The Ever Elusive Great Meeting

Life is what occurs between meetings. Most of us have days filled with meetings. I had a wise boss once who advised me nothing important happens in meetings - the important stuff happens in the pre meeting and the post meeting. Problem was I already had my day filled with the generic meetings.

Meetings used to be easy to identify because they took place in meeting rooms. Many still do, but often they also take place in the coffee shop, car, den, airport, airplane, and hotel. So if everyone is spending their day in meetings, then obviously we are all highly productive, right? Probably not - because the vast majority of meetings, in my opinion, are a waste of time.

It’s not just my opinion. Meetings are an easy target to poke fun at - comic strips, sit-coms, even commercials. A punchline involving a pointless meeting is an easy laugh without much risk of offending anyone. So let’s do something about it. Here’s a great New Year’s resolution suggestion: boost meeting productivity. Here are some best practices:

Level 1: Basic

1. All meetings must have a stated purpose or agenda. This is a tough one for recurring meetings.
2. Any action items or next steps get clearly identified, assigned, and tracked. Too often great ideas never make it out of the meeting.
3. The meeting should have an end time. Ideally, and never book meetings for a full hour. No rambling, and no off-topic conversations - that’s what water coolers (virtual or real) are for.
4. Start on time. I prefer the carrot instead of the stick. On a summer day, hand out ice cream sandwiches to everyone on time. Throw away the rest.

Those are easy, yet often ignored, guidelines. Especially the end times. Most calendar software defaults to 30 or 60 minutes - thus each block gets filled with no travel time or coffee refills/unfills. I have an option set on my calendar that changes the default end times to :20 or :50. It’s a nice option.

Want to go advanced?

Apple-ish Practices:

1. DRI: Every project or task has a Directly Responsible Individual. Eliminate confusion about who needs to do what by clearly putting a name next to each item on the agenda.
2. Invite and participate in debate and criticism. Jobs was famous for his criticism of ideas.

Google-ish Practices:

1. Positive energy: “Yes, and...” not “No, but...”
2. No more than 10 people in an interactive meeting.
3. Decide, then meet. Don’t put off important decisions while waiting for a meeting.

A personal rule is to give the meeting your full attention. We all have this insatiable desire to multi-task, even though we know we are not good at it. The laptop, desktop, phone, and tablet makes beg for attention with sounds and icons - stop checking email, Facebook, Twitter, and other things. Project the respect you expect.

What are your ideas? 

5 Responses to "The Ever Elusive Great Meeting" - Add Yours

Scott Wharton 12/13/2012 12:05:26 PM

If someone is multitasking and not paying attention to the meeting, they should not attend the meeting. People say they are "paying attention" but we all know that they are really reading their emails, lurking on Facebook etc.

Art Rosenberg 12/16/2012 10:07:47 AM

Obviously, you are talking about physical, "face-to-face" meetings which are being displaced by "virtual" online meetings and conferencing. However, the rules should cover all forms of real-time meetings, which can combine a variety of forms of participation, i.e., physical, online, voice and video conferencing.

Many years ago, I wrote about the need for participants to be prepared for any real-time meeting by getting an agenda and all necessary information relevant to the discussion. Until that information has been reviewed by the invited participants, you can't really finalize the meeting schedule.

It will also be necessary to find out how the invitees want to participate, instead of simply assuming they will attend physically. That kind of flexibility will facilitate setting a schedule and maximizing participation and preparedness.

I think it is also up the meeting organizer to take responsibility for what the individual attendees can or cannot do during a meeting - some people may have a particular interest in only certain issues, and will be multi-tasking when other subjects are discussed. As you point out, with mobile smartphones and tablets, multi-tasking distractions are inevitable, so participants should be able to control the notifications they get through presence/availability screening options (which I have labeled) "Unified Notification Management" to cover all types of incoming contacts (messages, calls, IMs, social posts, etc.).

The "virtual" meeting organizer should also be responsible for which participants have to be "on camera" or not for video conferencing, e.g., for a job interview, video presentations, etc..

dave michels 12/18/2012 8:59:45 PM

Art,
Most of those ideas will apply equally to online meetings.

I don't agree with you that organizers should set rules on what attendees can or can't do. I think that crosses the line. For example, starting on time means that we don't wait for you. We understand that perhaps you had a legitimate excuse for being late, but we don't particularly care. In other words, we treat you as an adult. Once you start saying no Facebook, then we acting like parents. I don't want to be parents to anyone buy my own kids.

dave michels 12/18/2012 9:01:24 PM

Scott,
It's a trap! I get bored in meetings so decide to check something online (being efficient). But once I am online, I get caught up in stuff and the meeting progressed to something important. More and more, I am just saying no to distractions. That's the only way, even during lulls.

Art Rosenberg 12/19/2012 12:54:11 AM

Dave,

Since we now can participate in meetings virtually and with a choice of real-time modes (voice, video on/off camera, the meeting organizers should let participants know what will be important for participation. I know that some experts feel that video conferencing should exploit on-camera participation to see body language and facial expressions, while video information will be very key to presentations regardless of being on or off camera.

I agree with your concern about distractions, especially as automated notifications for everything that happens will be overloading recipients and thus need to be managed by the recipients (screened) to minimize distractions when busy.

Note that I would not depend on the contact initiators (people, apps) to find out the recipient's status before sending a message, initiating a call, or attempting an IM, but would enable the recipients to control their "Do Not Disturb" situations selectively and simply as to who and what can even distract them in any way. That would certainly treat meeting participants as responsible adults, as you suggest!