There are endless interesting variants of meetings, but the one I want to talk about is the executive cross-pollination communication clusterfuck. The point of this meeting is alignment. Big alignment. You’ve likely got several different groups who don’t normally spend a lot of time together being forced to sit in the same room so the execs can compare stories, measure reality, and figure out who is lying.

Before I explain how to get your head around this meeting, I want to talk about intent behind this meeting. Intent starts with a question: “Why does this meeting exist?” If you’re responsible for the presentation in this particular meeting, it exists because someone hates you.

It’s not personal hate. It’s professional hate, and it’s exacerbated by a simple fact of organization: different groups speak different languages. Marketing speaks marketing, Legal speaks legal, and Engineering speaks engineering. There’s a fundamental communication breakdown somewhere in the building, and someone is feeling wronged. They’re feeling bullied and since they don’t speak your dialect, they’re complaining up rather than across.

Normally, we deal with these Tower of Babel situations with the direct application of middle management, program managers, and other folks we pay big bucks to sit in meetings and translate between organizations. However, translation has not worked in this case. Someone high up on the org chart is hearing two very different stories and wondering which is true. Story reconciliation is certainly on the top of your list of items to resolve in this meeting, but job #1 is to figure out who hates you.

For these critical meetings, your goal is to make them a rubber stamp affair. In the week before the meeting, you will have personally vetted your slides with each of the meeting invitees. You will have heard their concerns and made the appropriate adjustments to your deck. When the cross-pollination meeting arrives, your goal is an utter lack of drama and the finishing pronouncement of, “Yeah, we should do that and you know how.”

It never happens like this.

We’re “busy” and we have “things to do,” but mostly we’re “looking forward to blindsiding you with a Screw-Me at the least convenient moment in front of your executive team.”

It’s a disappointing trait of human nature that folks who feel wronged like to exact their revenge by flaunting their knowledge and dishing out the Screw-Me at the worst possible time, but roll with it. You’re already a step ahead just expecting to be screwed. Besides, your enemy is working more with emotion than content, and that will turn into their own personal Screw-Me Scenario at a later date. Right now, your job is data.

Ideas get better with eyeballs, and before this meeting goes down, your job is to get as many eyeballs on your presentation as possible. You’re not going to get everyone in the meeting, but that’s not the point. The task is cross-pollination. Casting the information net as wide as possible and incessantly asking:

I’ve got the Russian Lit major for vetting my strategy. Who do you have? I’m not talking about your boss or your coworker; I’m talking about the person who can objectively look at your presentation and start poking holes. These people are rare because it’s another disappointing trait of human nature that we often think we’re doing each other a favor by listening well but then tell each other what we want to hear.

You lose yourself in any significant project. You’ve long forgotten your strategic initial assumptions, but more importantly, you’ve forgotten what other people need because you’re furiously worrying about the daily tactical fire drills. A fresh perspective is a chance to test your entire idea and find the Screw-Me. You need someone to poke holes. You need to find and fill the gaps, and as each gap is filled, you’re going to build confidence around your pitch because, well, that’s one less potential Screw-Me entry point.

You’re not going to find them all. That’s OK, because in the process of constantly refining your pitch, you’re mentally refining yourself. You’re preparing yourself by seeing each of the different perspectives in your deck. That improves the chances that you’ll know what to do when someone starts dishing out the hate.

The meeting’s on. You’re walking in with a head full of data, and my hope is that through your constant cross-pollination, you are legitimately the most informed person on this particular topic in the room. There’s still work to do:

Tim’s got the Screw-Me, and you didn’t see it coming. Total left field. Completely valid strategic observation and you don’t have a clue how to answer. Shit.

You will recognize the Screw-Me by the complete silence that fills both the room and your head. That’s the realization everyone is having that you’re Screwed. First, let’s not make it worse....

Tim: “Rands, what about THIS?”

I’m a poker player and an experienced meeting surfer, so the room will not immediately know from the look on my face that This has Screwed me, but what I choose to do next will define my ongoing relationship with the room.

There are two options when you are cornered by This. Your animal brain, when cornered, will try to find a way out. You can taste this approach even before you begin. I am going to spin. I am going to talk quickly and confidently about This, and I am going to hope that in my furious verbal scurrying they are going to believe I’ve got This handled.

That’s not what they’re seeing or hearing.

This is not your staff meeting where a little verbal soft shoe is going to entertain and delight. These are the execs, and no matter how many meetings you’ve surfed, they see straight through spin, they know this dance, and the longer you sit there spinning, the longer you give your boss an opportunity to step in, try to make the diving save, and make you look like a blithering fool.

It takes a little practice to make the correct move when you feel the spin coming. You are going to do three things:

You have completely defused Tim. See, Tim was pissed, which is why he waited until precisely the wrong moment to throw down the Screw-Me. He wanted to see you spin and make a fool of yourself in front of your management team, and what you did with the instant acknowledgement was crush emotion with structured sanity.

You can get lucky with spin sometimes. There are times when you spin so hard that you talk yourself into a Screw-Me solution that actually makes sense. But this is rare and unreliable, and in my experience, this frenetic verbal journey erodes confidence and wastes time.

The only question on everyone’s mind during the cross-pollination clusterfuck is, “Do you know what you’re talking about?” It’s lame that Tim doesn’t speak Engineer and waited until precisely the wrong moment to Screw you, but my hope is that through your incessant vetting of your slides, you can deliver the “I don’t know” with confidence. Tim only knows what he’s pissed about and you, through your preparation, can see the entire picture.

An aggressive Screw-Me detection policy is, I believe, essential to navigating groups of people. It’s not just constantly knowing the potential worst-case scenario in any situation; it’s that you are instinctively always looking for it. When I am looking at any situation, I’m always trying to figure out what sequence of events could occur that will screw me.

This strategy sounds a lot like paranoia, and yes, an unchecked Screw-Me detection policy can result in a conspiracy theory lifestyle where THEY are out to GET YOU.

Yes, only the paranoid survive, but paranoia is a lot of work. You can burn a lot of calories worrying about all possibilities, but this is not an approach I recommend. What I’m asking is that you look at specific key events strategically. Step back and look at the whole board. Ask, “What sequence of moves is going to benefit me? Can I see what is coming? And how could I get screwed?” Because teams that kick ass aren’t just ones that deliver; it’s that they deliver even when they’re screwed.