MANAGEMENT

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HIGH QUALITY MEETINGS WITH MEANINGFUL OUTCOMES ARE VITAL SO ALL PRACTICE STAFF MOVE TOWARDS A COMMON GOAL. KAREN CROUCH EXPLAINS HOW TO AVOID THE TRAP OF INEFFECTIVE MEETINGS.

KAREN CROUCH

"A DECISION THAT COULD BE MADE RELATIVELY EASILY BY CIRCULATED EMAIL MIGHT ONLY REQUIRE A MEETING IF PARTIES CANNOT REACH AGREEMENT" A happy 2022 to all readers as we move through a successfullymanaged, pandemic-influenced environment to living with the disease as an endemic health condition.

Regardless, the need continues for effective communication, not just through one-on-one meetings but formal office forums to ensure meaningful, mutually achieved and understood outcomes. After all, forums of either particular office craft groups or by wider coverage are the ideal conduit for achieving best teamwork standards.

Practices sometimes pride themselves on strong interpersonal communication based on frequency of meetings. However, a closer review often reveals they lack more important factors: quality and outcomes (results).

Our firm is often involved in assessing the effectiveness of practice meetings to enrich their quality, improve decision making, and promulgate meeting resolutions, including enforcement of existing practice management or staff behavioural policies.

We noted the following common threads: • Meetings were invariably conducted between various job families – administration, clinicians, principals – but rarely across craft groups, • Yet, most felt the level of communication within the practice was high, based on the degree of familiarity and the general level of friendliness between staff, undoubtedly a favourable outcome from the perspective of office morale, • But many interviewees commented that decisions were often not clear or crisp, not communicated effectively, or meaningfully recorded for future reference, resulting in poor implementation of meeting resolutions.

It’s worth noting that a practice’s attitude and discipline of regular meetings is not to be discouraged as their basic appreciation for effective communication is praiseworthy.

With staff cooperation, we defined these desirable benefits of an effective meeting: • Target outcome/s is clearly defined and understood by participants via an agenda • Communication and decision making is

A chairperson or leader helps focus attendees’ minds on agenda items.

improved, including accurate recording of salient outcomes • Experiences, information and knowledge are freely exchanged • The forum is exploited as a ‘work smarter’ opportunity to achieve continuous improvement • Decisions are implemented through effective promulgation and follow through, and; • Quality corporate governance practices are maintained.

We noted all meetings were not for practice management reasons; some for social purposes were conducted on an informal basis for business/relationship or development purposes.

Generally, content was less structured, albeit well planned beforehand, and the general atmosphere was casual, affording staff the opportunity to speak freely about morale improvement.

We asked meeting groups the following questions, based on general principles of effective meetings: • Do meetings have a pre-circulated

Agenda? – a meeting ‘purpose’, including target outcomes that may be defined in some cases but merely as a guideline while not stifling open discussion • Is a chairperson or leader appointed? – a

‘controller’ to focus attendees’ minds on agenda items, encourages open debate where applicable, assigns appropriate actions to individuals, and ‘watches the clock’ so items are not deferred or left undecided • Are desired outcomes or decision options understood? – where applicable, this ensures participants are aware a decision is required and

that a consensus or majority opinion clearly confirms any decisions • Are meetings properly ‘time planned’ and ‘time managed’? – has adequate time been allocated to do justice to each topic and that the chairperson or leader can ensure each item has been afforded reasonable time for a meaningful outcome • What happens to ‘unfinished’ agenda items? – denotes items that are to be carried forward to the next meeting • Is relevant pre-reading circulated? – where an item warrants it, pre-reading affords attendees an opportunity to prepare and contribute more meaningfully, also evidencing thoroughness of the meeting coordinator • Are periodical self-assessment ‘meeting evaluations’ conducted? – a means by which teams strive to improve meeting quality and outcomes • Are minutes (including resolutions) and action items documented and distributed? – provides continuity and implementation of resolutions when minutes are tabled at subsequent meetings. An ongoing action items record also ensures agreed actions are enacted according to plan/time/ responsibility or diarised for follow up.

Staff, clinicians and principals have found the exercise highly beneficial, injecting meaningful structure and achievementoriented content into meetings, without introducing excessive bureaucracy.

While meetings are a useful form of communication, decision making and planning, the other extreme is too many meetings – meetings for the sake of meetings. A decision that could be made relatively easily by circulated email might only require a meeting if parties cannot reach agreement on a proposal. n

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: KAREN CROUCH is Managing Director of Health Practice Creations Group, a company that assists with practice set ups, administrative, legal and financial management of practices. Email kcrouch@ hpcnsw.com.au or visit hpcgroup.com.au.