Spend less time in unproductive meetings

Management - Features

Monday, 03 March 2008

Research shows that the average business manager wastes three weeks a year in meetings that are a complete waste of time.

That doesn’t even include the ones that are just ineffective and unproductive. The most common problems faced in meetings are not sticking to the agenda and dominant people talking too much.

If you would like to spend less time in ineffective meetings, here are some practical tips for making your meetings more productive.

The value of preparation

It is common bad practice to schedule a meeting without the meeting owner or the participants making time to prepare.

This does not make good sense, when you consider that a half-day meeting for ten people equates to five man days of work.

Surely it is worth spending half a day preparing to make the best use of this time? If I had to suggest one thing that would massively increase the productivity of most meetings, it would be to make enough time to prepare.

Purpose, outcomes and outputs

I consider the clarification and alignment of purpose, outcomes and outputs to be the most critical part of the preparation I do for any meeting.

Purpose - Why have this meeting? How does it fit with the overall work of this group? What do you want to happen that wouldn't happen without this meeting? If the latter question was asked more often I think most meetings would get cancelled!
Outcomes - What do you want to have achieved by the end of the session? It is useful to consider the outcomes for both the whole meeting and the separate agenda items. All too often meetings have agendas with no defined outcomes. An agenda item might say “Agree budgets for 2008/09”, without real clarity about what needs to come out of the session or the level of detail required, let alone how the decisions will be made (but decision-making in meetings is a whole topic in itself).
Outputs - What documentation is required after the meeting? Who will it go to? How will it be used? So often time is wasted writing lengthy minutes from meetings, which never get read by anyone except the poor unfortunate who got landed with the task of writing them.

The final checkis to make sure that there is alignment between the outputs, outcomes and purpose of a meeting.

When these three things are clear and aligned it is the first step to a successful meeting.

Pre-meeting communication

Before any meeting I facilitate, I contact the participants in advance of the meeting to help me understand their expectations and any concerns.

I am a professional facilitator, however, and I appreciate that most busy managers do not have the time for this.

I would recommend that before any meeting the following is clearly communicated to everyone coming, to ensure a degree of alignment when people arrive at the meeting.

Purpose of the meeting - to explain the context and scope for the meeting.
Pre-work - anything you want people to think about or prepare to bring into the meeting. I am always very realistic about what people will do as pre-work though.
Outcomes - what are the specific things you are aiming to achieve?
Agenda - at least an overview, showing the timing of breaks.
Roles - it is often useful to clarify why certain members of staff have been invited and the specific role they will take in the meeting. When people understand this they are much more likely to commit to being at the meeting.
Logistics – where, when, dress code etc. Obvious though it may seem, a meeting is unlikely to start on time if people don’t know where it is.

Setting up productive meetings

Having prepared for a meeting well, starting a meeting by re-stating the outcomes, agenda, roles and ground rules is the best way to get everyone on the same page or to sense check if there is a misalignment of expectations.

If this information is presented on a chart or poster and kept up during the meeting it then provides a reference point to come back to if the meeting starts to go off track.

None of the advice above is rocket science, but it is amazing how few meetings have sufficient preparation, good pre-communication and an effective set up.

Given how much time business managers spend in meetings, I am surprised that more businesses don’t focus on meeting productivity as a source of increased business effectiveness.

These techniques can be applied to any kind of meeting, whether it is a board meeting or a one to one conversation and will produce improved results.

Katherine Woods is the author of ‘Meeting Magic – a practical guide for business managers who want to make their meetings productive’.