We all have been in dragging meetings that go nowhere, or that could have been an email. Bad meetings are terrible for us—employees—and business alike:
We surveyed 5,000 knowledge workers across 4 continents. The main reason they struggle to get their work done? Meetings.
Meetings are ineffective 72% of the time.
Poorly organized or canceled meetings pose the biggest time drain to businesses in the UK, with 40% of employees believing this is the biggest threat to their company’s time. […] Professionals spend an average of two hours in pointless meetings every week.
Although some meetings are avoidable, many are crucial. If we do not feel their value,
or they drag, it is because we mishandle them. Meetings are useful only if they are seen by all present to be getting
somewhere—and somewhere they know they could not have gotten to individually.
If we think of a meeting like a project (they are both activities we partake to achieve something
),
then the first crucial step is planning it: defining a goal to align participants,
and a roadmap as a reference when conducting it.
So, I am explaining how to plan a meeting to be effective.
Set a goal
Start by defining the goal of the meeting. The following questions can aid you to create a good goal:
- What do I want to achieve with this meeting?
- Why are we meeting?
- What would be the consequences of not holding it?
- How do I judge whether the meeting is successful?
- What do I expect from people?
Why do people meet, though? Meetings create commitment, share knowledge, define the team, and avoid miscommunication.
Knowing the functions of a meeting helps us understand why we create them, and why we behave like we do in them.
- A meeting defines the team. Those present belong to it; those absent don't.
- A meeting is the place where the group revises, updates, and adds to what it knows as a team: it's shared knowledge.
- A meeting helps individuals understand the collective aim of the team and the way in which his own and everyone else's work can contribute to it.
- A meeting creates a commitment to the decisions taken. Once something has been decided, even if you originally argued against it, your membership in the group entails an obligation to accept the decision.
- A meeting is a status arena, where people find out their relative standing against others.
Moreover, face-to-face meetings are richer and more intuitive than virtual communication (e.g., emails).
For example, people understand only around 50% of our virtual messages.
We can divide meetings into three types, which helps in defining the meeting, and thus the goal.
- Meetings to inform
Where you want to introduce something that might raise questions.
They are also known as Process-Oriented, as knowledge is shared and information exchanged.
Examples are team meetings, project status meetings, and announcements.On the one hand,
this type of meetings might be better off handled asynchronously
(such as email, I.M., or a post in the company’s intranet) because they only require people to process information, which they can do by themselves. On the other hand, it might be good to conduct the meeting if the topic is complex.- Meetings to discuss or decide
These are Mission-oritented, as in there's a specific output to them, usually a decision.
For example:-
Deciding what shall we do, resulting in a new policy, project, or task; people contribute with ideas and knowledge.
-
Deciding how shall we do it, starting with a goal and finishing with a plan. As the team participated in the decision-making, the decision belongs to the team—securing the group’s consent. Moreover, this kind of meeting ensures each member understands, owns, and commits to their part.
Therefore,
ensure you invite the necessary people to take a decision, otherwise the meeting is useless.
These meetings are skippable if a single person can autonomously take the decision. However, they might avoid responsibility by delegating the decision to the group with a meeting.
Your company’s culture can encourage meetings rather than individual decision making, and you might be further advocating it by making or accepting them.
I share a guide to handle discussions in meetings, as it can be challenging.
The following guide is a summary loosely based on Antony Jay's How to Run a Meeting.
- Start by introducing the goal, reminding people what you want from them.
- Describe the symptoms, explaining the visible pain or opportunity leading to this discussion.
- Summarize the relevant facts and past discussions leading to today.
- Go through a diagnosis by
- First, constructing a series of explanations and options without discarding any.
- Then, start choosing among them.
- A discussion is done when, either
- We require more facts.
- We need the views of people not present.
- Members need more time to think and discuss.
- Events are changing and likely to alter or clarify the basis of the decision soon.
- There is not going to be enough time in the meeting left to discuss it.
- It became clear that a few members can settle the discussion outside the meeting, without taking up time of the rest.
- Ensure that by the end of a discussion, the decisions, conclusions, and actions are written and assigned to people.
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- A mix of types
Meetings might serve as a placeholder for several topics to discuss. Topics might be either to inform, or discuss/decide, and we define them in an agenda, which I explain later.
Recurring meetings tend to fall here. Note that
recurring meetings can diffuse over time (and might require reviewing with stakeholders to ensure that the frequency is right).
A good way to start the goal is by defining which type of meeting it is: Inform, Discuss, or Decide.
Some examples are:
- Review the roadmap of the project and discuss next steps.
- Decide on the best tool for system X.
- Analyze customer churn and define an initiative to reduce it.
Discuss the proposal for reduction to the next year's development budget
.
Create the meeting
It is time to give the meeting an entity in the form of a calendar event. As calendar apps are a commodity, use them. This event should contain:
- A title
If possible, use the goal of the meeting.
Don't put the word meeting or any synonym for it in the title.
- Participants
Try to invite them via the calendar app; this way you ensure they have it in their calendar.
- A time frame
Put the meeting at a time when your participants are going to be productive.
When is the best time to setup a meeting? Doodle's research reports that
70% of professionals reported that meetings are best held in the morning (8am – 12pm), as opposed to the afternoon (19%), and before work/evenings (11%)
. Moreover,avoid putting a meeting in the middle of a big time gap and thus breaking the focus of the people, nor after a chain of lengthy meetings where they are exhausted. Breaks between meetings allow the brain to “reset,” reducing a cumulative buildup of stress across meetings
.Finally, think of how long the meeting should take. If it feels too long, divide the meeting.
