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Stop Meeting like This

Kevin Wysocki, PMP
Date Published: 
November 6, 2008

We’ve all suffered through them; they’re boring, they’re ineffective and they waste our time.   Nonetheless, poorly run meetings are as much a part of our daily work as is the caffeine we consume each morning. 

So, why do poor meetings happen so frequently? How about characteristics like these:
  • There’s no agenda to work from;
  • Participants are not prepared;
  • They’re social gatherings, instead of productive working sessions;
  • They’re not actionable when participants adjourn;
  • Conversations get tangential, meander; and
  • Some participants have all the answers; meanwhile, some never utter a word.
 
As consultants it’s our responsibility to make our meetings – project status meetings, working sessions, stakeholder review meetings – as effective and productive as possible. A Praxis meeting is an opportunity to increase the value that we bring to our clients. Frankly speaking, it’s an easy way to differentiate ourselves.
Here are a few items that will immediately make a meeting better: know your audience, keep on topic, be timely and most importantly, have a good reason to meet. Let’s dissect each of these areas a bit. 
Bottom line: strive to make your meetings good working sessions that lead to results and lead to action when adjourning.

Audience 

It’s important to know who they are and what they expect.   For example, business stakeholders need not know the gory details of an MS project file and all a projects’ relationships. Typically, what’s important to them: milestone tracking and issue and risk identification and management.
 

TIP: filter details appropriately in order to cater to an audience’s needs.

Conflict is okay; it has to be managed and controlled. Conflict is a means to challenge assumptions and ambiguity; conflict can be used as a tool to get all participants on the same page and moving forward.
If you think someone isn’t speaking up because of conflict try stating what you think needs to be said and asking “are we being too nice to each other and not saying this”?
 

Topic

Another valuable skill is managing meetings and staying on topic. Be sure you know the topic of your meeting and stick to it.
 
Tangential conversations are bound to occur; some can be valuable but as the meeting leader you have to know when to shut them down and move back to the meeting’s topic. 
 
Meandering conversations lead to frustrated participants and this, in turn, leads to productivity impacts.
 

Be Timely

Try to make your meetings more about acting and doing instead of just attending. There will always be a need for information sharing, but too many meetings end without a compelling need to do something or have a valid take-away. Two items will increase the accountability of your participants, and the participants will have more of a sense of responsibility to you, too.
  1. No one should arrive at a meeting and not know why they’re there. 
  2. Limit invitations to appropriate participants.

Reason to meet

When deciding whether or not to meeting, consider the following: Am I trying to move a business strategy along, am I trying to ensure all parties are ‘on the same page’, or am I looking to share vital information to keep progress moving forward?
 
Meetings are necessary to gather information from disparate parties or distribute information to them; they’re nothing more and nothing less. If there are other similar means to reaching these two objectives, then use them!
 

Easy tools to help you be successful:

Agendas: make them clear, specific and brief. State the meeting’s goals, expectations and outcomes clearly.
 
Meeting minutes: take copious notes on valid points of discussion, record decisions and assign and track action items, issues and risks.
Elements of Meeting Minutes:
  1. Assign a note-taker / scribe.
  2. Use the subsequent meeting to close the loop and get progress on action items/open discussion pieces from the previous get together. This is critical. Resources will stay engaged.
  3. Distribute them shortly after meeting. (Hard to do but very important)

Results

Good, effective meetings lead to increased productivity. A well structured meeting can move group quickly through a decision-making process that might take much longer outside of the meeting format.
 
Think ‘Act / Do’. This paradigm shift will enable your peers and your stakeholders to participate actively and increases their accountability towards the end result. Effective meetings will enable your stakeholders begin to expect real, valuable knowledge sharing. Knowledge sharing provides them with the information they need in order to make timely decisions. Good things will happen.