Meetings can either be time-wasting talk-shops, energetic decision-making-forums, or a plethora of states in between. Wherever on this scale they may fall, meetings are a feature of everyday life for most people. In fact, in some organisations I have been in they are almost as much an obstacle to progress as the sea of e-mails we all suffer.
So what can you do to make sure your meeting is further towards the progress side of the spectrum than the stalemate side? Here are some top tips I have noted over the years:
1. Don’t hold meetings
Do you really need to call a meeting to discuss or decide something? Or would an e-mail, a phone call or a one-to-one chat achieve the sames result? Meetings can be very powerful tools, but why use a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
2. Use conference calls or video conference
I find these excellent mechanisms to get to a speedy conclusion. Not because technology works so well that it is as if we are all in the same room, but because they make people feel very awkward and consequentially they want the call/video conference concluded as quickly as possible. And this is before you take into consideration the time saved with no one having to travel, and the fact you can hold it earlier as it is easier to fit in diaries.
3. Draft, circulate, and agree an agenda beforehand
How many times have I sat in a meeting and heard “Oh, we need Bob to discuss that but he is not here” – be it to an agenda item, or to something raised in Any Other Business. By circulating the agenda in good time before the meeting, you can make sure that the right people are attending, that those people have done the research or brought the right material, and that anything additional that needs to be discussed is identified in advance, with time to prepare, rather than appearing at the end of a marathon 5 hour session.
4. Set a finish time
It is remarkable how you can get as much achieved in a meeting that starts at 3pm when people go home at 5pm, as you can in one that starts at 1pm and ends at home time. If there is a deadline by which people have to have concluded their thinking then it gives the process the necessary momentum.
5. Start with what you want to achieve
Start the meeting by making a statement about what you would like the meeting to achieve. This may be something like “Thank you all for coming today. What I would like this session to achieve is to decide which of the two proposed products we are going to run with, and to set-up a working committee to take it through the next stage of development”. At the end of the meeting you are then able to check “yes, we chose Product A” and “Jim, Asif and Sarah are to form the working party and report back by 10 October”. Remember, just because you have been through every item on the agenda does not mean it has been a successful meeting.
6. Hide the cookies
Cookies cause meetings. Cookies prolong meetings. Have you ever been running something by someone and they have said “Lets get a meeting room to discuss this, then we can get some of the nice coffee”? A five minute conversation has just become a one hour meeting.
7. Invite fewer people
A sad fact of meetings, especially ones where there is a ‘boss’ present, is that everyone feels the need to say something, anything, to justify their existence. While I’m sure it is a valiant effort, the more people who are doing this the longer your meeting is going to be. Only invite people who are going to contribute anyway to the proposed agenda and the meeting will remain focused.
8. Invite more people
Invite more decision makers. This is the biggest cause of talk-shop style meetings – lots of opinions, but no one able to conclude a decision from it all. If you have planned your agenda in advance , and defined your objectives, decision makers will be happy to attend the meeting because they will be confident it’ll resolve something that is probably on their to do list.
9. Action points not minutes
I’m not suggesting that you don’t take minutes of your meeting – sometimes this is an important aspect for legal reasons, or for those who couldn’t attend. But they shouldn’t be the main output of the session. As a result of each agenda item there should be a number of action points and people with responsibility for these (if there aren’t then there is something wrong with your meeting! If you want to chat about something with out concluding anything then you need a water cooler not a meeting room). After the meeting circulate the list of action points so people can see what was agreed and by who, without having to wade through 20 pages of discussion.
10. Chair like a despot
Finally, you really need to be a bit meaner. The best meetings are kept on track by a firm but understanding hand. This maybe quieting those who say too much, or encouraging those who don’t say enough. It is ensuring the agenda is kept to and the objective is met. Above all, it is ensuring there is a real ‘feel’ of direction about the meeting at all times – this ensures the momentum necessary to engage all, and to be really productive.
