific purpose and selective attendees. Once a manager plans to carry out a meeting, he has to plan well and seriously. Meeting must be arranged and planned. It is not wise to plan a meeting accidentally. The essence of a meeting is purposively held, not just based on time left or spare time that the manager has. If so, meeting will be held whenever manager wants and needs, even if the invited participants are not capable to come on that time because they might have scheduled for other tasks before.
Locker and Kaczmarek (2007) identify the 6 kinds of meeting purposes, those are:
- to share information
- to brainstorm ideas
- to evaluate ideas
- to make decisions
- to create a document
- to motivate members
In each kind of purpose, the participants invited will be different composition. When the meeting has a purpose to make decisions, they are 4 different decision-making process, named:
Authoritative, when the leader makes the decision alone.
Consultative, when the leader hears group comment but then makes the decision alone.
Voting, when the majority wins.
Consensus, when the discussion continues until everyone can ‘buy into’ the decision.
After planning the purpose of meeting, the next step is arranging the agenda that indicates:
- The time and place of the meeting
- Whether each item is presented for information, for discussion or for a decision
- Who is sponsoring or introducing each item
- How much time is allotted for each item
Some meetings often become so infuriating and unproductive, generating more ‘heat’ than ‘light’, but some have the potential to be one of the richest and most creative communication channels. Blundel differed meeting based on its primary purpose into 5 types:
- Briefing: to deliver information
- Investigatory: to gather information
- Advisory : to provide information
- Consultative : to get voice opinions
- Executive: to make decisions
The successful meeting can both inform and motivate those attending, unfortunately, business meeting rarely succeed in exploiting these opportunities to the full. The reasons caused the unsuccessful meeting are:
The each attendee arrives with his or her own information, pre-convinced ideas, feelings, and prejudices.
As the meeting grinds on, the different interpretations of the material that has been discussed will occur.
The arguments come from each attendee’s pre-convinced ideas will make any debate that might be out of context.
When it starts being out context the meeting will become boring and produce something unrelated.
The main way to coordinate people within a team is the meeting. As the leader of the team, a manager/owner is required to run well-prepared and well-managed meetings. It is easy for a meeting to degenerate into a boring, meaningless waste of time. A productive meeting can build a great team relationship and achieve result (Kao & Liang 2001).
In start up business, both owner or managers and employees can turn the boring meeting in to the productive meeting, by:
- Always have a prepared agenda, which states the purpose of the meeting. So that everybody knows exactly what to expect.
- Make sure that the size of the meeting is manageable. Three to five is a good number. Seven or more may be unwieldy.
- Be sure the meeting starts and finishes on time. Half an hour is often long enough and also one hour should be the limit.
- Once the decision is made, assign the task of implementing the decision to someone and set a completion date. See that others support the person responsible.
These tips can be applied in start-up business to avoid the boredom in meeting, because of the characteristic of start-up business is having small number of employees, that meeting turns to be a time to have intimacy gathering among the employees. Although it can give a good result, that everybody within firm knows each other, but it can be an entrapment to reduce the professionalism atmosphere within organization.



START-UP BUSINESS
Based on Kao & Liang (2001), at the start up business, effectiveness is enhanced by using the team approach in working toward implementing the plan. If the team involves more than two people, it must have a coordinator who keeps track of everyone’s efforts and ensures that they remain focused on the task. In a start up business, when the number of the employees is small, an owner or manager must plan for growth, emphasizing team effort and learning to share work, decision-making, responsibility, and profits.
Start up business is such a stage of an enterprise begins with official registration or incorporation of the undertaking. Kao & Liang (2001) wrote that during the time the primary activity is offering a product or service to potential buyers. Very few of business can gain profit at this stage; many work their way from a planned loss to a break-even point. Meanwhile they are acquiring financial and human resources, establishing their place in the market and becoming operational. Management in this stage is mainly entrepreneurial and personalized. The owner may do some delegation, but he or she makes all decisions, including those on pricing.

