1. If possible — Don't go
Unless someone can convince you that there is a real purpose
and that you are the best person to go — don't.
There must be thousands of meetings held every day.
Many of them, as you know, are, at best, worthless, and, at
worst, demotivating and a total waste of time. There are a
number of alternatives to meetings — explore all of these
first before you call a meeting.
2. The purpose and the result
What is the purpose of the meeting, and what is the
intended result? If you can't answer those two basic questions,
there's no benefit to holding a meeting. If you're
asked to attend a meeting and the person setting up the
meeting can't tell you the purpose and intended result —
you'll be wasting your time.
Ask yourself: Do I really need this meeting? If you are in
a position to decide without meeting — do. If you're concerned,
then phone or email others telling them what you
intend to do and asking them if they have any objections.
If the meeting is merely to pass on information, can you
send a report, a video of a presentation, a link? If you can
do it and allow people time to digest this information on
their own time — do.
3. Be selective in whom you invite
Don't invite people to a meeting because they always
come to these meetings. Get the right person to attend —
irrespective of his or her position.
People frequently don't need to attend the entire meeting.
Prepare an agenda of who should stay/go for each item on
the agenda. There is nothing worse than sitting through a
three-hour meeting waiting for your 10-minute slot at the
end that will inevitably be postponed until the next time
because you've run out of time.
4. Be ruthless about time
Start exactly on time. If people are late, they get to miss it
this time. Schedule each discussion item and schedule a time.
If an item's scheduled for 20 minutes and time's up and you're
nowhere near a conclusion, stop it — reschedule it and move
on to the next item. This will be incredibly hard to begin with,
but people will soon learn to get to the point quicker.
If possible, separate information-sharing meetings and
decision-making meetings. Inevitably, the person who has
presented the information will have a bias toward getting it
accepted even if there are stronger arguments. Separate
these meetings — ideally over a day or so to allow people
to assimilate all the information, or at least take a break
between the presentations and the voting.
There are different ways of holding meetings and different
approaches that may not be popular with a few people
early on, but they will get used to it; one example is the
stand-up meeting. No chairs, no coffee — quick. People are
surprisingly eloquent and to the point once they've been
standing for 10 minutes or so.
5. Follow your agenda
Never discuss items off the agenda — ever. If people can't
inform you before the meeting, it can't be that important, or
they are doing it for tactical reasons. Defer the items to
another meeting.
6. Be creative
Creative meetings can be fun and extremely useful. If you
have a problem or a proposal to look at, try something a little
different. One technique is to use the principles outlined
in Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats:
The chair will have the blue hat, which manages the
process. Other attendees are given a particular color hat
and must act out the process for that particular color:
black hat is for negativity and why something won't work;
white hat is concerned with information — facts and figures;
red hat deals with feelings and intuition; yellow hat
symbolizes optimism and positive thinking; green hat
focuses on creativity.
So, once these roles are assigned, the topic is discussed.
The black-hat thinkers will look for reasons this won't
work. The white-hat thinkers will argue on the basis of facts
and figures, and so on. The discussions are usually lively
and productive. People don't get trapped into defending
positions but can explore ideas in a creative way. A similar
approach may be for all to look at the problem with the
black-hat mentality, then all look at it from a creative angle,
etc. This does work. There are organizations that actually
have different-colored hats that help.
Meetings needn't be that bad, but you have to control
them. They do develop a life of their own once they occur
regularly. People frequently go along to a project or group
meeting way past its "sell by" date. The last item should be:
Give me a purpose and intended result for the next meeting
or else it's not going to happen.
Learn more about Byron Kalies and his book
25 Management Techniques in 90 Minutes.