New Economy or not, meetings haven't changed much from the old days. They are still the most universal--and universally despised--part of business life. And as more work becomes teamwork, meetings are becoming the place where most of the really important work gets done.
Like me, you've probably wasted too much of your time on unfocused and unproductive meetings. Meetings are often called to clear up doubt and fight confusion; but unfocused meetings usually have the opposite effect of adding confusion to confusion, which usually leaves everyone feeling unproductive. But it doesn't always have to be like this: A meeting can actually be an energizing experience, leaving people feeling good about themselves and each other, driving them forward to achieve specific goals time-lined with definite milestones. Here's a guide to making productive and effective meetings happen.
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Productive meetings begin with the end in mind.
I borrowed this concept from Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. If you can't clearly visualize, taste and feel what you have to do before you do it, you will have a hard time trying to do it. Before you hold your meeting, you should know what you're trying to accomplish in the meeting and how you will know when you've actually achieved what you set out to achieve. In Simply Brilliant, Fergus O'Connell recounts the tale of a friend who writes down the minutes of the meeting before she actually holds the meeting. "Here's how I will know when the meeting has achieved it objectives," says O'Connell's friend.
Productive meetings have different approaches.
All meetings generally fall into three broad categories, with each one requiring a different approach:
Meeting to explore possibilities. The team acknowledges that it has come together to generate ideas to fuel a project, not to make decisions. Brainstorm and mind-map as much as you need. Think wide and embrace all ideas, both good and bad. Every idea is good at this stage; the pruning will come later. The focus is on creativity.
Meeting to exploit opportunities. The goal is to narrow down the field of ideas or options you have generated above. Gather all the information you need to analyze your options and do your due diligence. Think narrow and come up with a short list of ideas and options to decide on in the next stage. You may argue and postulate. Passions and opinions will dominate, but you will succeed in cutting down your list of 100 ideas to the final five.
Meeting to decide and take action. You've brainstormed about it and you've narrowed your options down to five. The goal now is to decide which path to commit to. Don't waste time exploring possibilities and opportunities to exploit--it's too late for that now. Use decision-making matrices and tools to decide on what to do. The time for arguing is over. Be cold-blooded and levelheaded and focus on going forward. When you decide on one final choice, take action and turn your decision into a set of actionable objectives with a clear action plan.
Make it clear to people what kind of meeting they're going to have, and the rules they have to play by.
Productive meetings have a structured agenda.
The best-kept secret to keeping your meetings on track and your time and discussions under control: having a structured agenda and sticking to it. Having a schedule of who has to speak and when will help you avoid the deadly silence and furtive looks when you ask, "So, who wants to start first?"
At the very minimum, a good agenda should include:
However, even the most structured agenda will not stop people from wandering off-topic. Effective meeting leaders keep meetings focused without killing creativity or reprimanding people who stray: Use a "holding area" whiteboard to record and track useful comments or questions that aren't related to the issue at hand.
Productive meetings let people make the transition.
Meetings are most productive when people interact and collaborate as much as they can. The problem is that it's often difficult to make the transition from working at your desk on your own to the emotional roller coaster of a highly collaborative event. You need to facilitate that transition by setting aside about 5 to 10 minutes of open time to let people warm-up to one another. Let them make small talk and get into the socializing mode. When you do get down to business, you'll find people more willing to open up and contribute their minds to the meeting.
Productive meetings have all the facts at your fingertips.
Do you have all the information and infrastructure you need to conduct a meeting? Organize your papers, facts and presentations so that they are easy to retrieve. If you need to make a presentation or refer to online content, make sure that the computer network is up and running in the meeting room, all the required applications are installed and running and the projector and screens are all in place and working. And most importantly, make sure you have all the login codes to need to access network resources.
Productive meetings close the loop.
Give a short summary of the main points discussed in the meeting. This will help to refresh memories and bring everyone back to the present. Go from "talking about it" to "doing it." Assign a person and a deadline to every action item you have identified. Review with each person which specific steps he or she is responsible for and emphasize the due date for the completion of each step. Set the date of your next meeting to receive status reports on everyone's next steps, to track progress and address problems.
Set aside five minutes at the end of every meeting to get feedback: What really worked well in this meeting? What didn't work out so well? Are there bad habits that we seem to keep repeating?
Productive meetings always end with the minutes.
Meeting minutes record what everyone agreed on and what has to be done. Minutes help prevent people from leaving a meeting with different views of what happened and what's supposed to happen next.
Appoint someone to take the meeting minutes. I generally prefer to have all my team members take turns at this role. As a rule the person leading the meeting shouldn't also take the minutes: It's pretty hard to speak and take notes at the same time.
Don't worry too much about taking exhaustive notes about who said what. Focus instead on the points that matter the most:
Keep it short and sweet since you don't want to spend too much time writing it (and make people spend too much time reading it).
In conclusion...
Productive meetings don't happen overnight. Meetings are like any other part of business life: You get better only if you commit to what works best and practice what you preach. But don't be too intent on making it better. The best medicine in the world can make you sick if you take too much of it. If you become too enthusiastic in improving meetings, you're likely to become a heel to your colleagues and team members. Take your time, execute in small steps and don't prescribe more medicine than your people can swallow.
Geoff Choo is a project manager for Invisible Site, an Italian interactive media agency, and a freelance business and technology writer. In his spare time, he helps produce Netstatistica Report, a free monthly newsletter that helps busy decision makers plan smarter and act faster by providing easy-to-digest key Internet economy demographics, statistics and facts from Europe and around the world. In a previous life, he worked as a Web developer and project manager for IconMedialab in Italy. You can get in touch with Geoff at [email protected].
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