As a Program and Project Manager, a good chunk of many of my days are spent in meetings. Unfortunately, allot of these meetings are not very well run and end up becoming a hidden tax that is levied on the meeting participants and their organization. Please don't get the wrong idea. I'm not against meetings. Quite the contrary, well planned and executed meetings are an effective way to move a project forward.
I attend allot of meetings that run astray and lose their effectiveness. In some cases, meeting objectives aren't clear or the participants run off on tangents like wild dogs chasing a juicy bone. And more often than not the meeting organizer isn't always dilligent about making sure that action items are followed up on. The net result is wasted effort, time, and $. Multiple this by the number of meetings that occur in most organizations and well it becomes pretty apparent why running effective meetings is critically important.
In my experience there are a few critical things that need to be attended to in order or meetings to be effective. There are other fine points but the ones below are the most important in my experience.
1. Have objectives and an agenda: Without objectives and an agenda, meeting participants have no idea why they should show up or how they can contribute. Further, participants won't know how to prepare for the meeting so that they can make it as productive as possible.
As a meeting organizer you owe the participants clear objectives and an agenda. If the organizer doesn't offer this up then as invitees, each of us own the responsibility of following up with the organizer to find out what the meeting is about.
2. Start On-Time: I can hear the comments already. But my last meeting ended late. Okay, sure but I get it but I don't buy this excuse.
Whether you're running a meeting or attending a meeting, it's your responsibility to attend meetings on time. You can help this along by watching the clock and using time wisely. If you attend an hour meeting, consider wrapping up five or so minutes early. Bring this point up early and let the meeting organizer and other participants know. I doubt the other participants will complain. Heck, you may even be a hero even if for just a few minutes. Remember High School when the period bell rang and gave each of us a few minutes break and travel time to your next class? Maybe, as a meeting organizers and participants, we should apply this same concept to our meetings?
3. Meeting Notes: If you take the time to gather more than two people to discuss a matter of importance then you owe it to those that attended (and those that couldn't) to publish meeting notes. Adult retention is not that great. Actually, it's pretty low and allot of information gets lost due to hour our brains work. Sorry to burst your bubble but very few of us have a photographic memory. And with all of the meetings and details that need to be tracked, writing things down is important because it frees your mind to think about other more interesting and impactful things.
So publish notes and make sure to check on the action items after the meeting. Even better, create a master action log and transfer all of the action items into a project action log so that you can track all of the open items in one place.
Getting meetings right is really important. As professionals, we attend allot of them and even small improvements in how they are run can have a big impact on getting stuff done!
Cheers,
Todd
