To Meet, or Not to Meet?
How many meetings do you have in an average work day?
What types of meetings are these? Status updates? Staff roundtables? Project kickoffs? A debrief meeting about a meeting you just had so you can plan for the next meeting?
And how many of these meetings are actually productive? When you leave the meeting, do you say to yourself, “well that was really useful. Glad that meeting actually happened!”
Or, do you utter these words, “well that’s 60 minutes of my time I’ll never get back. Now I’m even more behind and will have to do overtime to get caught up!”
So you might think that I hate meetings and think they are useless. Actually, I don’t hate meetings. I believe meetings are even necessary. Conducted effectively, meetings can clarify confusion, remove obstacles and most importantly, ensure critical decisions are made so people leave knowing exactly what their roles and responsibilities are.
But as we all know, most meetings are not productive. Why? Well, do any of these sound familiar?
- “What’s the agenda for this meeting?” i.e., why are we here?
- “Pardon me, can you repeat your question? I wasn’t listening ‘coz I was answering an email.”
- “Can you send me the reference files so I can read them and then circle back?”
- “Oh was I supposed to do that after the last meeting? Well sorry but I’ve been in so many back-to-back meetings that I haven’t had time to get to it.”
So how do you get out of the dreadful meeting hamster wheel? Read on…
1. Don’t Engage in Drive-by Meetings
You know what I’m talking about right? You’re sitting in your cubicle, totally focused on that report that you need to present tomorrow. Out of nowhere, someone sticks his head into your cubicle and says “Do you have a quick 5 minutes for this 911 issue I have? Please please?”
We both know these are never just “5 minute questions” and most of the time, whatever issue your co-worker might have can be answered with a quick Google search. But these drive-by interruptions are productivity killers… for you, not for your co-workers. They get their questions answered but meanwhile, you’ve fallen behind and will need to work overtime to finish that report.
So what to do? First, do not become the dreaded drive-by nuisance yourself! People know who they are and they are not popular. But if approached by one of them, politely say “I’m in the middle of something. Send me an email and I’ll take a look in xxx minutes.” Be firm. Pushy people, by nature, will not stop on their first attempt. They will try to get their way — “Please, this will only take 5 minutes, I promise.” Don’t cave in. Be firm and politely let them know you have a deadline but will be happy to look at their question at a time that works for you (not for them!) After a few times, even the pushy people will get the message and start to respect your time.
Another reason for this delay tactic? When you do get back to your colleagues, 9 times out of 10, they will have already solved the problem themselves, either by bugging someone else or they simply just figured out a way themselves. But this just goes to show you that the “drive-by meeting” they wanted was totally unnecessary and by being willing to help on your terms, you’ve not only protected your valuable time but hopefully, also trained your co-worker to have more respect for yours and other people’s time.
2. Ask Yourself, “To Meet, or Not to Meet?”
Before scheduling any meeting, ask yourself, “can my questions be answered via email, chat or other collaboration tools such as Miro, Asana, etc.?” It’s been said that most meetings can be phone calls, most phone calls can be emails, and most emails can be chat messages.
There are really only four real meeting purposes:
- Prioritization & Clarification: e.g., project kickoff or project planning, not project doing
- Learning: e.g., project post mortem, post event debrief or feedback gathering
- Collaboration & Brainstorm
- Decision Making
Many other types of meetings, especially status updates or roundtable information sharing can be done using effectively-designed project management tools such as Smartsheet, Monday.com, Asana, or just a simple spreadsheet.
There are times when frequently status updates are unavoidable, e.g., short-term, quick turnaround projects. In those situations, adopting the IT model of a daily 15-minute scrum meeting can be very effective. These short scrum meetings are designed for “issues only”. Team members only need to speak up if they have a showstopper or are waiting for someone else’s overdue deliverable. If you’re on track, there is no need for your status update.
3. Meeting Invites: Be Clear. Be Brief. Be Gone
Of course there will be times when meetings are necessary. As the meeting organizer, you can help to increase your meeting’s effectiveness by setting out a clear meeting objective and agenda. I will provide a bonus tip at the end that will make you a meeting rock star!
There is nothing more annoying than showing up to a meeting only to find out during the meeting that you’re not the right person for the meeting. If only the meeting organizer had shared an agenda ahead of time, you could’ve notified the organizer of this error, or forwarded the invite to the correct individual. What a waste of everyone’s time!
The reality is, meeting invites without a clear agenda is more common than you think. Why? Because it takes time to put together a good agenda. It has taken me 30+ minutes sometimes to put together a clear and concise agenda, especially for large, cross functional meetings. But it’s well worth your time. It will make you look organized and prepared, will help you run your meetings effectively and productively and most importantly, it will give you credibility as someone who is respectful of other people’s time who doesn’t schedule frivolous meetings.
