This One Thing Cuts Any Meeting in Half

One of the most impactful and leveraged places you can affect as a leader, is meetings. Even very small behavioral changes can go a long way toward shifting the collective mindset, which is your leadership leverage point. And because meetings touch almost every person at work, you can “do big things” by reducing time spent in meetings. Here’s an easy-to-do pivot:

Before every meeting, have the organizer identify the exact high value adding activity that the collective group can deliver by being together in that meeting? What is the raison d’être to have these individuals come together, and what’s the highest value they can deliver?

THIS SINGLE ACT YIELDS BIG GAINS

Of course the basic meeting skeleton is still useful - an agenda with timed agenda items, meeting rules, etc. I even issue homework to participants just to put them in the mindset to arrive prepared. You make major efficiency strides with these tools. But that’s chump change compared to the ability to actually cut your meeting time in half AND boost the quality of the meting at the same time. Your biggest gains begin with the single act of knowing what the high value add of the group is.

Now for the Good Part

High value add in hand, the meeting organizer can now take any and all necessary information, get it done before the meeting and then visually display it on the walls of the meeting room. Whatever has to be done for that meeting, that you don’t want to spend time doing in the meeting -- get it done and put up on the walls at the meeting. 

As an example, if each person has a list of something they've prioritized already (maybe because the organizer asked them to before the meeting), get that list from them and put it up on the wall before they arrive. That way, if you want the group to come to consensus on the prioritization, you can run a quick multi-vote that the group can only do together. This allows you to get right “to the meat of the meeting” instead of spending valuable time transcribing stuff onto the wall.

TREAT YOUR MEETINGS LIKE A RACECAR PITSTOP

It’s kind of like doing set-up reduction (SMED) for meetings. Do everything that can be done externally and present it visually at the meeting, so that "the work that can only be done internally" gets the most meeting time. By doing this one thing, you can cut meeting times in half and instantly boost the quality of everyone's participation. How's that for a fantastic hit? And at the same time, it's the most valuable thing you can give to leaders - more time.

There are several other excellent steps to achieving Lean meetings, but nothing makes your meetings run like a Ferrari more than this one. So act now and commit to turning your company’s meetings into the shortest, best run meetings in the world. That's both a nice notch for you to have in your belt as a leader, and to use as a stepping stone to affect rapid, leveraged change in your organization.

Which is a really great thing to get done and be known for, just because poorly run meetings are so prevalent. Improve your company's meetings, and get recognized as the one who solved this major vexing problem for the company in one fell swoop.

Want an invisible change expert to help you facilitate leadership transformation in under 2 days? Check it out at https://bit.ly/JimPresents.

About the Author:

I'm Jim Hudson, founder of the Lean Expert Academy and former partner in the Lean Leadership Institute with Jeff Liker (The Toyota Way), Paul Akers (Two Second Lean) and the recently departed, but hugely influential Norm Bodek (Productivity Press Founder). I've worked with some of the earliest Lean thinkers including Mark DeLuzio, the principal architect of the Danaher Business System and Mike George, founder of the George Group (now part of Accenture).

I'm also the CEO of a Lean consulting company which trains Lean leaders to implement the exact methodology and techniques that you can learn right here. If you want to get out of the tactical loop that Lean Management has become & charge ahead with a highly strategic approach to transformational change, click on https://bit.ly/JimPresents