INTIMACY GATHERING
Intimacy gathering can not be defined strictly, because the word “intimacy” has different meaning for some people to others. Because it depends on the characteristic of the country they live in. The degree of intimacy will be different between high context and low context culture. Before we further define “intimacy”, we should understand the definition of high and low context culture. Both contexts are used in many business communication guide books to explaining the attitude and the behavior of people when they communicate in workplace.
This paper wants to describe the behavior of people in workplace influenced by the culture contexts. Low context-culture tends to prefer direct verbal interaction, values individualism, relies more in logic and employs linear logic. It is usually found in North America, Western Europe. The low context-culture will be appeared in business meetings. As they seem to be action-oriented and says ‘no’ directly. The communication will be in highly structured (contexted) message, provides details, stresses literal meanings, gives authority to written information (Guffey, et.al 2005 ). They will make the time spent for a meeting effective and efficient, so they won’t waste their time and energy to discuss other topics out of the main topic discussed in a meeting.
The harder problem may come from the people from high-context culture, as shown by the people in most Asia such as Japan, China and Arab countries. Indonesia is one of the main country discussed here, has the high-context culture. The people of Indonesia tends to prefer indirect verbal interaction, values group membership and talks around points even avoids saying ‘no’. The people in high context-culture communicate in simple, ambiguous, noncontexted messages; understands visual messages readily.
People in high context-culture act so close each other. Because they value group membership, so they like to have a talk to each other closely. If they bring it into a business meeting, no wonder if they are entrapped in an ‘intimacy gathering’ rather than keeping a professionalism atmosphere. So, in this paper, intimacy gathering means a gathering that occurs when two or more people that either closed each other before or not discusses or serves as if they have known before. In a marriage term, it is such the couple talks or serves for each other. And also in spiritual activity term, it can be an intimacy between human and God. But, in business term, I define the intimacy is such a very close relationship among the employees that is able to produce a deeply talks.
By understanding more about the culture’s business practices, we also know that Americans, who are in low-context culture, tend to prefer formal business practices where employees arrive on time to a meeting, address the point of a meeting, arrive at a prompt conclusion, and depart the meeting on schedule. Americans are direct and goal oriented, finding little time to exchange pleasantries. Conversely, other cultures, such as the Japanese, who lives in high-context culture, exchange friendly stories at the beginning of a business meeting, incorporating family ties into their business world. Americans typically separate their “business life” from their “family life” (Carpenter 2005).

PROFESSIONALISM
There’s no strict definition of the word “professionalism”. But, it derives from “professional” that means professional status, methods, character, or standards. When we talk about professionalism it is such a difficult way to define it. But, originated from the noun ‘professional’ itself, the professionalism can be said as the method, the character and the standard that must be found in a professional. For example, if you are a teacher, you have to understand the method of teaching, the character you should have and the standard that you have keep when you are working. So, in this paper, what ever your position in a firm, come and attend a meeting with the method, character and standard of your profession. If you attend a meeting such as an accountant, say and act that relevant to your position.
The measurement of how professional we are depends on what the profession we have. As explained before, that professional is method, character and standard assigned to a profession, so the measurement will be easier because it will be measured by its profession. When someone says he is an accountant, his professionalism will be measured by the method, character and standard as an accountant. So will the other occupations and positions.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This paper has a qualitative-descriptive research method, which gains the data from focus group discussion to get the answer of open-ended questions, other references, and also supported by a questionnaires to help the members in focus group to answer the close-ended questions, so the answers can be strictly defined.
The framework
To guide the understanding of the idea in this paper, here is the framework:
Start- up business
Skill:
Business Communication
(Focused on meeting)

Time and energy effectiveness and goal achievement through the well-conducted meetings

Figure 1: Framework on analysis of conducting meeting in start-up business
The figure 1 above indicates that:
Start-up business has a small number of employee that comes from the close clan, family or relatives and friends.
Start-up business needs an improved skill in business communication, no matter what the cultural context. In this paper, focused on conducting meeting.
Meeting in start-up business are held to coordinate the team to run the business well.
The ability to conduct and run a meeting effectively can result a better relationship within the team and to enhance the ability to gain the expected goals.
The challenge of the owner of a start-up business is how to run the meeting and keep it professionally run although in high context culture especially, the close relationship between the employees can harm the professional atmosphere in a meeting room through their entrapped by an intimacy.
Research background
Research was done in Surabaya, Indonesia and focused in new firms. The members of focus group were selected from different company. They have a specific criterion, that must be working or ever worked before in a start-up business which started the business in the previous 1-2 years before they worked in that firm.
Collecting data techniques
The data collection method for this paper was done by interviewing ten people that ever worked or even still working in a new firm or start-up business and also gave the member the close-ended questions to guide the member in specific topic. So, the result of in-depth interview could be answers, talks or behavior that appears from the empathy relation.
Research instrument
Instrument used for data collection in this paper are open-ended questions. Besides, the writer got the data from the other questions in questionnaires which answered by the members in focus group.
Research steps
This research has two big steps, those are:
- Investigation and initial interview to the research objects.
- Verification and analysis on the result of investigation and interview.
Data analysis
The data collected from interview, investigation and answers of questionnaires that proposed to the ten members of focus group discussion, who are working and ever worked in different firms, has the result:
1. Variables used to decide whether the meeting held in start-up business conducted in professionalism atmosphere, or just ‘entrapped’ by intimacy gathering, are:
a. Start-up business
This paper has the specific definition on start-up business as the business that had just started previous 1-2 years. Based on Kao & Liang (2001), the number of the employees is small, so an owner or manager must plan for growth, emphasizing team effort and learning to share work, decision-making, responsibility, and profits because of the infant business.