So what does a good meeting invite look like? Here is an example for an upcoming marketing campaign. Clarity is key, but so is brevity. The invite only needs to contain enough information for attendees to determine two things:
- Am I the right attendee for this meeting?
- Do I need to read or prepare anything in advance?
Example of a good meeting invite:
End Note:
Make sure you include this line in all meeting invites: “If I have missed any critical team members, please forward the invite to them. Thank you.” This is a safe, catch-all sentence that helps you ensure the right participants are in the meeting. Having clear objectives and agenda will help invitees gauge if they are the right participant, or if they should forward the invite to someone else.
Bonus Tip:
So what is the bonus tip that will make you a rock star? Include presenters’ names in the agenda so that they know they’re expected to speak. For example:
By adding people’s names to the agenda item, it’s a cue for them that they are expected to speak and so they need to be prepared. If they’re not prepared, well, it is abundantly clear to all participants who dropped the ball.
4. Watch the Clock. Document Discussion. Assign Action Items
What percentage of meetings do you attend that is facilitated by someone who tracks meeting time and agenda items, documents action items and assigns tasks? Probably less than 30%? Not doing these things is probably the number one reason why people hate meetings — they end up being an invitation for gabby people to just ramble on, whether they have something valuable to contribute or not, and then everyone ends up walking away without a clear idea of next steps.
If you are the facilitator, it might be challenging to take on all these tasks — keep track of the discussions, be the time keeper, document action items and assign tasks. You might want to ask someone else to share the duties with you. Make sure you ask them in advance of the meeting and be clear about who’s doing what.
Bonus Tip:
Send out a meeting summary 1–2 days after the meeting, recapping key discussion points, key decisions made, action items and task owners. To ensure action items are indeed actioned, advise task owners that you will be following up with them on their assigned tasks.
5. Ensure decisions are made and documented
How many times has someone asked “what did we decide in that meeting about…?” Questions like that are sure signs of an ineffective meeting. Don’t rely on yours or other people’s “good memories”. Even if you have an exceptional memory, one week and 15 meetings (using a conservative measure of 3 meetings per work day) later, they all start to blend into each other!
What’s the solution? Document! This brings points #3 and #4 together — have a good agenda, assign a meeting facilitator and task tracker, and use a tool (such as Smartsheet or similar) to keep a record of discussion points and decisions. Having a “project tracking sheet” of some sort helps to keep the meeting on agenda and minimize the “verbal diarrhea” that can happen when there isn’t any visual context for people to follow.
But remember this — use the tool for good, not for evil! An effective project tracking sheet doesn’t need to contain 100 columns and 1000 rows! Follow the KISS principle — Keep It Simple Stupid. Only discuss the critical points, update the key statues of those points (due date, task status, etc.). If you must have a large spreadsheet, hide the columns that the meeting participants don’t need to see. This will help you move through and update the sheet more quickly, and minimize distracting questions that can quickly derail a meeting. Questions like “oh I noticed you have xxx in column H, what do you mean by that?”
Find a place in the project sheet to document key decisions — this can be a general “Notes” column associated with a line item, e.g., “Select ad agency for campaign”. Put the ad agency’s name in the “Notes” column and voila, that decision is now documented in eternity!
6. Make sure your entire team agrees to the meeting etiquette
This brings me to my last point — call a meeting to obtain alignment and buy-in from your entire team. Did I say call a meeting? Yes! If you go back to point #2, you’ll see that this fits perfectly within the “is this a real meeting” rule. It is critical that you allow all team members to voice their opinion on what they think can improve meeting effectiveness, because in the end, unless people feel their input is heard and valued, you will not get the buy-in you need from everyone to adopt the new process. Every team and every organization has unique practices and processes, so it’s impossible to have a set of “meeting rules” that will apply to every organization. But two things should remain true:
- We have too many meetings and that’s taking up value time from team members to do their work
- How can we develop a process to ensure meetings are necessary and productive
With that, you can call a meeting, table your concerns, invite discussions & ideas, document them, and then make a decision on what your collective, agreed-upon, new meeting etiquette looks like.
About me:
I managed a marketing operations team whose main job is to execute campaigns. My team launched 300+ campaigns annually. I’ve had many days when I was in meetings solid from 8am to 4:30pm. Those days absolutely drained me. I loved my job but absolutely hated most of the pointless meetings. The learnings here are based on my own experience, and also things I learned from other meeting masters. Every once in a while, when you’re in a meeting run by a master, it will make your day! I hope you become the one that makes someone else’s day!
Let me know if these insights have helped create more productive and sane days for you.