- An Agenda
Add a link to the agenda in the description, if any. More on this later.
- Instructions to access the meeting
- Explain how to access the meeting: do you need an address, a conference room, or a link?
Define the agenda
Share an agenda if the meeting has more than one or two topics (a.k.a agenda items),
and do it 2-3 days before the meeting—less than that and people won’t review the topics; more than that and they might forget
.
For each topic in the agenda:
- Write a title in the form of the goal you want to achieve once the topic is concluded, the same way you created the goal of the meeting.
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All topics should be thought in advance if they are to be usefully discussed.
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Share short drafts or proposals to help reaching the goal of the item of the agenda, helping people in formulating useful questions and considerations in advance. Avoid long ones.
- Provide context to people: add references and previous meetings, including decisions taken. This allows people to catch up and get into context before the meeting, avoiding spending time within.
- Note points that you want to be ensured they are discussed in each item (you do not have to share all of them in the public agenda), in order to guide the discussion.
-
- Put the expected finishing time of the topic on the agenda.
- Define who is the Chairman (if it differs from the meeting one; more on this later) and Task Leader (more on this later).
- Leave a space for next steps or actions, and write any you already know of.
Sort the topics on the agenda wisely: by urgency, mental energy, interest, and whether they are divisive topics.
- First, the ones requiring urgent decision, vs those that can wait till next time.
- Then, those that require mental energy or bright ideas, as the early part of the meeting is more lively and creative than the end of it.
- A divise or interesting item that can take long time can go later the end to ensure other items are processed.
- Some items unite the meeting in a common front, while others divide them. Make a conscious decision of what you prefer (start unified then divide, or otherwise).
- Avoid welling on trivial but urgent items but excluding important ones whose significant is longterm rather than immediate.
Define the roles of the participants
These are the roles of the people in meetings. It is important to understand in which role people fall and what they have to do.
- Chairman
(a.k.a. Chairperson). They are the social leaders of the meeting. They ensure that the meeting achieves the best conclusions—the agenda topics are solved—efficiently (eg. without derailing) by acting as a facilitator.
- They are usually the person setting up the meeting.
- They ensure that people know their role at the beginning of the meeting.
- They should be acting as a servant leader, guiding the group to achieve conclusions, for example, via the socratic method.
- Moving the discussion forward, cutting when it derails (e.g. by saying “we have to move on”).
- Preventing misunderstanding and confusion.
- Encouraging the clash of ideas (probing, stimulating, summarizing) and avoiding the clash of personalities.
- They should not have strong opinions nor impose them.
- Ensuring everyone participates, including silent and junior people that might be intimidated by senior ones.
- They ensure that, by the end of each topic, the conclusions, decisions, and actions have been written and agreed by the ones responsible.
Watch out for the suggestion-squashing reflex.
Suggestions contain the seeds of future success. Although very few suggestions will ever lead to anything, almost all of them need to be given every chance. The trouble is that suggestions are much easier to ridicuel than facts or opinions. If people feel that making a suggestions will provoke the negative reaction of being laughed at or squashed, they will soon stop.
Antony Jay, How to Run a Meeting - Few suggestions can stand up to squashing in their pristine state.
- Notice and show special warmth when anyone makes a suggestion.
- Pick out the best part of one and get the other members to help build it into something that might work.
- Task leader
(a.k.a. project leader). They are the owner of a topic in the agenda, and lead the discussion of that topic.
Chairman VS task leader
The Chairman can be the Task Leader, although it’s not advisable. Research shows that most of the effective discussions have these two leaders separately.
The reasoning is that the task leader can have strong arguments and take decisions—be a master leader—whereas the chairman should be a servant leader, as in facilitating people to make arguments and take decisions. The Chairman has to be perceived to be committed to the combined goal and neutral, instead of advocating one side of the argument, otherwise they loose credibility.
- Secretary
(a.k.a. note or minute taker).
Although the Chairman is the responsible for taking notes, this can be delegated or shared with a participant. The purpose of the minutes is to capture what was discussed, and more importantly, what was agreed at a meeting
.- Attendees
Attendees are accountable for participating and contributing to the meeting.
McKinsey divides attendees into decision makers, advisers, recommenders, and execution partners.
- Decision makers should be the only participants with a vote, and the ones with the responsibility to decide as they see fit. Sometimes decision makers will need to “disagree and commit,” to use a phrase coined by Jeff Bezos in a 2017 letter to Amazon shareholders.
- Advisers give input and shape the decision. They typically have a big stake in the decision’s outcome.
- Recommenders conduct analyses, explore alternatives, illuminate pros and cons, and ultimately recommend a course of action to the advisers and decision makers. The more recommenders the better—for the process, not the decision meeting itself.
- Execution partners don’t give input in making the decision but are deeply involved in implementation. For optimal speed and clarity, execution partners should be in the room when the decision is made so that they can envision how the implementation will evolve from the decision.
McKinsey & Company, What is an effective meeting?
The Cambridge’s Effective Meetings Toolkit has trainings for each role.
Conclusions
In the previous sections we planned a meeting by defining its goal, giving it a place in our calendar app, defining the roadmap of the meeting in the form of an agenda, and defining the roles of the participants.
Now, what is left is to start the meeting, and use or roadmap to run it effectively.
This post came from my team raising their frustrations over meetings, and their ideas on improving them. So I would like to thank them for their contribution: Catalina, Eddy, Enrique, Lídice, and Serhiy… thank you!