Another day, another meeting. When done wrong, meetings might be the one of the biggest barriers to productivity in modern history and it has gotten a lot worse in the last five years. At least it used to be a little bit harder to hold meetings, but after the pandemic the use of video conferencing exploded from something that used to be a novelty to integration into everyday use.
There was no better measure of this explosion than the stock market as people retreated to their homes for work. Logitech (LOGI), the webcam producer’s stock tripled from about $40 in March of 2020 to over $120 by July of 2021. Not bad, but was easily outdone by Zoom (ZM) which started 2020 near $60 and rose to an all time high of $559 by October of the same year. Not a bad way to 10x your money if you were smart enough to dump it at that point.
Logistics are the Secret Sauce to a Good Meeting
Meetings can be a huge catalyst for action, but only when the logistics are done right. That means putting a lot of sweat equity into the meeting well before it starts and making sure to follow up afterwards. Here’s the thing about logistics. They don’t get a lot of credit, because when they are good, you don’t really notice and things flow along nicely. When they are bad, it’s a train wreck.
Unfortunately we have gotten to the point where the norm is at worst a disaster but at the least a colossal waste of time. The good news is that now a smoothly run meeting can be a huge breath of fresh air and score you points not only with the boss, but with your co-workers as well. Here are 10 tips to run a meeting your co-workers won’t hate.
If you want to read more on this topic I highly recommend “No Fail Meetings”by Michael Hyatt. A lot of the process I use today was born out of that book. Just like an efficient meeting, it’s a quick read and very well done.
1. Do You Even Need a Meeting?
The first step in having an efficient meeting is deciding if you need to have a meeting in the first place. I believe that 90% of the time the answer should be no. How many times have you heard a co-worker say, “That could have been an email.” Progress updates tend to fall into this category. We show up, we talk about where we are, and what we still have to do but no new actions are assigned and no new ideas are born.
A good guide is to build your meeting around project inflection points or end points. In the beginning, brainstorming meetings are ok as long as they are guided and have guard rails as to not get too far off topic.
Another good time to have a meeting is the inflection point where actions are to be assigned and the team is ready to embark on a project. This allows everyone to get on the same page and then leave the meeting with a clear direction about what comes next. Finally, meet when there are results that cause the project to end or move in a new direction with new action items.
2. Where Should You Meet?
The real question here is whether the meeting should be in person or virtual. Virtual involves picking the right online platform, but if it is in person a little more consideration should go into the space. Is the meeting small enough to meet in an office or is a larger conference room more appropriate. Does the space have the ability to support refreshments if you want to provide them for your guests?
Sometimes the topic can dictate the venue. If the conversations that need to be had are uncomfortable, it can help to move to a more comfortable space and don’t be afraid to think outside the box. If this is a conversation between two or three people, walking on a path together outside can allow people to speak their mind side by side, eliminating the feeling of confrontation. At the same time being able to walk naturally decreases the stress levels.
3. Decide Who Doesn’t Need to be at the Meeting
When thinking about meeting efficiency, deciding who not to involve is more important than who you do invite. We want to limit this to the smallest viable audience to get the job done. Smaller audiences are naturally more engaged. If you are on a virtual call with 3 people, you are going to have your camera on and be very much engaged in the meeting. If you arrive in a virtual space with 200 people, the camera goes off and you start multi-tasking in the background.
A good rule of thumb is to keep the meeting to the same number of people as will have action items at the end of the meeting. The phrase “too many cooks in the kitchen” applies here which can lead to two very detrimental things that meetings can face. Passengers and Hijackers and I’ll discuss both later.
4. Scheduling the Meeting
One of my biggest pet peeves is when I get a Doodle poll to fill out my availability and it includes 175 time slots over the next 3 months. Stop doing that. As the organizer, pick a target week and leave it at that. If it doesn’t work out send a new poll but save your audience the time of checking all those boxes and hating you before the meeting even starts! One of my favorite softwares to use for scheduling a meeting is when2meet. It’s simple, easy and to the point.
If you are in an organization that spans multiple time zones make sure to be cognizant that you take that into account to avoid scheduling meetings too early or late in the day for a separate time zone.
5. Have an Agenda Ready Ahead of Time
It’s a cardinal sin to go into a meeting without an agenda handy. I’ve heard it so many times before, “I didn’t make an agenda because I wanted to just throw some ideas around.” Even if you are brainstorming, you have to set the expectations for what the meeting will be ahead of time. An agenda should outline the topics for the guests but also serve as a guide for you to guide the discussion.
One of the mistakes I see most often is that if people set a meeting for one hour, they try to fill the agenda with too many topics. Take two or three main ideas and make sure you build in time for questions and discussion. Try to make it so that the if you bust on time you end early, not late. Nobody complains when a meeting ends early. You can only do that if you build more time into your agenda than you need on purpose at the onset.
RELATED ARTICLE: Your Idea Doesn’t Suck, Your Presentation Missed the Mark
6. Designate a Note Taker
I for one absolutely cannot lead a discussion and take notes at the same time. One of those two things is going to suffer and for me it’s definitely the notes. Pro tip, don’t spring this on people at the meeting. It’s a thankless job and nobody likes to do it last minute. Ask someone ahead of time if they would be willing to do it so that they can prepare as well. Make sure they have a copy of the agenda, and know everything that you want out of the meeting ahead of time.
7. Distribute Materials
Give everyone the agenda and any handout materials ahead of time. This will allow people to process the information ahead of time and come to the meeting with their thoughts and ideas already organized. This will make for more productive conversation.
8. Set Expectations at the Onset
Setting the guidelines ahead of time is critical for an efficient meeting. This is especially true when it comes to two types of people that meetings tend to have. First there is the passenger. The one who has their camera off, doesn’t contribute to the conversation and is probably watching the game on their other screen.
In reality, if this happens, you probably didn’t need that person in the meeting in the first place. In some instances this is unavoidable if your audience is a certain group of people that they happen to be a part of. Keep the meeting as interactive as possible. If people know they will have to participate, they are more likely to stay engaged.
Finally we have to make sure the meeting doesn’t get hijacked by those one or two people that not only talk at every meeting but ramble on for days, desperately trying to get a point across that could have been just a couple of sentences. I am definitely guilty of this from time to time. Simply stating in the beginning that in the interest of time we will try to keep responses to a minute or two and that you will be moving the conversation along gives you the authority to jump in and keep things on track.
9. Drive the Discussion With Prompts
For each topic keep a list of two or three bullet points that you want to hit on the keep the conversation moving. This will not only keep you on topic but help to usher the thought process if folks hit a stumbling block.
One technique for doing this is called sentence stems. Your prompt might be, “When I think of what the very next action item we need to take to make this project successful is…” and then let your team finish that sentence or whatever sentence stem you come up with.
Since you were smart and built time into your agenda ahead of time, don’t be afraid to allow space for people to think. Many times we want to fill the dead air when in reality, stopping and waiting will allow thoughts to come to the forefront that wouldn’t have had a chance if you just keep steamrolling through to the next thing.
10. Don’t Leave Without Action Items
A failed meeting is one that ends without clear action items for what comes next. If you have a larger group, don’t be afraid to break into sub teams. Teams of just a few people will be more productive because they will all feel the need to pull their own weight. Larger teams tend to wait to see which one or two will take the lead and then let them do all the work. Avoid that by breaking into smaller units and making sure everyone is assigned an action item. If you can’t assign one, that person shouldn’t have been in the meeting in the first place.
Finally, follow up afterwards. Make sure everyone gets a copy of the notes, the action items, and a clear deadline when those action items need to be completed. This is also a chance to set the cadence for the next meeting.
The name of the game for an efficient meeting is to keep them as infrequent, small, and engaging as possible. When you pull this off, meetings won’t be a drag, but instead a source of energy, purpose, and a space to build trust that positively influences your workplace culture.
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