Stop The Meeting Madness
Meetings! Some love them. Others don’t. Either way, they are an inevitable part of any functioning organization. When led effectively, meetings are well worth the time investment.
However, we all know they can easily become time-wasters and energy drainers. When we pay attention to the attendance list, form a strict agenda in advance, and conclude with action items, (good) meetings can unleash new insights and promote productivity.
Attendees
We’ve probably all attended meetings and had the thought, “Why am I even here?” When thinking through the meeting attendees, you need to take a step back and ask: Who actually needs to be in the meeting? What do I want from each person there? What value would they be bringing to the meeting?
Aside from wasting people’s time, too many attendees in a meeting tends to create a “hiding-in-a-crowd” feeling and discourages active participation. In addition to filtering your invite list, let people know what you need from them in the meeting.
When people have a role or task to engage in, meetings feel like an honor rather than an obligation. Fewer people who know exactly why they are in the meeting will create an environment for creativity and productivity.
Agenda
If you’re trying to have a productive and efficient meeting, you need to start with an agenda. If you’re struggling to come up with an agenda, consider whether the meeting is even necessary. Perhaps this is one of those meetings that would be more effective as an email instead. Once you’ve got your agenda, send it out ahead of time to attendees, particularly if you need them to brainstorm or form an opinion on a complicated issue.
You can capitalize on your limited time together by giving attendees a list of questions to ponder and investigate well ahead of time. When you try to introduce a complicated question during a meeting, attendees will quickly try to process the question and generate ideas on the spot. Better ideas are likely to come from more extensive processing time prior to the meeting.
It’s one thing to set and send an agenda, but it’s a whole other thing to follow through with it. This can be difficult if you have a particularly chatty group. As the leader, you need to set up and enforce some norms for meeting efficiency and success.
Perhaps you devote the first 5 minutes of a meeting to non-business-related chatting (a segue, if you will), and then turn your attention to the heart of the meeting. Even so, you may have people who have a difficult time staying on track. Record their tangents, but make it clear they belong in a separate meeting. It’s your job as the leader to keep the meeting focused.
Action Items
Once the meeting is over, you should conclude by sending each attendee a summary of what’s happened and a list of action items to follow up on. Each action item should have a due date and a person responsible for completing it.
We recommend discussing the summary and action items at the end of the meeting, and then following up with an email directly after the meeting ends. This provides meeting attendees with a written record of what happened during the meeting and reminds them of their responsibilities.
If you were wise enough to record the meeting, you could also include a link to the recording in that email as well.
Brevity is Wit
If you’ve managed to stick to your agenda and your attendees all came prepared to the meeting, there’s a high likelihood it’s been very productive.
If you find that there’s time left on the clock, that is not the time to spend starting on new action items. Any extra time is a gift you can give back to your attendees. Don’t forget to thank them for their time and their ideas. Then, end the meeting early.
Wrapping Up
By auditing the attendance list, setting and following an agenda, and ending with action items, you can make every minute of every meeting matter. Over the course of a year, following these best practices can have a major impact on a company’s bottom line.
Additionally, when enough meeting leaders implement these changes, the norms and attitudes around meetings will begin to shift. Attendees will start to expect more from meetings and will ultimately bring more energy, ideas, and expertise to them.
Our Etho platform helps companies and leaders like you be more strategic about meetings. When you join Etho you will unleash a competitive advantage through saved money, saved time, and better ideas. Book a demo today to see Etho in action! We’ll be sure to keep it a short meeting.
