A CEO once told me, "If you ask for 30 minutes take 15."
We didn't have a great relationship, but what he was telling me holds true in every organization I have been a part of.
The question, "Is there anything we haven't covered yet?" is like a magic phrase. People who were sleeping, tweeting, reading, working on their own PowerPoint decks suddenly become quite attentive. Like an audible sigh of collective relief, the room breaks up as the host/leader says, "Okay, we're gonna give you back 10 minutes." Those are the most happy words I can remember hearing at any meeting.
So what is the issue? What can we do to make meetings more effective, more streamlined, more efficient? A couple of simple things will help your colleagues get more out of each meeting, if you are the leader. And if you are a participant there are a few things you can do to facilitate the efficiency of the meeting.
1. Have an agenda. If you are not the leader ask for an agenda ahead of time. With no agenda, the meeting should be canceled until the agendas are out and everyone has agreed to the meeting again.
2. No side conversations. The biggest problem in most meetings is the lack of attention from all the participants. If the meeting has a global or conference call component the problem is compounded exponentially. So in-person meetings should be "clam shells down." If you are so busy that you can't give me your full attention you need to be somewhere else. How many times during a conference call is it appropriate to call on someone for an answer to have them say, "I'm sorry, I missed the question, can you repeat that." And why is this such a common response? Because they are definitely not listening. The trigger was the mention of their name. So then you get to go over the question again. And depending on how far back the person checked out, go back over some of the details to help them salvage their response. Kill Blackberrys and iPhones as well. That stare you have at your hands under the conference room table is not an excuse.
3. Summarize action items at the end of the meeting. If you don't have any action items to summarize, I'd say you might need to go back to #1 and figure out what the purpose of the meeting was.
4. Send out meeting summary notes within a few hours of the end of the meeting. This is super critical. This is the only chance you will have as a leader, to get agreement from the participants on the action items and deliverables that were accepted during the meeting. And this is the step that will bring the biggest objections from those who were not paying attention. If you assigned an action item to someone who was surfing the web, they may not have accepted the task or might not be aware of the deadline for their input. The summary notes are the only place you will be able to hold everyone's feet to the flame of the project. In your summary state who was attending, who was on conference call, and who was missing (if they were critical to the objectives of the meeting). Then state who was assigned action items and what the deadline is for their completion.
In setting good agendas, allowing no laptops or phones to be used, and in rounding up all the tasks in a simple summary you will find you need much less time to complete most meetings. And people who run good tight meetings will be more successful at getting executives and leaders to attend their meetings in the future.
If you don't do these things you are wasting my time and yours. And the value of those ten minutes could you give it back to everyone in attendance could well be worth some serious gratitude. As we are all struggling to get more done with less, time is gold.
It is good to be the leader who can say "So we're done. The summary will be in your inbox in the next 10 minutes. And we're giving you back 15 minutes."
Listen for the sigh. It might be as loud as a cheer depending on the day of the week or the lateness of the meeting.
@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/no-mo-meetings
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