Do you remember when everyone started knocking down cubicles, going office-less and embracing the open office floor plans? Do you also remember when they all realized that it was extremely noisy, distracting, smelly, and lacking privacy? The open office trend comes with a lot of great benefits like increased collaboration, energy and innovation. The idea was to embrace the employee-centric culture, knock down the hierarchical pyramid and create a more horizontal vibe in the workplace. The flaw is that just about everyone went out, bought a pair of noise canceling headphones, put them on and never took them off again.

A survey revealed that 67% of meetings are considered by executives to be a failure. Meetings are intended as a productivity booster, a coming together to accomplish objectives, a “let’s get on the same page” gathering. So why are they considered the black hole of time in just about every workplace?

As leaders create and build teams, they might find that some teams have better chemistry than others. There is something about certain groups of people collaborating that just clicks. We have always thought of the idea of chemistry between people as some sort of serendipitous event that can’t be purposefully created or duplicated. But what if it can be?