Beating the Meeting Mentality

I thought I’d follow up my revised email article which 277 read, 52 people liked and just under 7 billion people remain unaware of, so I can discuss another bugbear of modern corporate life. Meetings.

Email is brilliant. Meetings are brilliant. Yes they are. Provided they are focused, selective, appropriate and achieve something. If not they are just a time thief.

So first of all let’s take the view you want to have a meeting, or have been asked to chair one.

Question 1 for you is what is the purpose of the meeting? If you cannot write down the purpose of the meeting then it isn’t a meeting it is a chat. Save it for the water cooler. Pick up the phone. Have a chat.

Question 2 what is the desired outcome? Please note the word desired. If you have already decided what the outcome is then why call a meeting? Just go ahead and tell people what you are doing and get on with it. Just make sure that you have got things right, or else you may be riding roughshod over some very clever people, and end up looking very stupid.

Okay so you’ve decided your desired outcome.

Question 3 what or who is going to help me, what may get in the way, who do I need to consult with, and who are the decision makers?

Now you can start to draft an agenda. If you don’t set agendas for your meetings then you should start now. Why? Because if you do not write an agenda one of the other smarter delegates will, and use your meeting for their purposes rather than yours. The meeting should also have timescales so it runs to time.

Question 4 the agenda. Once you have done all this then you can actually decide who should be at the meeting. 

How about some meeting rules?   No waffling, no emailing, and if a delegate says nothing then they agree with what may be said.

Question 5 who is coming to the meeting? Invite people who actually are affected or represent those affected by the outcome, those who know more than you on relevant topics, and who may actually take actions from the meeting.

If a crucial delegate cannot attend then try to be flexible with the date of the meeting. If there are still problems then ensure they send a substitute who can act on their behalf.

Don’t invite people who are there because they like you, and will therefore hopefully nod their head. Avoid people who turn up at meetings but never take any action points, and those who like to be in the loop but have little interest beside the beverages and cakes.

Finally ALWAYS circulate the agenda before the meeting, include Any Other Business and ask for anyone to suggest amendments or additions to the agenda. Insist items are submitted well in advance of the meeting. The same applies to advance papers.

If your meeting isn’t important enough to go through the above don’t hold the meeting.

If you are invited to a meeting that doesn’t have an agenda, ask for one. If you don’t get an agenda then maybe you shouldn’t bother going.

If you are in a meeting and there is little chance you will have any input or action points don’t go. Don’t be afraid to say this half way through an expensive meeting either.  If you can spend 2 hours more fruitfully in another place then why be at the meeting?

I appreciate all the above will be more recognisable for large organisations. The best way for a small organisation to become a big organisation is for it to emulate good practice in large organisations.

The best way for large organisations to become small organisations is for them to forget how valuable people’s time is.

A special mention for Mike Bennett of one2onetracker who was my business mentor at Cunningham Lindsey UK and helped create the ruthless monster of pragmatism which I have become.