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March 25, 2006
How effective are your meetings?
Too many meetings seems to be a hot topic these days. I often hear people in seminars tell me they don't feel like they can get real work done because their days are filled in back-to-back meetings. Yesterday, in the Santa Monica RoadMap seminar, I heard a classic from David Allen on this:
"Some people are going to meetings just because the cow in front of them is."
Here are some suggestions I've been pulling together for improving meetings:
- Start every meeting with "What's the purpose of this meeting?"
- End every meeting with "What's the next action and who's got it?"
- Send meeting agendas ahead of time (one client told me this one alone has transformed their meetings--they no longer waste time in meetings figuring out what the meeting is about.)
- Send meeting minutes after the meeting while it's still fresh in participant's minds.
- Does everyone who is there really need to be there? Unless someone is directly related to the project or topic, do they really need to attend?
- Do your recurring meetings need to happen as frequently anymore? Maybe a year ago that weekly Wednesday meeting made sense, but maybe it's not needed as often (or at all!). Can it move to biweekly or monthly? Can it be a conference call instead?
- Allow enough time for people to get between meetings. Some clients start 7 minutes after the hour and end 7 minutes prior, just to allow walking/breathing/water break time.
- One client said they give speaker time-limits, so the meeting doesn't drag on and on.
- If you are on shared calendars, block your calendar for your own doing time (including eating lunch), if you find that other people are grabbing whatever open time you've got.
I'd love comments on this. Anything you've done to improve your workflow around meetings?
Posted by Kelly at March 25, 2006 10:19 AM
Comments
We use Outlook in our office, so when I use it to schedule a number of people into a meeting I put "Purpose of Meeting" in the notes section, followed by a list of agenda items (with someone's name next to each item wherever possible), and finally a list of "Next Steps" with responsible names if I already know them. Often even before a meeting occurs you already know what a few of the next steps are going to be -- I find that outlining those up front sets the expectation to everyone that we'll be leaving the meeting with action items.
Posted by: Meghan Wilker at March 28, 2006 06:04 AM
One trick I use to speed up meetings is called the "Flea Market." It's from Bill Daniels work. Basically you give 5 minutes for everyone to handle any 1-on-1 only topics, so the meeting is only focused on group topics.
Posted by: Jon at March 29, 2006 11:22 AM
I've found it helpful to halve the time I think I'll need for a meeting. If I'm tempted to schedule a 1-hr meeting, I'll only schedule 30-min. The time pressure stops the chit-chat and bunny-hole explorations.
I also try like crazy to start the meeting on time and those running late need to catch up on their own. Perhaps a bit heartless, but doing this only wastes the one person's time - not re-hashing the information and wasting everyone's time.
Posted by: Russ N. at April 4, 2006 09:26 AM
