Maximizing the Value of Your Meetings

Modern management couldn’t live without the meeting. It is a key tool for connecting and discussing issues with staff, advisors, customers, clients and others. Many meetings are increasingly being conducted across great distances, using teleconferences and video to connect geographically dispersed participants.

Yet, you would be hard pressed to find someone who thinks all of those meetings are effective and worth the time they take from their day. Meetings that never end, rarely reach a decision or include the wrong people seem to be a fact of life. However, almost any meeting can be improved through the consistent application of a few simple principals.

These four rules for maximizing the value of meetings will help you to get the most from your precious face-to-face time with colleagues while also minimizing the time you have to invest in meetings.

Rule Number 1: Clarity of Purpose

Always have a clear purpose for the meeting. You should identify the outcomes you are trying to achieve, who should be involved, and what topics you will need to discuss. This clarity of purpose will ensure that the meeting is focused on creating value rather than simply letting people vent or chat aimlessly.

You should also assess if the outcome you are trying to create is controversial or will require a lot of debate. Topics such as these are often very hard to resolve by phone unless the participants know each other well and have a high level of trust. If the issue is critical and the group has little history of working together, it probably makes sense to convene a face-to-face meeting to resolve it. The visual cues and camaraderie of in person meetings make it much easier to resolve knotty issues.

Standing meetings with no clear purpose are the biggest time wasters of all, in my experience. Get rid of them unless each one has a specific, valuable, outcome.

Rule Number 2: Set an Agenda

Every meeting must have an agenda. This is typically the responsibility of the person who convenes the event. An agenda does not have to be elaborate but should state why it is being held, what you hope to achieve, and the topics you envision covering in pursuit of that outcome. The agenda should also list who will be participating in the meeting.

An agenda such as this helps create common understanding of why the meeting is being held and sets expectations for what will be covered. People can prepare better with this information and be ready for a productive conversation.

Status reports should rarely, if ever, be delivered during a meeting. Send out text updates of no more than a single page and then start with an agenda item asking if there are any questions or issues to be raised based on the text reports. This alone can dramatically shorten and even eliminate many of your meetings. If you do only one thing, do this.

Rule Number 3: Appoint a Facilitator

This rule is the secret sauce that makes sure the rest of the rules are actually implemented. No agenda is going to help if it is immediately jettisoned at the start of each meeting. A facilitator helps to make sure the group stays focused on your outcomes and avoids spiraling into minutia.

The key actions a facilitator should take during a meeting include:

Keeping people on the agenda;
Appointing individuals to resolve specific issues that come up but cannot be resolved in short order;
Asking silent participants if they have anything to add;
Opening and closing the meeting with a focus on your common purpose and next steps to take.

The facilitator does not have to be the senior person in the room or on call. It should be someone who can referee the discussion without being overly vested in the outcome being decided. Therefore, it is good to have a few people who are skilled facilitators who can serve in the role when others have a strong position and need to be able to debate freely.

Rule Number 4: Close Strong

Finally, always close strong. Summarize the points that were covered, decisions that were made or deferred, assigned accountabilities and next steps. This gives everyone an opportunity to clarify or question the results of the meeting. It also protects you from having to cover the exact same ground the next time you get together.

Applying the rules above to your meetings will reclaim hour of your time each week and make your remaining meetings much more productive and efficient.

+1 (410) 742-9088 | david@highcontext.com

High Context Consulting, LLC