10 steps to effective meetings, or may be just say NO to meetings.

Did you know ?

Do you know there are more than 10 million meetings being held every business day

No ? OK, lets get started

Meetings, a fancy word in the corporate that everyone come across a lot many times (For some it can be a very effective excuse to avoid other things though :-P)

Meetings are an integral part of any process-oriented organization.

It makes sense to meet every while to get the status updates, near future plans, project deadlines, company future projection etc.

With Work from Home situation number of meetings per day is definitely more and it makes sense as well. However an ineffective meeting is a huge productivity loss.

Lets browse few points which are very common but still effective to get productive outcome from the meetings.

Meetings? Or time eaters

When you call for a meeting, you get your team out of their working momentum.

The meeting is scheduled for say 1 hour but actually it is 10–12 hour trade off for something that we mostly spend on discussing causal things.

10 people * 1 hour = 10 hours

+ 2–3 hours to get them back to the momentum

So meetings are simple time eaters of productive hours if not organized well.

Planned vs out of focus discussion

Most of the time we plan a meeting as soon as we feel to meet because it looks fancy to be a part of meeting. And we end up sending invites without planning attendees and the clear agenda communication.

If some of the meeting attendees do not do their homework and this leads to discussions which should be clarified before meeting.

This leads to out of scope discussions and elongated meetings. Sometimes meetings procreate more meetings as well.

What should you do?

Meetings are like toxic if not planned properly.

First and most effective is

Avoid meetings until unavoidable ;-)

Simulate it as hitting the gym,

You find reasons to avoid going to the gym. But once you realize that you are out of shape you forcefully go with all the diet plan and schedule.

Treat meetings the same as above.

Invite fewest possible

Invite only those who can have positive impact on the quality of discussion. It not only adds quality but also saves a lot of time for other indirect attendees.

Educate everyone about it

Send clear meeting invites with start, end time and duration so that everyone can make their mind and plan their day accordingly. Send reminders so that everyone keeps up with agenda and time.

Clear agenda to the attendees

Mention the agenda clearly and if possible assign the kind of homework you want each attendee to come prepared with.

Welcome with a specific problem

The meeting organizer should welcome them all on time (without wasting a single minute).

Meeting should start with a brief introduction about the purpose of this meeting.

It should be very transparent about the past happenings or future projections to everyone.

Fixed duration meetings

The duration you mentioned in the invitation mail should be like a promise.

Like we get out of gym as soon as we hit the clock ;-) remember?

Hit the stopwatch as soon as it interrupts you with a noise, call it the end of the meeting.

Meet on site of crime (if possible)

Most of the times we meet at conference rooms. This is good practice to get aside from the workplace to avoid disturbing others. However, meeting at the place of the reason behind the meeting brings a lot of clarity. You can make signs to the real things and can have a look at something important present there and then.

It saves you a lot of time and the promises to get back on something later.

Minutes of meeting

Make someone accountable to make a not of meeting highlights. This can be very helpful for those who are not direct stakeholders of that meeting.

Also, these MOMs can be referenced later to remember what we discussed in the meeting ( say 3 months ago ).

Make someone Accountable for plan

We meet to induce something out of meetings. Some action plan, some investigation to be done, etc. Most of the times, the plan remains untouched. It is advised to make someone accountable to come back with the results in a stipulated time.

No meetings Thursdays

You can also decide not to do any meetings on Thursdays. (Not compulsorily Thursday, you can plan as per your convenience)

This will save you about say

10 meetings for 10 departments

Each meeting on average is around 1 hour

And each meeting have average 10 attendees.

So 10 meetings * 1 hour * (10) people

Is 100 productive hours in which you can complete around 10 user stories.

I found one more article which is really nice, which is worth a read. Covers topics like No meetings day vs batching, How many meetings are enough for the day,

Other Knicks-knacks

• Keep your phone silent
• Always be on time
• Come prepared with homework
• Work on the outcome of the meeting
• Avoid snacks and talks about the movie you watched at the weekend or your new jumpsuit.

One most important one is -

• Keep smiling and be pro(a/du)ctive.
• I will keep sharing my experiences with you in return

I want you all to share it in your network and subscribe to "One step closer" newsletter.

Looking forward to feedback and suggestions. Have a good day!