Meetings that Matter
Making Meetings Productive, Engaging and Launch Pads for Great Ideas
Bad Meetings Suck.
We have all been there. In that meeting. The one that goes too long, does too little and is generally a waste of our precious time and energy. In the United States alone we hold about 3 billion formal meetings a year. And those that attend them feel that a whopping 71% of them are unproductive. But these meetings don’t have to suck. They can be better. They can help align us, be the critical moment of decission, a haven for the creation of new and powerful thinking and a support system of dynamic action that leads to profit, growth and corporate happiness. Yeah, we said it - “happiness.” So huddle up and we’ll show you how.
TRYING TO KEEP UP On average we spend 16 hours per week in meetings. That’s 800 hours per year and 37,440 hours in a life time. That’s 4 years of your life!
Don’t get us wrong. We’re not saying meetings are not important. In fact, in a more fast moving and complex world where better decissions need to be made faster meetings are even more important. And they are where we build the culture of a company face to face. This is where we build team trust like a group of soldiers who learn to depend on each other. So we have to get meetings right.
Three things to a better meeting.
CreateYour RunYour Meeting Meeting
Enhance Your Meeting
CreateYour Meeting
A good, nay great, meeting doesn’t happen in the meeting. It happens before the meeting. Prepare you meeting with care and you’ll get the meeting you want.
What is the purpose? “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” - Lewis Caroll Every meeting needs a purpose. You have to answer the question “why are we meeting?” - to decide something, to create options, to align people? Write it down in 5 words and share it with the team. If the purpose is clear then people know what is wanted of them.
Where is your agenda? 59% of all meetings have no agenda. (and it pisses people off) Your agenda doesn’t need to be a phone book of things. It just needs to outline what will be done and what is important so that people know what to bring to the meeting and how to prepare. Send it 3 days ahead of time in an email nothing too formal. If you really want it to be remembered, turn it into questions. Questions get people thinking.
Be conscious of time. 25% of all meetings are spent talking about irrelevant things. Do you really need the full hour or two to do what you need to do. Often a meeting doesn’t need to be more than 30 minutes. Think about how much time is wasted in a meeting and cut it out, cut it down and get people to the point. Also, don’t hold meetings right after lunch if you need people to decide things or create things. Those high energy, big debate meetings should be in the morning.
Who are the right people? There are two balancing forces when making your invite list - simple and diverse. Smaller teams of talented people do better work. Too many meetings are over populated with people who either don’t contribute or don’t need to be there. Steve Jobs was famous for ejecting people out of meetings. On the flip side, you want to make sure you have diversity in your meetings. By bringing in new points of view you get a better discussion and result in better decissions. So mix it up.
RunYour Meeting
Let’s be honest, some meeting get out of control. Running a meeting is an art and science. Left to their own devices people can loose focus, waste time and get, well - kind of childish. Meetings need to be run actively so they produce real results.
People need to respect the meeting. Meetings are not a break from the work. They are a part of the work. People can’t be walking in late or doing other things in the meeting. It pisses the rest of us off. JUST START. If your meeting is scheduled for 2pm then start exactly on time even if no one is there. When they walk in late don’t back up and catch them up. Yeah, they’ll have to get notes from someone after the meeting but after a few times of this people start showing up on time. And absolutely no tolerance for taking calls or checking emails. All phones on the table and laptops closed.
Play Phone Stack Everyone stacks their phones on the center of the table. If anyone answers their phone in the meeting they have to buy lunch for everyone else.
Meetings need parenting Someone needs to lead, regulate and engage people. We call it a facilitator. Their job is to start the meeting on time, keep people to the agenda, “parking lot” issues that can’t be dealt with in the meeting and cut off “ball hogs” - people who ramble on or try to dominate discussions. A great tool is to have a real ball. Rule is you can only talk if you have it. And remember, the most senior person doesn’t need to be the facilitator. Sometimes they need to be just another member of the group.
Record for Action Someone need to take notes. But don’t take minutes - those long list of everything. Just capture the top things to know and top actions agreed to. And make the actions “actionable” - add the what, when, how, who to it so everyone is clear what happens next. A great way to do this is to have a board in the hall with all of this written and for everyone to see. There are also great project management tools like getBlimp.com to help you track projects.
