Meeting or Not Meeting... That is the Question!

Dear Managers and Leaders!

Meetings... If there is one element in the work life of a manager or leader that can really take a lot of time without producing real results, it must be those long hours spent sitting in meeting rooms with your colleagues. I remember one meeting I was in a long time ago. Back then, I was a software developer. I was asked to present an idea that I had about improving some processes to a number of senior executives. With a lot of luck, I was asked to present late on a Friday afternoon. Well, while I was presenting, I noticed that three out of four people in the room had their eyes closed, sleeping. One of them even snored at some point. I was furious! Maybe I was not a great presenter, but nonetheless I felt that these executives should have told me “no” up-front instead of wasting my time like they did. Needless to say, my idea was never approved.

Anyways, there are some ground rules that should be followed to ensure that you have meetings only when necessary and to guarantee their success or at least their productivity.

(1) Have clear objectives for each and every meeting you hold. If you cannot state clearly what the objectives of the meeting are, then cancel the meeting. It will be a waste of time.

(2) Send a meeting agenda ahead of time to the invitees to make sure that everyone will be ready for the meeting.

(3) Ask that people provide you with all the data they need to bring into the meeting prior to the meeting. At the beginning of the meeting, take a very brief amount of time to summarize what people sent you. You do not want the meeting to turn into a round table where everyone falls asleep.

(4) Meetings are usually about one of the three following things (see Seth Godin’s recent blog at http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/03/three-kinds-of-meetings.html):

a. Provide information to the people present. This is a one-way meeting and even though questions are allowed, the decisions have been made prior to the meeting
b. Discuss something. This is an open forum where the leader wants feedback from the invitees.
c. Get permission. Here the leader needs approval to do something. The audience is expected to say yes, but can still say no.

Don’t confuse these three types of meetings. It should be clear from the agenda what type of meeting it will be.

(5) Always define the end time of the meeting. Most meetings should last 30 minutes or less. In Agile methods, they even mandate that the daily “scrum” meeting be held with people standing up to make sure the meeting will remain short!

(6) During the meeting, leave no space to chit-chats or discussions going off a tangent. People who want to socialize can do so after the meeting.

(7) If a point requires more discussion between a subset of the attendees, make someone responsible for that topic and postpone the discussion to a later time.

What about you, dear reader. Do you often find yourself wasting your precious time in un-productive meetings? Are there any other meeting ground rules that you use to ensure productivity? Please share your thoughts with this group!

Until next time,
Remi Cote