To meet or not to meet

“To (meet), or not to (meet): that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them? To die: to sleep.”

Apologies to all & Shakespeare, who scribbled this long ago with different intent.

It simply sprang to mind on reading a startup CEO viewpoint by Mangrove Capital Partners ' partner Yannick Oswald .

Yannick recently penned in Luxembourg’s financial community news platform Delano : “Some of my managers spend all their time in meetings. I don’t understand how this could possibly work. They need to have some time on their own to digest the stuff and condense it into a clear and actionable strategy.”

This counsel applies no matter what level you are at in a company or organisation. It resonates for me, particularly over the years after countless media and business meetings at colleague, C-suite and Board level.

Everyone is time poor.

Staying with this theme, below are 10 tips / best practice suggestions on what I have seen, heard and strive to adopt. It’s an area one can always improve on. When I don’t get it right, it’s often because one or more of these have been left out of the mix ...

1. Set an agenda, flag pre-reading, make objectives clear and only invite those necessary to achieve a clearly-stated objective.
2. Ask yourself: Do you need this meeting? – might a conversation or break-out moment with a few key stakeholders work better? As one executive said during a strategy meeting years ago and well before the pandemic: ‘Why didn’t anyone PUFF?’. In other words, why did no one pick up the ‘x’ phone and address what they were working to resolve?
3. Frame the objective with your invite – not as a throw-away comment 10 minutes in when a dozen people+ from different departments and teams around the world in different time zones on the call are wondering why they are there.
4. Close out your meeting being explicit on what was agreed to, who has to deliver it and when. If there are loose ends, call them out.
5. As sender/host, don’t accept the 'computer-assist' invite duration default timeline. 5-10-15 mins max is often more than enough. 'Less is more'. Champion it! Those you invite will appreciate that you get their time is as important as yours. Plus, it’s your meeting – control it.
6. As recipient/guest, consider if you really need to be there. It’s ok to decline if you see a clear priorities clash. Flagging so 1-1 early can also often help focus the mind of the host.
7. Consider starting meetings at five minutes past the hour or quarter hour. How many times have you been Slack-Stacked-Smacked against back-to-backs with no agenda, wondering when that 'fresh air' moment or loo break might be your time?
8. Do you need to cc those you do and/or make them optional? Really?
9. Consider taking chairs out of the equation. Standing-only meetings have merits and focus minds, especially for shorter meetings. (Yes, easier in an office, rather than remote/hybrid).
10. Don’t run to the clock. Just because you scheduled your meeting for 15+ minutes, doesn’t mean you need to 'air guitar'/'shoot-the-breeze' your way through to your scheduled end time.

As Shakespeare closed out in those timeless Hamlet lines: “And enterprises of great pith and moment / With this regard their currents turn awry/ And lose the name of action.”

Whatever works for you when you meet, make it count.

Time is precious – for you and everyone you touch, whenever, however, wherever you meet.

= = =

# Mangrove Capital Partners is an investor in The Bank of London , the B2B bank, which has also applied for a European banking licence from Luxembourg’s financial regulator, the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF) and the European Central Bank .

#business #startups #timemanagement #peoplemanagement #Luxembourg

Photo Credit: Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash