How to Run an Effective Meeting

Published by chrisminglee on April 7th, 2008 in Entrepreneurship, Productivity, Work | 9 Comments

Everyday of my college career seemed to conclude with a series of long meetings, each one more trivial and ineffective than the next. Water-cooler gossip delayed the start, while side-discussions and tangents drew us away from our goals. Everything eventually dissolved into free-for-all bashings of Fox News, Bill O'Reilly, or Lindsay Lohan. An hour would go by, and we'd have accomplished few, if any, of our objectives.

It got to the point where I purposely saved all my musing and day dreaming for those meetings. This way, at least I was unproductive and fantasizing Natalie Portman as my girlfriend at the same time (the latter helped numb the pain the former created.) I endured these mini-retirements to hell for most of college, because I thought meetings were supposed to suck your soul dry – see Brad H.'s example.

It wasn't until I started running consultations, project discussions, and editorial meetings did I see why those meetings were painful. It wasn't that they were intrinsically agonizing – humans, after all, are social beings. It was the disorganization, the lack of goals, and lack of actionable objectives that made things miserable. Once I identified these specific problems, and focused on eliminating them, I found solutions to running a more effective meeting. Here are five:

Create an agenda before the meeting. Cover topics in order from most important to least important. Send the agenda to your group members before the meeting. Ask them to prepare questions beforehand.
Have a maximum of 3 mission critical objectives every meeting. When you make a list of 20 objectives, the important items get lost in the noise.
Designate a start and end time (the shorter, the better) – and stick to them. Latecomers will quickly learn to arrive promptly, and people will appreciate your respect for their valuable time.
Explicitly ask everyone to keep side discussions until after the meeting. Tell your group you'd enjoy talking with them afterwards, but first you have important items to discuss.
Assign group members responsibility over meeting objectives. Give them a set amount of time (five to 10 minutes) to explain the problem, lead discussion, or offer solutions. Members will pay more attention if they're invested in the meeting, rather than being talked at. Afterwards, you or your group should make a decision based on their presentation.

In general, I'm not a fan of face-to-face, large group meetings. I believe there are faster, more effective ways of conveying information. But when they are necessary, hopefully you can keep them from consuming the enthusiasm of your group or organization.

Leave your thoughts here. (9 responses)

This article´s comments All Employee Evolution comments

Scott M

Apr 7th, 2008 at 9:29 am

This is a good list. I think it's been around since the dawn of time.

Unfortunately, many people don't follow these tips. So after reading the post, I started thinking about why. I don't necessarily have all the answers, but here are some of the problems.

One problem is that people lack the authority to set the rules for the meeting, or think they lack the authority: With today's flat organizations and ever flexible team-oriented structure, the people who are running the meetings are rarely the most senior person in the room (in job title, not age). They may not feel comfortable forcing others to keep to the agenda. Some leadership training would help this, but how often do companies actually do that?

Another is that too many people are invited to meetings: Again, in a flat organizational structure, where roles are ever shifting, it's hard to know who bears the responsibility for what. So everyone gets invited to the meeting, just to cover the bases. Then you end up with lots of people, who don't really need to be involved, muddying up the waters. A clear definition of responsibilities in the company is needed.

I'm interested in hearing about other roadblocks to running effective meetings. Anyone else?

Jaclyn

Apr 7th, 2008 at 11:33 am

Good post, Chris! I agree that in many instances meetings are not the best way to convey information / get things done. I've sat through so many meetings for the purpose of having a meeting.

Scott, I definitely agree with your point about authority. The person who is leading the meeting can often be one of the most significant roadblocks. Beyond their comfort with authority, their organizational abilities, communication and presentation style make a huge difference in how they are perceived and what gets accomplished.

chrisminglee

Apr 7th, 2008 at 2:48 pm

Scott – I think it's important the organization make it clear the person running the meeting is accountable for how the meeting goes, regardless of his position relative to others. He can't know everything, nor does he have to make all executive decisions. He's just in charge of making sure the meeting is smooth. Leadership training is the ideal way to teach this, and like Jadyn said, great presentation skills get much more accomplished.

Also, you're right – if you need to have a meeting, the fewer number of people you can keep it to, the better off you'll be.

HR Wench

Apr 8th, 2008 at 5:10 pm

The best meeting is a canceled meeting that is never rescheduled.

Bubba

Apr 8th, 2008 at 10:06 pm

There are many roadblocks to having efficient meetings including having not the right people there. Many people see the number of meetings they attend as a their standing in the workplace but the only people who should attend a meeting are folks who are either providing information, or making the decisions.

I though would not call the meeting facilitator a roadblock. If they have received proper training and understand how to deal with the different types of participants (there are seven I believe) they should be able to keep the meeting on track without offending or stepping on the feet of any participants. If they cannot do this I would refer to them as roadblock because they are not performing to par. The facilitator should be able to keep the meeting on track though. Being a facilitator is much more easy in theory though.

If there is side talk regarding something work related the facilitator can also suggest that there be another meeting, or the issue will be refereed to another person. An example of this is during a meeting regarding new employees and their training. The topic of needing to recruit employees with a larger skill set was brought up. Instead of spending twenty minutes discussing this, since it wasn't the topic at hand, and nothing would actually come from this discussion it was suggested that everyone write down their concerns with the recently hired employees and forward them to one person (who volunteered) who then forwarded them to HR.

One issue which we frequently face is having meeting participates who are not fully informed of the topic at hand and therefore become distracted by details which are not important. During a meeting involving the design timeline for a new piece of machinery the VP of Manufacturing became overly concerned about the use of material on the machine, and that it unnecessarily and could be reduced to cut weight and cost. While this was a genuine concern and important issue it was not the point of the meeting. This was solved by sending out a copy of the material to be presented along with the topics that would be covered and asks for further suggestions on the meeting. When the VP of Manufacturing responds stating that he is concerned about the material usage a meeting is then set up between him and the design staff allowing for complete avoiding of the topic during the meeting regarding the timeline.

Meetings are all different but the most important thing is to have an agenda which is given out prior to the meeting but not sooner then two weeks.