Have you ever been to a meeting that meets any (or many) of these criteria?

• You don’t know why you were called to that meeting
• The meeting lasts way longer than the scheduled duration
• People digress and no decisions are made
• You contribute to the meeting for 10 minutes but have to be there for an hour
• The meeting started 15 minutes late because not everyone was on time

I don’t know anyone who hasn’t been to many of those!  In my opinion, inefficient meetings are one of the biggest time robbers nowadays.  Every time we find a problem we tend to call a meeting with lots of people to decide what to do. Or the project manager calls the whole team to update the status of the project.  Or the boss has a new bright idea and wants everyone to listen to it.

Don’t get me wrong.  Meetings are a powerful tool if used correctly.  Try the following guidelines and you will notice an increase in productivity:

• Send an agenda with enough time in advance so that everyone can prepare the meeting.  This includes the material that has to be prepared beforehand
• Start the meeting on time.  Many people do not consider highly important to be on time for a meeting (in the end it is not a train that would leave.  The meeting will still be there if I am late).  I personally consider it a lack of respect for the ones that were on time.  If you can start the meeting, go ahead without the missing people.  If you can’t, let him/her know that you have been waiting for them, and they will probably be on time next time.
• Set a time limit for each item on the agenda.
• Call only the people that are necessary for the meeting.  And as you have set a time limit for each topic, you could have someone attending only part of the meeting.
• Do not discuss about topics that are not on the agenda.  Avoid going off-topic or you will lose control.  If the topic is relevant, write it down and discuss it either at the end of the meeting (if there is time) or in a future meeting.
• Make a short summary after each item on the agenda.  You have to make sure that everyone has the same understanding after the discussion.
• For each of the actions that arise, identify the scope of the action, the person responsible to do it and the deadline.  It’s very typical to hear something like “we have to do this”, and it usually results in nothing being done.
• Write the minutes and distribute them, identifying all the agreements and actions.

There is nothing is these guidelines that is difficult to do.  It is just a matter of getting used to it and educate your co-workers to do the same.  After a few meetings you it will become natural and you will have much more effective meetings.

Although the steps above assume you are the meeting leader, it also works when you are not.  In that case you are obviously more limited, but you can try to help the leader.  For instance, you can ask for the agenda when you receive something like “Project X meeting from 10:00 to 12:00″ or you can suggest to talk about that new topic at the end of the meeting if there is a deviation from the agenda.  People are usually smart and if they see that their meetings are better when they follow your recommendations, they will end up adopting them.

Tags: Leadership, Meeting, Time Management, Time robber

This entry was posted on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 9:45 pm and is filed under Communication, Time Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.