Meetings Meetings Meetings

How many times have you heard people complain about meetings?

Meetings large or small, formal or casual, can be one of the most productive means of communication and decision-making available to you. They can also be the most frustrating, expensive and unproductive waste of your time!

Sitting through a lousy meeting is almost like being in jail. Sitting for hour after hour in a boring, non-productive meeting while the work continues to pour in, back at your desk.

Maybe you saw the agenda and thought maybe this time – just this once – the meeting would be crisp and efficient and you might even get out on time. Then the dysfunctional behaviour that gets in the way of an effective meeting emerges.

Unsuccessful meetings can be a disaster – they’re unpleasant to be in, they’re ineffective, they’re a waste of time, and they create a huge productivity hole. If you look around the room in most corporate meetings, there’s a lot of money being burned by the minute.

So what exactly is dysfunctional meeting behaviour?

• People attend with no preparation;
• The meeting starts 15-minutes behind schedule and ends even later;
• The conversation wanders off topic;
• One or two people dominate the discussion;
• The group can't make a decision;

Ineffective meetings are almost certainly the biggest time waster in business today. So what is the answer?

The answer is to run effective meetings and to realise that a large part of what makes a meeting successful, occurs in the preparation phase. Although it may vary by committee, department or unit, there are two fundamental responsibilities expected of chairs or team leaders before a meeting takes place.

• Clarify purpose and aims:  A clearly stated purpose or aim describes the key decisions that must be made, or actions that must occur at the meeting. The purpose of a meeting should be stated at the top of the meeting agenda.
  
• Create an agenda:  An agenda is a framework that guides and supports the meeting. Agendas are like roadmaps or flight plans. An agenda helps focus the group's work toward achieving desired outcomes. Good agenda items provide focus and structure for a meeting.

Once these fundamentals are in hand, for a meeting to be a success, it is important to choose an appropriate meeting time. Set a time limit and stick to it, if possible. Remember, members have other commitments. They will be more likely to attend meetings if you make them productive, predictable and as short as possible.

It is also important to arrange the room so that participants face each and so that they are comfortable. Small rooms with too many people get stuffy and create tension. A larger room is usually more comfortable and tends to encourage individual expression.

A slightly radical idea is to have meetings with all delegates standing! Some business people swear by this approach, but it obviously has some limitations.

Of course, no matter how good a meeting is, there is an alternative: don't meet!

Avoid a meeting if the same information can be covered in a memo, e-mail or brief report. One of the keys to having more effective meetings is differentiating between the need for one-way information dissemination and two-way information sharing. To disseminate information you can use a variety of other communication media, such as sending an e-mail or posting the information on your company's intranet.

If you want to be certain you have delivered the right message, you can schedule a meeting to simply answer questions about the information you have sent. By remembering to ask yourself, "Is a meeting the best way to handle this?" you'll cut down on wasted meeting time and restore your group's belief that the meetings they attend are necessary.