Meetings stink and I don’t want to be fowl!

How do you conduct meetings

Your Rant In my new job I have to run a lot of meetings. I’ve never been a big one for committees, so what advice can you tell me to make my meetings worthwhile?
911 Repair

Do you remember the Mars Climate Orbiter? If flew 416 million miles over 9 months. So far, so good. Unfortunately after all those miles, it got just a little too up close and personal with Mars and burned up-$125 million up in smoke. The reason? Lockheed Martin had sent in data for the mission in English units of pounds instead of in metric unit of Newtons. Oops!

And just like the Mars Orbiter; many meetings have gone up in smoke because people use different frames of reference during them. Use the Ten Commandments below to get everyone on the same page. For more check out “First Aid for Meetings” by Charlie Hawkins (Book Partners, 1997)

Have a reason for meeting. This is a special challenge for regularly scheduled meetings. You waste an hour before you realize you have no actual reason for meeting. Always start by clarifying what you’re trying to accomplish.

Send out info in advance of the meeting. Don’t bury them in paper or attachments; only send out the stuff they’ll need to see.

Start on time. Sometimes you have to wait for the big Kahuna, but most the time you’ve just got to take some lumps by starting without everyone in the room. Over time you’ll develop the reputation for having the one meeting that starts, and finishes, on time.

One conversation. Meetings that degenerate into a million side conversations are a waste of everyone’s time. Extinguish side conversations immediately or you’ll pay the consequences.

Separate idea collection from idea evaluation. Criticism makes a lot of people keep their opinions to themselves. Solicit ideas at one point in the meeting and evaluate them later.

Put facilitator in charge. Personally I like meetings where facilitation rotates rather than just going to the person highest up on the org chart, but this does require that everyone receive some training in how to do it.

Do you put in a bit of extra time to reach consensus? I think that we tend to vote too early in meetings. It’s often worth giving it a little extra time to see if everyone can agree on one way to proceed.

Acknowledge, acknowledge, acknowledge. Recognize people in every way that you can. Have refreshments, recognize people who contribute-my theory is that you can never put too much into rewarding people.

Give a homework assignment. Not for the sake of homework, but be sure to assign specific tasks to people so that your effort continues to build momentum.

Debrief. This is the step that everyone skips. I think it’s valuable to ask for feedback about the meeting before you break.

Having a good meeting shouldn’t have to be rocket science. All you have to do is practice the Ten Commandments above.

Workplace911 Pulse:

What song do you sing when it comes to attending meetings where you work?

• “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be”, 29.6%
• “That’s the Way (I Like It)”, 24%
• “That’s Where I Went Wrong”, 46.2%

User Genrated

I establish a ‘parking lot’ at the beginning of the meeting. This can be a flipchart, or an area on a white board placed so it is visible to all members of the group. We can then ‘park’ (record) important issues or ideas that we want to capture for later discussion, but may not be relevant to the discussion at hand. This prevents the meeting from being derailed by the introduction of important but unrelated topics or issues. However, it is usually better to ask the group whether an idea is relevant or a ‘parking lot’ issue rather than just arbitrarily placing it in that category yourself