Good Meetings, Bad Meetings and Presentations

We have all been there at some point in our careers. We look at the time and say to ourselves,” I will never get this time back. What a waste, and when will it end?” Bad meetings occur all to often in business and they can affect teams long after the meeting has concluded. I do not want to waste your time talking about what makes a bad meeting. The goal is to help you find some inspiration to host good meetings. The primary difference between a good meeting and a presentation is the number of people present. A meeting is an occasion when people come together to discuss or decide something. For meaningful discussions to take place, there really is an upper limit on the number of people that can participate in the meeting process and this caps out at about ten. After eight to ten people you have left the meeting space and entered the realm of presentation because only a portion of the people present can effectively participate, while the remaining bodies can only receive information. It is important to remember that distinction. Presentations are a valuable tool and once leaders conclude meetings the outcomes should be taken back and presented to the larger teams to act on what was discussed and decided. Now that we have defined what a meeting is, we can outline specific matters that will help us conduct better meetings. Everyone’s time is valuable and finite. We should strive to make good use of time, so people can contribute as best they can to the success of their organization. Here are some of my insights to what we can do to help have fewer bad and more good meetings.

1.      Do you need to get people together to have a meeting or is the topic actionable by some other means? Not all decisions require people to group up and hash out a course of action. Meetings take people away from their ability to perform other duties, so the topic must warrant that.

2.      What’s the agenda for this meeting? The matters to be discussed and decided should be clearly defined and kept to a small list of actionable items. Rome wasn’t built in a day and Romulus and Remus didn’t try and tackle all the logistics involved in one sitting. The meeting scope should be written out ahead of time and any dependencies should be accounted for.

3.      Who are the best or most responsible people to address the topics that have been outlined for the meeting?  Once you have identified the two to ten people that need to attend the meeting get them the agenda quickly.

4.      Timing is important. When, where and how long will the meeting last. The start and stop time for a meeting should be enforced as much as possible. Knowing you have only two hours to decide is just the fire needed to get everyone to act.

5.      Planning, planning, planning.  Prior to the meeting as much information as possible on the topic should be assembled and made available to the participants so they can make the most informed decision. Having the required source material will ensure that precious meeting time and energy is not wasted while someone hunts down information. The better the planning the fewer the interruptions.

6.      Meetings are face to face affairs. In order to fully understand a person’s position about a complex topic you need to understand body language and expression. You do not get that on a phone call. Whenever possible, meeting participants should be physically present or using today's advanced collaboration tools to see and interact with remote participants in real time.

7.      Good meetings require a facilitator. A facilitator helps keep the meeting moving forward and to stay on topic. If the facilitator is a person, they can intervene when an individual speaks to long and usurps the meeting. When the meeting gets off track, they can correct course and refocus the group. The facilitator does even need to be a person. There are many forms of facilitators from the Scrum Master to the peace pipe, every group needs to find what works best for them and stick to it. The important point is to have an accepted process that facilitates the flow of the meeting.

8.      Recorder of Deeds. Someone or some thing needs to take notes and annotate what took place during the meeting. This is a very important function that cannot be overlooked. Most of us do not remember what we had for lunch yesterday let alone what transpired in a two-hour meeting four days ago.

9.      The vote. When a decision has been be made all participants in the meeting should voice their yeah or nay to the action being discussed in the meeting. Full participation in the meeting process is important. We get together to decide what to do and not just nod yes in agreement. No leader should want a room full of bobble heads blindly agreeing to all proposals, strong leaders should want to hear all sides of an argument before making a choice and should be comfortable with dissension.

10.  Follow up and action. After a meeting is concluded the minutes should be tallied and whatever decisions were made should be enacted. A follow up to the meeting should be sent out to ensure that the understanding of the meeting participants and the minutes coincide.

No one is perfect, we will still conduct bad meetings from time to time. We can improve our chances of hosting a successful meeting if we adopt these strategies and apply them to our gatherings.  There are many hardware and software tools available as to aid us with meetings and presentations. If you need help choosing some tools feel free to reach out and I will try and help you find a match that works for you. Thank you for your time and have a great rest of your day.