The 3 biggest mistakes accountants make with internal meetings

Is your firm acing its internal meetings, or are you falling foul of common meeting mistakes? To find out, let’s look at the three biggest mistakes accounting firms make (plus, how to fix them).

 Mistake #1: Not having enough meetings

The warning signs: 

• When you do have meetings, you find you’re trying to cover too many items at one time.
• Your firm’s meetings often overrun and end in a hurry, without a clear resolution or decision.
• Meetings get hijacked by urgent issues, while other important issues never get discussed.

These problems are all caused by not having enough meetings. It’s an easy trap to fall into – after all, you and your team are busy, so you’d prefer to spend less time in meetings. But it’s a false saving, as the meetings that you do have suffer from overwhelm. This, in turn, breeds frustration, lack of engagement, and the suspicion that all meetings are a waste of time. The truth is meetings aren’t a waste of time. Bad meetings are a waste of time.

 The solutions: 

• Stop having bad meetings and start having more good ones! 
• Implement structured weekly team and leadership meetings. (More on structure coming up.) All strategy execution frameworks – such as Management by Objectives and Balanced Scorecard – advocate weekly leadership and department meetings because they keep everyone aligned and accountable.
• If you’re not doing them already, quarterly reviews and annual strategic planning sessions provide a welcome chance to step back, assess progress and plan for the future. 

 Mistake #2: Not having a structure to meetings

The warning signs: 

• Meetings either have no agenda, or the agenda soon goes out the window.
• You fail to achieve what you set out to do in the meeting.
• Some people dominate the conversation, while others don’t participate at all.
• People turn up unprepared.
• People leave the meeting unclear on what happens next.
• Action items get forgotten after the meeting.

If you experience these problems, your meetings are crying out for more structure. Lack of structure leads to uncertainty and frustration – both of which are bad for productivity and engagement. The good news is, injecting more structure into your meetings is an easy fix.

The solutions: 

• As a team, agree a list of simple ground rules that set out exactly what should happen before, during and after every meeting.
• Create an agenda for every meeting. There are many approaches and templates you can follow; for example, Gino Wickman’s book Traction sets out a structured agenda designed to promote productivity and effectiveness.
• Ensure the host and participants prepare properly for meetings, according to the items on the agenda.
• Score your meetings (more on this coming up next).
• Agree clear action items to be followed up after each meeting. 

 Mistake #3: Not having good meeting data

The warning signs: 

• You have no idea which meetings are effective and which aren’t.
• There is little or no accountability for meeting performance and completing agreed to-do items.
• People struggle to connect their work to the firm’s strategy.

For all the data accountants work with on a daily basis, there’s often a lack of meeting data. It’s a ‘catch 22’ situation, really – firm’s don’t bother with meeting data because they don’t recognise the importance of meetings, yet without that data it’s hard to recognise the importance of meetings.

 The solutions: 

• Scoring your meetings is a great start. At the end of each meeting, ask each participant to give the meeting a score from 1–10, based on whether you all stuck to the agenda, achieved what you set out to do, agreed clear actions, and so on.
• Include meeting scores as part of your firm’s KPIs to boost accountability. You could also include meeting effectiveness and delivering on meeting follow-ups (to-do items/actions) as part of personal appraisals. 
• Use data in your weekly team meetings to demonstrate value and connect people’s work to the firm’s overall strategy and performance. This links back to being properly prepared for meetings. 

 Meetings are important. Make yours count

Designed for accounting firms, Agendali’s meeting management software provides template agendas to add structure to your meetings, and performance metrics to help you track meeting data. Sign up today.