productive meetings A storybook by SeriouslyCreative
 to help you make meetings productive, engaging and a launchpad for great actions.
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 decision, 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 Avg. 5.6 hours a week 69% “not productive” 25% “irrelevant stuff” 90% “daydream” 11 Million Meetings a Day 3 Billion a Year In10 years - this could be 2240 hours of your life source: Microsoft survey
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 decisions 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 areas to improve:
Prep Your Meeting
Run Your Meeting
Enhance & Make it Stick
Prep Your Meeting
A good, nay - great, meeting doesn’t happen in the meeting. It happens before the meeting. Prepare your meeting with care and you’ll get the meeting you want.
example: “Align team around 1stQ Goals.” “Solve operational issues in production”
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.
What is the purpose?
Decide
Create
Align
(update)
make decisions
ideas, plans
actions
really?
Info Needed, Criteria to Decide, Process of Decision
Questions, Stimulus, Data, Consumer, Business Need/s
Information to Share, Framework, Goals, Objectives, Resources, Action Capture
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 2-3 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.
Could it be all questions? ie. What is needed next to improve key account retention?
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. Could 1 hour become 50 mins or could 30 be done in 20? Make sure most important issues are addressed first. Also, break big issues into smaller manageable bites. Remember to Have people take mental breaks. Divergent meetings: AM (create) Convergent meetings: PM (align/decide)
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 dismissing people from 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 decisions. So mix it up. Also, honest groups are bolder.
recommended: brainstorming: 18 persons alignment / decisions: 8 (pizza rule)
How much time before we loose them?
ATTENTION: 18 MINS. ENGAGEMENT: 40 MINS.
RunYour Meeting Let’s be honest, some meetings 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. Some organizations give fines for each minute you came in late for, or have assigned seating for late participants.
About Tech And absolutely no tolerance for taking calls or checking emails. All phones on the table and laptops closed (do the stretch!) ;-) 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.
Roles: Facilitator 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.
Have people participate to make the group rules. • one microphone • meeting values technology • parking lot
Roles: Recorder and Time Keeper 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. Also, make sure someone keeps track of time per issue and moves the agenda forward.
Roles: A Guest Insider A neat role could be a guest insider, that is someone who shares knowledge about particular issues or briefs the crowd. Also could do Q&A. This person, does not necessarily have to stay in the meeting, could be in and out 10-15 minutes.
some tips and platforms could help with running your meeting ‣ ‣ ‣ ‣ ‣
scheduling outsiders: doodle.com commitments from participants: index card: I need /I Will take picture post its: PostIt Plus app brainstorm: padlet.com or stormboard.com digital project management: evernote, trello, basecamp, blimp or slack ‣ analog project management: scrum, Kanban boards, war rooms or project walls. ‣ live survey, trivia, engagement: polleverywhere.com or yammer.com
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.
Intros, Energy & Breaks •visual story cards (good for intros and storytelling) •trivia (good to warm up or review learnings from a session) •charades/heads up (build energy/spontaneity/non-verbal communication) •minute to win it (energy + strategy) •hot potato (turns to talk) •puzzles (warm up and collaboration) •perfection (stress release)
Different type of Prework / Create
Provoking/ Divergent Thinking • show and tell: what you found mindblowing or “bring examples of convenience” • video/ted pre-work • interview assignments
Align Mindset/ Visualize to Create
Gallery of Information •post all data on walls •10 min walk through (or through breaks, breakfast) •add questions you want answered and have people react or give feedback
Get feedback / analog survey
Expectations & Clarity •What do you need from this meeting? ‣15 seconds ‣Post up
Assess Where We Are/Progress
Stop, Start & Continue Have participants work in groups and analyze the issue: 1.What should we STOP doing because it is not helping us move forward? 2.What do we know we should START doing? 3.What are those things we should CONTINUE to do or amplify, since we know they do help?
Ideate / Diverge
Post Up for Idea + Feedback 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.
Be aware of when to diverge or converge
UP All and any idea Think outside the box DIVERGENT
…then…
DOWN make choices, use judgement CONVERGENT
Prioritize + Decide
Making decisions 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.
Prioritize + Decide •index cards/ prioritize •dotmocracy
Other techniques
Prioritize + Decide
• • • • •
Adopt and Discuss (index cards) Priority Ladder (APPLAUSE) Rating Poker Dotmocracy (vote for ideas) Creative Tensions (where do you stand on this issue?)
Feedback tool
Prioritize + Decide
I like I love I worry
Metaphors for Understanding 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.
Making it Concrete & Ideate around personas How about getting people to act out in improv how some interaction isn’t working? Creating prototypes of new products, systems or services? Turn conversations into drawings, show me what done looks like. Also, create personas for your brainstorming.
Timebox Presentations 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.
Space recommendations
If you want to think outside the box, don’t put your brain in a box.
CreateYour RunYour Meeting Meeting 1. PURPOSE 2. AGENDA/TIME 3. PEOPLE 4. PLACE
1.RULES 2.FACILITATION 3.TRICKS AND TIPS
Enhanceit &Makeit Stick 1.MEETING CULTURE 2.EXERCISES AND TECHNIQUES
SeriouslyCreative[dot]com @SeriouslyCreative
We are an international innovation firm with over 10 years of experience design thinking.
What makes us different Our simple, dynamic and structured approach to problem solving facilitates collaboration pushing teams to find the bolder solutions they seek, faster.
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Be Radically Collaborative
Iterate Throughout Process
Suspend Judgement
Prototype to Learn
Show & Tell Stories
Bias Towards Action
Be Human Centric
skills and process
Our Why We believe in the power & willingness of people to work together, think beyond and create products and services that drive sustainable growth bringing value to the world.
areas we work in
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