Before anything happens, ask yourself: ‘Is this meeting really necessary?’ Followed by, ‘Is there a better and more efficient way for me to distribute this information?’ If the answers are yes and no respectfully, then there are six specific steps to put into place in order to make your meetings: essential, efficient, informative and productive.
First, who must attend? Does your whole organization need to be there, and if so, do they need to be there from start to finish? There is nothing wrong with having different departments or people coming in and out of a meeting at the appropriate time to participate in their particular area of expertise. Why would you take a person away from their everyday obligations for 90 minutes if they are only required for ten minutes?
Secondly, send out a notice that a meeting will be held with a specific start and ending time, as well as location and when their participation is required. This notice should go out one week prior to the meeting so that any conflicts can be addressed.
Great, you have the time, place and who, so you are now ready to go. Not even close.
Thirdly, where is the agenda? This is the why. The agenda gives all the attendees the reason for their attendance. The best agendas have the talking points laid out, with the most important issues on top, who will be speaking on that point and how long this point will be discussed. The agenda again, states the start and end time as well as the location. This agenda should be distributed no later than 48 hours prior to the meeting for a couple of reasons; One, it’s a gentle reminder of the meeting and secondly, and most importantly, it allows the people that have been called to participate, time to prepare on what they have been tasked to do for the meeting. Think of it this way, how would you like to be invited to participate in an activity, but not know what that activity is? Do you bring skates, soccer cleats, sneakers or hiking boots? Where are we meeting and when and how long is this activity going to take? After all, you may have other obligations. You would look pretty silly showing up to the rec center with your hockey gear when the activity was a basketball game.
Fourth step, arrive ten minutes prior to the posted meeting start. If you were to ask individuals that attend lot of meetings what their most frustrating thing is about them, the overwhelming majority response would be, ‘They never start or end on time.’ You stated the time on the original announcement. You again reiterated it in the agenda. Therefore, if it has a start time of 9:00 am, start it at 9:00 am not a minute later. If it has been advertised to end at 10:30, guess what? Yup, it ends at 10:30 and not a minute later. What if all the items on the agenda have not been covered? Hopefully at this point these items are of minimal importance, as all agendas should be in descending order of importance and can be carried over to another meeting; better still, they can be handled in another manner such as; one on one talks, emails, etc. This also tells you that something went sideways during the meeting, as every item had a specific time allotted, there should have been time to handle the whole agenda. Of course, build in a Q&A portion to each point into the time allotted.
Fifth, keep the meeting on track by eliminating distractions. The biggest today of course are cell phones. In all the meetings that I hold the number one rule is, all phones off, not vibrate, but off. Also, as the one who has called for this forum, it is your job to keep it on track. Your agenda tells you how long each point should take. You are the timekeeper. If that time starts to get away, you must bring it back by simply stating something like, ‘Obviously we need more discussion on this issue. We can do one of two things; defer to a subsequent meeting, or, we eliminate the following from this agenda; this is where you name the points.’ Now just go, ‘Those in favour of differing?’ Followed by, ‘Those in favour of eliminating the stated points?’ You now have consensus and can continue. You also need to keep people away from the “bright shiny object syndrome” and on topic as well and adhere to the stated agenda. You also have an obligation to make sure that everyone has a chance to participates by asking specific questions and/or opinions from specific people and make sure that all opinions have not only been shared, but have also been heard.
Okay, glad that’s over! Well not quite. As the leader of the meeting you are now obligated to complete the sixth and final step which is to send out within 24 hours a quick recap of the discussions, decisions reached, action plans to be put in place, the people responsible for the action plan and the agreed upon time for completing those tasks. So, as the meeting is going on, either yourself, or someone you have designated, must be taking notes. Do not rely on your memory as you will forget something.
The above criteria is the same regardless if the meeting is with a group, face to face, by telephone or video conferencing. I know what you are thinking, ‘but this is just common sense.’ Sure it is. Now tell me, when was the last meeting you were asked to attend that the above actually happened? Thought so.