Pre-Reads

REFLECTION SERIES

One of the best pieces of advice that I received about delivering a tough message during a meeting is to give it in the first 5 minutes of the meeting. This means the message is delivered quickly, there is time to assimilate the message and figure out options and actions. If the message is given late, it turns out to be a more emotional reaction and hard to figure out the next steps. This was about 7 or 8 years back. Although this advice was for delivering tough messages, I have found the approach of addressing the most important thing within the first 5 to 10 minutes of a meeting extremely useful.?

In a collaborative organisation like ours, most decisions are taken jointly and collaboratively. During meetings that get scheduled to take such decisions, most of the time gets spent in bringing all the stakeholders on the same page. The meeting just ends up becoming a one way information sharing and then the last few minutes are spent on taking a decision or it is deferred to a small group to decide later. Not a very effective use of time of all stakeholders.?

It is a no-brainer that ideally most time needs to be allocated to debate, discuss and arrive at a decision and not on context sharing. And all decisions that need to be made are put on the table within the first 5 to 10 minutes. But given the varied levels of context that the stakeholders generally have, unless a different approach is taken, the meetings tend to become a context sharing forum.

One of the approaches that I have found useful is to share all information and context as a “pre-read”.? A pre-read is a document that is shared before the meeting to ensure all stakeholders are on the same page and have all the necessary background and data to be able to make a decision. The depth of the information in the pre-read is dependent on the context that the stakeholders have. Ideally a pre-read should be self explanatory and no voice over needed to explain the contents. Pre-read as a tool is only effective if all the stakeholders are able to gather all the context needed offline before the meeting.

Another thing that I have found useful is to encourage the stakeholders to add comments on the deck for any clarifications. Even with the best efforts, it is still quite likely that there are still questions or lack of clarity about the content, so it is best to use the comments wherever needed and try answering as much as possible before the meeting.

During the meeting the key thing is to not share any context again and only time is spent on answering any open questions or clarifications that might still be unanswered. For this approach to work, it is important to set expectations with the stakeholders that no context sharing will happen during the meeting. A pre-read will be shared and all stakeholders are expected to read and come prepared. It is important that the pre-read is shared at least a week in advance for all your stakeholders to go through it, add comments and be ready for the meeting.?

During the meeting, ensure all decisions that need to be made are put on the table in the first 5 to 10 minutes. The remaining time can be used to debate or discuss the decisions that need to be taken by the group. Keep the pre-read material handy (typically as an appendix) and accessible to all during the meeting for reference. It is highly likely that you will need to do a lot of back and forth on some of the context or open the slides that have the data to facilitate the decision.?

Like any other meetings, facilitation of such a meeting is also a key. It is important to ensure that now since time is available, discussions are not going endless. Facilitator needs to ensure that there is a fine balance between having sufficient time to discuss and calling a timeout on discussions going in a circle.

This approach is simple to implement and gives good results. The only thing is, it needs efforts from everyone to come prepared for the meeting. There might be initial challenges of some stakeholders not coming prepared or deck being shared too late etc but once the initial teething troubles are over, the benefits are undeniable and time saved is immense.

Me reflections from this

1. In collaborative environments, the most time is spent in getting all necessary stakeholders on the same page.
2. No context sharing during the meeting is an effective way to focus all time on key decisions and discussions needed to make those decisions.
3. Pre-reads are super effective tools that help in such situations.
4. All decisions that need to be taken have to be put on the table within the first 5 to 10 minutes of the meeting.
5. There is significant effort needed from everyone to make such meetings effective and it may feel exhausting to begin with.
6. But once it is adapted, most meetings turn out to be super effective.