There is often talk about whether meetings are worthwhile, and whether they should be abolished altogether because they are a waste of time. Personally I find this view somewhat extreme, but I understand that it responds to the fact that in many cases the way we conduct meetings is effectively a waste of time and money, and a source of frustration and demotivation. Throughout my career I have worked with quite a few companies, and in all of them I have participated in unproductive meetings, and this seems to be a constant no matter who you talk to. It’s hard to find someone who, when you ask them about how they do meetings in their company, doesn’t complain.
However, there are times when meetings are really valuable and can make a difference. There are meetings that last over time and serve as a reference for future meetings. Some of my favourites are brainstorming meetings, and more specifically those in which we have worked on defining the MVP for a new product, or where we have designed a technical solution for a complex problem. In these meetings all the participants were very involved and you could feel the harmony between us. I remember leaving with extra motivation and a great desire to work on the agreed actions.
I think that nowadays how meetings are organised is more of an art than a science, however, there are a multitude of tools and actions that allow for effective meetings, and the best thing about it is that it is not rocket science, but many of them are quite simple. The first thing is to be aware that good meetings have 3 parts: preparation, meeting and after meeting. Sometimes we focus only on the meeting, but without proper preparation we find ourselves lost or having to use the time to prepare the agenda. Other times, we leave the meeting and forget what we have agreed or we do not follow it up properly. With all this in mind, here are some of the actions that I consider most relevant for each of the phases. How many of these actions do you apply in your company?
Preparation
- Define the purpose of the meeting and the need for it – is it a clear purpose and can it be addressed without a meeting, e.g. an email thread? Meetings by their nature are the most expensive events in the company, even if we don’t see the cost, it is there.
- Define a realistic, specific and relevant agenda, this is the plan for the meeting and it is basic. Share it with all participants a few days in advance so that they have time to prepare and think about it.
- Define the participants. Answering two questions: Are all the people we need there, do we need all the people there, and do we need all the people there? There is nothing worse than being in a meeting and not being able to decide anything because the person in charge is missing.
- Agree who is the facilitator of the meeting. The person in charge of making the meeting happen and creating the space for the objective to be achieved.
- Find a suitable slot, which allows the whole agenda to be covered, takes into account the necessary mental freshness and tries to minimise the impact on the participants’ working day. For example: for briefings, I usually prefer to hold them in the afternoon, because they require less mental freshness. For meetings that involve thinking, the morning is usually fresher. Avoid holding them in the middle of the morning so as not to break it up.
- Set a duration of 50-55 minutes to allow time for people who have another meeting to be on time.
During
- Be on time to start and finish. Apart from the obvious benefits, knowing that you are going to finish on time makes everyone more aware of the use of time and discourages slippage.
- Entering the agenda, putting one address per section helps to structure the time better. Use a presentation, document or whiteboard to display the agenda.
- Clarify the dynamics and rules of the meeting
- For virtual meetings ask everyone to wear cameras. You would never go to a meeting with your face covered, so why do it online? In most cases it is to hide that you are doing something else. If you think you should not be at the meeting or have any doubts, talk to the organiser.
- Respect turn-taking and listening.
- Encourage people to talk and ask questions. In many cases, meetings become unbalanced and only the dominant voices are heard. Giving space to other voices is fundamental to complement and discover new points of view and enrich the results.
- Take notes, make frequent recaps, e.g. before moving on to the next agenda item you can summarise the conclusions of the current item. You can also ask a participant to explain what he or she has understood – this can be a good way to check that everyone has got the message.
- Summarise the meeting, the agreed actions, their dates and owners. Each action should have an owner so that it does not fall on deaf ears and an estimated date. The “must do” and “will do” without a clear owner are not done.
- Acknowledge work and congratulate participants. In meetings that are somewhat tense, acknowledging progress and tensions can be a way of closing on a better note.
After meeting
- Compartir las minutas de la reunión (idealmente el mismo día) con todos los participantes y otros stakeholders interesados. Resumir, la agenda, los mensajes importantes y las siguientes acciones. Además de utilizar el mail, es muy recomendable registrarlas en la plataforma de documentación que utilicemos. Es mucho más sencillo encontrar todas las minutas de reuniones pasadas si están bajo una misma carpeta, que haciendo una búsqueda en el correo.
- More and more tools include AI that generates meeting minutes automatically. This speeds up the process, but I think we should always check them against our notes, to avoid omissions or the hallucinations typical of generative AI.
- More and more tools include AI that generates meeting minutes automatically. This speeds up the process, but I think we should always check them against our notes, to avoid omissions or the hallucinations typical of generative AI.
- Follow up on actions, either through email threads, project management tools or other follow-up meetings.
- Reflect individually on how the meeting went, what worked well and what can be changed for the next meeting. It is the way to bring about continuous improvement.
How many of these actions do you already apply in your company? If the answer is not almost all or all, then you have room for improvement.
Bad meetings are a waste of time, money and motivation, but changing this is not difficult and the impact can be seen very quickly, simply by defining guidelines (or policies) on how to run them. Recognising its 3 phases, and the actions we need to take in each phase, will improve how we work and the motivation of our teams. Why to wait?
References
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I am currently working to help companies and technology teams make better use of their potential. I help them to be aware of where their inefficiencies lie and how they can work on concrete actions to improve within their context, and do so on an ongoing basis. If you feel that you have room for improvement in your company, but the day-to-day is eating you up, we can talk to explore solutions together. Book a call here.