10 questions you should ask to upgrade your next meeting

“People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.” (Thomas Sowell)

There’s no shortage of cynical, humorous, and data backed quotes poking fun at the most common organizational ritual of all—the meeting.

I did a little loose math and I’m probably sitting on 10,000(ish) hours of meetings across my entire career. So. Many. Meetings.

But, I’ve been in some really well facilitated meetings here at SAS. Our deputy superintendent is highly skilled in this area and I’ve learned a lot while attending her meetings. So this week, I figured I’d take that learning and share a list of questions I’ve seen used to help you upgrade the next meeting you’re voluntold to attend.

Could this have been an email?

One of my favorite ways to upgrade a meeting is to not have it at all. Sometimes the most effective meeting is the one that never happened.

If you’re sitting in 20-30 hours of meetings each week and this question gets you out of 10%-20% of those meetings, you’ve just got back 2-3 hours which goes a long way to helping you avoid working late.?

Wondering how to determine if the meeting could be an email? Check out this little flow chart from Doist.

Why are we here?

If people show up not knowing why they’re there, you’re already off to a bad start.

Send the agenda ahead of time.?

Send the pre-reads ahead of time.

You want people showing up with well thought out ideas, solutions, and questions instead of doing things on the fly.

What are our ground rules?

Ground rules, working agreements, norms—whatever you want to call them, you need them.?

It’s not enough to assume everyone in the room is a professional. You need to establish a common understanding about how folks will interact with and show respect to one another.?

Figure out the role of technology. Are laptops open? Should people be on phones? Who facilitates the discussions and what does that look like??Two or three ground rules ensure everyone is on the same page.

Whose voice is missing?

You’ve seen the agenda, read the pre-read, and now you’re ready for a discussion and decision. Look around the room—whose voice is missing? This might be someone who needs to physically be in the room or it could be as simple as data captured beforehand to ensure voices are represented during the discussion.

Find the missing voices now or those voices will definitely find you later when it might be too late ??

Are we solving the right problem?

Several weeks ago, I was sitting in a content meeting talking about our magazine when it became clear we needed to address the larger issue of our overall content strategy instead of just the magazine. We decided to make no decision regarding the magazine and turned our attention toward the right conversation.?

Beware of the bias toward action. High performing organizations are especially prone to fall into the trap of acting before assessing because movement feels good—even when we’re moving in the wrong direction.

This is a question I’m tying to ask more both professionally and personally. It adds more time to the process at the front but the quality of the solutions on the other end is much higher.

*we covered this question several weeks ago on its own—check it out!

What would our worst critics say about this?

Even if you’ve run a thoughtful process, held a productive meeting, had all the voices in the room, and done everything you possibly can, someone is going to be upset.?

They’re always out there.

And they are a voice that doesn’t always get invited to these meetings which means you have to seek them out and actively make space for that voice.?

When you know how you’ll be picked apart, you can prepare for it.

I look at this like a good football coach. The other team is going to actively try and dismantle you. You need to study their approach and how they intend to attack you. Then you can determine how to respond. The last thing you want is to have someone catch you in the hallway one day and rip you apart for a decision while you stand there thinking, “shoot, this is a good counterpoint, how’d we miss this?”

Trust me.?

Who needs to do what by when?

THIS QUESTION! Ask it!

How many times have you left a meeting wondering, “what’s next?”

This question should be the cleanup hitter at the end of the meeting or as you finish different agenda items.

When this question gets answered, things get done.

What’s the true cost?

We spend a lot of time on budgets as we try to optimize every dollar coming in. We have an entire department dedicated to ensuring we are financially responsible. We can present a detailed report that outlines where every single dollar went. I’m not worried about you understanding the financial impact of a decision.?

But who’s in the meeting pushing for what’s under the price tags. Beyond the money, what else will this decision cost us?

In fact, who’s actually adding up the cost of the meeting itself in terms of money, time, energy, and culture?

Everything costs more than what the price tag says it will.

That’s not a bad thing unless you’re unaware. Uncover the costs so you can make better decisions.

*we covered this question several years ago, check it out!

How could we test this first?

We are in the middle of our $400 million campus upgrade project called ‘SAS Reimagined.’ I toured the elementary school construction site earlier this week and I just kept saying, “whoa!” every time we stopped somewhere. It’s unreal.?

But we didn’t just decide to build a new campus.

Each week, we hold learning walks and when it’s my turn to lead I love showing people how we spent years building up to the big project. We have remodeled dozens of rooms across campus which has in turn allowed us to collect data, make adjustments, and fine tune things before making the major investment.

When people start throwing around big ideas in your next meeting, step back for a minute and see how you could first run a small experiment to gather some quick data.

What does success look like?

Success is such a dangerous word. The trouble is that we often don’t agree on what it means.?

In education, some people see success as standardized test scores while others are focused entirely on elite college acceptances. And there are others who are more interested in seeing kids develop a love for learning paired with an understanding of “how” they learn best.?

The next time you’re in a meeting discussing a topic, make sure you’re all looking at success through the same lens or you’ll eventually reach a place where you both succeeded and failed.

What’d I miss? Is there a question you like to ask when you’re in a meeting to help keep things productive?

Leave a comment or shoot me a message.

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