Conducting Productive Meetings

Having been in #meetings where a colleague and I had completely different views of its effectiveness, I thought I might put in writing some of the things that I believe are required for conducting an effective meeting. Different companies have different styles but I think many of these are required no matter the people and culture.

Every meeting needs an owner

In a general sense every meeting is a committee. It might be a small committee where one person holds the power in the case of an employee and their boss. It might be a large committee with people spread across time zones having a meeting via conference call. No matter the size or the topic of discussion there needs to be an owner for the meeting who leads the discussion, makes sure it does not veer too far from the agenda, and who ultimately is responsible for the decision that is made.

When there is no clearly defined owner for the meeting everything about it is at risk of getting derailed. The meeting might devolve into a power struggle or end with nothing being accomplished.

The owner, or ideally someone they delegate it to in larger meetings, also has the responsibility of taking notes and providing a summary, or full minutes, after the fact. This should be done as soon as possible after the meeting ends so that the conversation is still fresh in people's minds. These notes might be referred to in the coming months as any decisions are implemented so it is important that everyone is in agreement about what was said and what those decisions were.

Agreement on terms used

People will end up talking over and past each other if they are not in agreement about what words mean. A meeting about marketing will be derailed if people think that marketing means sales or that the two are interchangeable. Leads and opportunities are another common one in that vein that I have seen cause issues with people trying to understand each other.

Literally defining terms might be a bit much to open a meeting with but can be included creatively in the agenda when it is sent out.

Agreement on problem the meeting is addressing

This builds on the previous point about terms used. There have been many times where I have been in a meeting that ended up being about something completely different than what I thought it was about. We might be talking about the same division of the company but one person thought we were talking about training, another one business development, and another one product.

Always include in the calendar invite for the meeting a detailed agenda to make sure that everyone enters the meeting on the same page.

Everybody gets a seat at the table

There are many reasons to make sure that everybody has a chance to voice their thoughts in a meeting. First of all if someone has taken the time out of their day for the meeting--they surely have other things they would rather be doing--then out of respect they need to be allowed to give their point of view.

Secondly, some people might be less inclined to chime in depending on their personality or their familiarity with the rest of the people in the meeting. This is often seen when someone from a peripheral department is included in a meeting. Their outside perspective can be invaluable.

Another reason why everybody should have a voice in the meeting (even having the meeting owner making sure to call on everyone in the meeting) is buy in. Meetings are where decisions are made and the days, weeks, and months following the meeting is when the actual work implementing those decisions is done. When people feel like they did not have a voice in the decision that was made they are less likely to support it. They might even go as far as to try and sabotage it. By giving everyone a seat at the table and a chance to share in the ownership of the decision they are going to be more vested in its success.

Respectful disagreement

I have read (possibly in Principles) that one should avoid hedging their statements using terms such as "I believe" or "in my opinion" as when you use those terms you are not interjecting facts into a discussion but conjecture. In other words it lowers the bar for the conversation and provides a voice to those that did not prepare at the expense of those that did. The people who did their homework should be given more weight.

However, I was recently listening to Startups For the Rest of Us and they made the point that as one grows older they tend to stop speaking in absolutes as one learns that few things in this world are truly black and white. Most business decisions (and things in life) live in the gray area between the two absolutes.

In the real world unfortunately the more informed people in the meeting might have done their homework in vain as their facts are drowned out by the people with louder opinions. What really should happen is that every disagreement needs to be carefully voiced with what you are disagreeing with and why.

Debate style note-taking should be taught for all meetings. This is a format where you split your paper into two or more columns (one for each person in the meeting). When the first person speaks you record their points vertically in their column. Each point gets its own row. For each point the second person comments on, you record their comments in the same row. If they bring up a new point then that would get added as a new row with the text in the second column but no text in the first column as the first person has not had a chance to respond to it yet.

Using this style of note taking allows you to easily see where there was agreement or disagreement. You will also be able to easily see where each point was left off which is particularly helpful if you are the one responsible for the meeting minutes.

Send out materials prior to the meeting

The best way for someone who is likely to be drowned out or overruled in a meeting (often the junior members in the group or even the ones that are better listeners) is to send out the facts beforehand. By clearly putting in writing what you hope to achieve in the meeting and why you believe your outcome should be taken and then sending that to the rest of the participants gives you a bit of an advantage when the meeting starts. (Note that I have been in many meetings where that document is summarily disregarded but it does force the decision maker to acknowledge it.)