Effective Meeting Management

The success of the project management team is directly linked to the knowledge, skills, and abilities of its project manager. A key component to this success is the project manager’s ability to facilitate diverse groups towards discovery or consensus decision making through effective meeting management.

The meeting on its own merit can occur without the presence of effective meeting management. We have all at one point or another sat in on a meeting that lacked effectiveness. Subconsciously we recognize when we’re in their presence. We learn what we wouldn’t do if tasked to facilitate. However, this type of learning does not teach us what we should do when actually facilitate a meeting.

Project managers must possess this critical management skill in order to train their project teams in the effective conduct of meeting planning, management, control, and closure.

What Are Meetings?

If you polled a group of professionals and asked them to define meetings, you would probably gather a pretty broad spectrum of responses.

The one I have heard the most throughout my career, whether entering or leaving meetings, is that they are a complete waste of time. When this belief permeates an organization, stagnation sets in and growth is impacted. Because meetings are absolutely essential to effective management.

Depending on the complexity of the project and the experience and organizational roles of the meetings participants, millions of dollars in human capital can be found sitting captive waiting for something significant to happen.  Nothing kills morale or erodes belief in your abilities as a project manager faster than ineffective meetings.

The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) 5TH Edition, identifies meetings and meeting management as key tools and techniques for 17 of the 47 PMBOK processes.  The 17 processes encompass the development of each knowledge area plan as well as the control processes of the Integration, Communications, Risk, and Stakeholder Management knowledge areas.

Meetings and meeting management also appear as key tools and techniques of the Direct and Manage Project Work, Close Project or Phase, and Identify Stakeholders Processes.

An efficient and effective project manager understands that the PMBOK defines good practices for meeting planning, coordination, management, and follow-up

The foundation of meeting success is identifying the purpose of the meeting.  According to the PMBOK there are three types of meetings; decision making, information exchange, and brainstorming, and they should never be mixed in one setting.

When effectively managed, meetings flow through their progression towards a conclusion that seeks to solve outstanding issues, address pending issues through the formation of action items with specific owners, and end with a recap of the meeting and the distribution of the meeting content within the meeting minutes.

The preferred meeting method for meetings is face-to-face.  This meeting mode is extremely effective when discussing extremely important facts and issues.

The global economy has extended the foot print of many of today’s corporations thus leading to the proliferation of technology driven virtual meeting solutions.  This meeting mode requires more coordination and planning to yield results similar to face-to-face meetings.

Overall effective meeting management can be accomplished when the project manager understands and is capable of effectively executing the following steps:

1. Properly prepare for the meeting
2. Select an appropriate location
3. Provide food and drink (coffee works more effectively than alcohol)
4. Provide necessary materials
5. Establish working knowledge of meeting topics, objectives, and content
6. Keep the meeting duration less than an hour
7. Ensure every applicable participant receives and completes all pre-meeting tasks
8. Help the establishment of meeting ground rules
9. Conduct individual introductions at start of each meeting
10. Generate and disseminate an agenda prior to the meeting
11. Guide the discussion without forcing the direction
12. Close the meeting with a last-call for any remaining issues that need to be addressed
13. Follow-up the meeting with meeting minutes that include the action-items with action-item owners and agreed upon deadlines