Enhance Your Meeting
Meetings are your Culture Meetings define what kind of company you are so you need to make they active, energetic and more productive if that is the kind of company you want to be. The “we are so serious� approach kills the productivity of meetings. Everyone spends so much time trying to show how smart they are they never get things done. There are better ways based on games that can help. Read on.
Merry go Round Need to get your people to speak up and to the point? Want opinion from everyone? Need them to say what they need or expect from the meeting? Give everyone 30ss, 60ss or 2 min. Go around in a circle. People need to respond right away. Eg. What do you need from this meeting? 30 seconds starting with Jorge. Go!
Information Gallery With so much data presented in a meeting people tend to loose track. Or you waste the whole meeting presenting data that was intended to provoke a conversation. Why not post the information spreadsheets, charts, reports, etc - on a wall and have everyone review at the beginning or before the meeting. You can get people to write post-it note feedback/ questions on the gallery wall as a way to see what needs to be talked about.
Post-Up Everyone wants to give their opinion or talk about their idea. And it takes up time. Have everyone write their questions, feedback or ideas on post-it notes - one comment per note. Post them on a wall or table and then organize them into theme based buckets. From here it is easy to see what the group is talking about and kick off the discussion.
We at SeriouslyCreative use this same technique to get feeback at big meetings company wide events, conventions, etc. Give everyone post-it notes at the beginning of the event. Tell them to please write any feedback based on what you present. One comment per post-it note. At breaks or at the end have walls or boards with the themes of what you spoke about and have people post comments based on the themes (ie. marketing, sales, finance, etc)
Prioritize + Decide Making decissions or prioritizing action can dominate many meetings. But in the debate we can often loose the comparisons and purpose. Making it visual and into a game helps. Use 2 x 2 matrix to move around post-it notes or use a “ladder� where post-it notes are moved up or down on a board based upon how people in the group see there priority. Games make people see the big picture and collaborate.
Use Metaphors It’s hard to deal with complex issues. But by imagining your issue as as something physical a tree for our opportunities, a ship as our organization, a farm as the market - we can better understand all the moving parts of what we want to discuss. For example, have a team draw your organization as a ship. Use the metaphor as a way to discuss what is working, what is not. This gets people to talk about serious issues by disguising it in play.
Acting for Understanding How about getting people to act out in improv how some interaction isn’t working? We had a group of service providers act out a consumer experience along with all the actions it takes to provide them with what it needs. By acting it out people were able to see the obvious reasons things were not working.
The Extreme Situation Sometimes people need to get outside of their current comfort zone and see things from a new perspective. How about asking people to explain how they would address the situation if the worst case scenario happened like “the project has failed? Now tell me what went wrong, what didn’t we do?” By going beyond the current situation people open up and get more daring.
Get Rid of the Table Once there is a table between people they tend to set up a laptop and the barrier between people becomes psychological. Get rid of the table. Make people sit in a circle facing each other. This simple change makes people get to the point a be less political and more honest. Not to mention that without the table it is a lot harder to check your laptop.
Visual Permanence A great way to support meetings is to have a wall that has all the actions and projects people are working on. By having these things post up and physically there it makes it a lot easier for people to remember everything that is going on, make the connections between things and have better conversations with less orientation time.
15 minute stand up One of the best things you can do to substitute that weekly update meeting that sucks up all your time. Have a meeting at the exact same time every day. It lasts for exactly 15 minutes - no more! Everyone reports on what they did yesterday, what they are doing today and what they need from anyone. Anyone who shows up late gets fined. Nothing like speed to build urgency and teamwork. And the best thing is that everyone is up to date every morning.
Timebox Nothing makes you want to jump out the window like someone droning on for 45 minutes with 70 Powerpoint slide and no end in sight. Make people get the point and leave time for discussion and debate by putting limits. Could you impose a “5 slides only� rule? How about Ignite Rules - you have 15 slides only that are timed to change every 15 seconds? Or the PechaKucha rules of 20 slides by 20 second per slide?
Get out of the office Get up, stand up and get out of the regular meeting space. Shake things up with a new location. Could you go to Starbuck’s? How about someone’s house? Or you could make it physical and go paddle boarding. Steve Jobs was famous for having meeting by going for a group walk. By getting out of your regular place the brain fires back up and people start thinking different things.
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