b. Meeting
Meeting in this paper will focus on how to run a meeting. Agenda and other meeting preparations will not discuss further in this paper. Because we will mainly discuss on the behavior of the meeting participants in start-up business, whether they keep the professionalism, or they keep the professional atmosphere in attending a meeting.
c. Intimacy gathering
This paper has a specific definition on ”intimacy gathering” that is driven by the condition of employees in start-up business who knows each other before and the small number of employees has made the relationship among employees is very closed. This close relationship produces the situation in a meeting tends to be an informal rather than formal one. Everybody who knows each other will use the meeting room to talk about other topics with another one.
d. Professionalism
The word ‘professionalism’ here will be focused on the way of thinking, behave suitable with the position in a firm. During the meeting, it can be appeared, so the member of the focus group discussion can see how it works.
2. The result:
1. Six people of ten in the group count that the meeting they ever attended in the beginning of firm operation was:
- routine (held once a week)
- more than an hour
- met the goals
- no professional atmosphere
- Attendees were entrapped to have a chat one another out of the topic discussed in the meeting and tended to discuss private cases, such as families or else.
- Everybody who attended the meeting knew each other before they worked in the firm, such as a relative or friends.
2. Four of the members in Focus group discussion said that the firm contained of the people that didn’t know each other before. But, because of the small number of the entire employees in the firm, it made everybody seemed to be family. Because of the very close relationship and interaction everyday.
Furthermore, the four people indicated:
- The meetings were held routine (once a week).
- The meetings were run more than an hour.
- The meetings sometimes met the goals.
- The meetings tended to lose the professional atmosphere.
- Attendees were entrapped to have a chat one another out of the topic discussed in the meeting and acted as if the meeting were the only chance to share other topic, about family or other private cases.
From the short discussion with ten people in focus-group discussion, it can be seen, that in high-context culture, such as Indonesian people, the challenge in start-up business especially in business communication skill is how to conduct the meeting, and keep the professional atmosphere in meeting room. The result also indicated that start-up business usually has the employees from family, relative and friends. So it give the impact to the situation in meeting room, when a high-context culture values interpersonal relationship highly and deep intimacy with other is important to them. The value is brought in to a meeting room and in professional meeting.
The result of such meeting were not clear for the attendees as the meeting discussion was received in bias, as the attendees seemed to be busy with their own topics. For the four members, who worked in a firm, that not everybody knew each other before worked in the same firm, seemed to be better. Because the meetings held, sometimes could gain the goals and the professional atmosphere were still kept although everybody entrapped to have a chat on other topics.
Blundel (2004) mentioned that one of the reasons caused the unsuccessful meeting is that the meeting discussion become boring and produce something unrelated. It can be more harmed when the high-context culture people entrapped to discuss the private cases and the owner, manager or leader also ‘entrapped’ in the unrelated cases.
The meeting in high-context culture almost have no debates as the people seem to appreciate other when talking. It can be a positive but also negative. It is positive for preventing the meeting from the out of context debates, but will be negative if the meeting can not draw the ideas from attendees. It means that the meeting, which should be able to produce the fresh and bright ideas, especially in start up business, will end uselessly. This is the challenge for the owner, leader, manager or an entrepreneur himself, to invite the meeting participants to blow up new ideas to be used in firm operational.




Conclusion
This paper has a purpose to enhance the quality of business communication skill in a start-up business especially in conducting a meeting as the effective way to coordinate the things related with the business needs that surely needed in the first steps. For start-up business in the high-context culture, it is such a challenge.
The owner or the manager of the start-up business should aware and learn how to conduct and run the meeting, as their position as leaders of the team in start up business. If not, they will waste time, energy and even money to do the wasteful and purposeless meeting. The meeting itself is useful for coordinating and discussing the issues in business which are very important to a start-up business if they want to grow in the bigger scale of business.
Hopefully, when an entrepreneur or owner of start-up business knows how to conduct and run the meeting well, he or she can share his vision, strategies, and policy in a professional way although the general theory about start-up business contains of the employees who have close relation among each other. It should be a good inspiration for the entrepreneurs to handle the employees in meeting room. Because, no body in business wants to waste the time and energy for the unused chats.





Reference

Blundel, Richard 2004, Effective Organizational Communication: Perspective, Principles and Practices, 2nd Edition.

Carpenter, Russel Gordon 2005, ‘ Designing for A Japanese High-Context Culture: Culture’s Influence on the Technical Writer’s Visual Rhetoric, A Thesis in the College of Arts and Sciences, at The University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, Spring Term.

Guffey, Mary Ellen, Rhodes, Kathleen & Rogin, Patricia 2005, Business Communication: Process and Product 4th Edition, Thompson, Canada.

Kao, Raymond WY & Liang, Tan Wee 2001, Entrepreneurship and Enterprise development in Asia, Prentice Hall, Singapore.

Locker, Kitty O & Kaczmarek, Stephen Kyo 2007, Business Communication: Building Critical Skills 3rd Edition, McGraw Hill, New York.