A properly planned meeting should not be one that puts people "on the spot"...everyone should know what's expected of them before the meeting so that they can properly plan and prepare so that the meeting can meet it's expected outcome...oh, and meetings should have a predetermined outcome If you don't know the purpose or what you expect to get from the meeting...cancel it. Period. Determine the purpose of the meeting before you decide to waste your time and the time of others. I tend to cancel a lot of meetings and the truth is I would rather cancel a meeting than to waste one of the most precious nonrenewable sources there is on this planet...Time.
Many of us waste countless hours in pointless, useless, and boring meetings. Even worse many of us plan them (Guilty).
Here are a few things I try do for each meeting:
- Determine Purpose: Is it to make a decision, provide status, solve a problem, etc. Personally, if the purpose is a status meeting, then cancel it....status can be given in a written report. Especially if it involves a bunch of status that nobody cares about enough to listen.
- Determine Expected Outcome: Very close to determining purpose, but important enough to stand on it's own. What do you want to walk away from the meeting with. If you can't answer this then cancel the meeting--period.
- Determine Audience: Who needs to be there for this to be an effective meeting? Don't invite everyone in the world to a meeting where only two people are the only people impacted. I am sure I am not the only one who has counted the number of people who weren't needed for the meeting that are in the room and multiplied that number by an assumed average hourly rate and gasped at the amount of money being wasted! Inviting the wrong people wastes a lot of money, and more importantly, time.
- Determine Meeting Format: Does everyone need to meet face to face? Can it be a phone meeting? How long should it take? Will there be a presentation? Should it be held at an offsite? All of these questions and countless others need to be answered to determine the most optimal format and forum for having the meeting.
- Create Agenda (with times!) - You have the audience, purpose, expected outcome, and format so you should have more than enough information to create an agenda. Put all of your ideas down of what you want to discuss and think about who will need to be involved in each discussion and think about how long it will take. Put those times down and try to stick to those times during the meeting.
- Provide Pre-Meeting Work/Read Ahead - According to the agenda there may be info or work that needs to be done prior to the meeting. Make sure that you provide individuals with enough information ahead of time to either review or to complete. This could affect the outcome of the meeting drastically if people are not prepared ahead of time. A
- Invite Attendees - Invite the ONLY the needed people and send them the purpose, agenda and read aheads so that they can save you and them time--and sanity.
- Set the expectation for the meeting: Be sure to communicate with meeting attendees prior to the meeting to let them know what they can expect and what you expect or will need from them during the meeting. This way everyone knows their part in the meeting and what they need to bring to or take away from the meeting. Prep action item sheets so that people can write up actions during the meeting for either themselves or someone else at the meeting. Be sure that the action item sheet includes at a minimum: action, action owner, and due date
- Have the Meeting - All of the hard work is about to pay off. Review the purpose and agenda for the meeting with the audience to Follow the agenda and make sure that you and be sure to take notes (or assign someone to) and track action items during the meeting. Don't forget to hand out those action sheets.
- Review Action Items - At the end of the meeting review the action items and make sure everyone is clear on the action and that a date has been agreed to for the completion of the action item.
- Send Notes and Action Items - Shortly after the meeting (within a few days) send out the notes and the action items. Don't forget to track and follow up on those action items!
Sounds like a lot of work right? Well, it should be, and notice that most of the work is done BEFORE the meeting! Keep in mind this is a high level of what should be done. There are other things that could be discussed that would turn into it's own blog post such as presentation format, meeting etiquette, etc.
A lot of what I said above was recounted from several articles that I have read over the past few months and from mistakes I've made along the way as I try to improve. I often use the super secret information source (Google) to do some research on things before I do them and here a few of the many articles that I came across about running effective meetings.
- http://www.mindtools.com/CommSkll/RunningMeetings.htm
- http://www.inc.com/guides/2010/08/how-to-run-effective-meeting.html
- http://www.liquidplanner.com/blog/kill-status-meeting/
- Another article on why status meetings are bad, but I can't find it arrrghhh-will be added later
Happy Meeting Planning!
