MProduct <Education>: How to Conduct Effective Meetings
Welcome to MProduct Education. The primary function of this series is to consistently provide aspiring product managers (PM’s) at the University of Michigan with tools that can be used throughout their career as a PM. Whether you have just learned the operating functions of a PM or are well into your career within the realm of product, our educational content will always be created for those hungry to push their boundaries of PM knowledge.
This piece’s focus: How to Conduct Effective Meetings
The Issue
The term product management signifies leadership. Being a leader means that we must learn not only how to work with our team, but also how to ensure that our team gets stuff done. Therefore, as product managers, the majority of our calendars will be booked with meetings. It is our job to make sure that these meetings are productive and worth everybody’s time. This is a challenge that leaders of all different sizes of teams face. The question then becomes, how do we as product managers conduct effective meetings?
7 Effective Meeting Hacks
Luckily, MProduct has some quick and clean tips on how to conduct excellent meetings. Here are 7 tips for how to hold an effective meeting:
1. DON’T have one.
If one is not needed. Often times, meetings that we hold as product managers do NOT require the entire team to be there. If the purpose of a meeting can be achieved just via a brief e-mail to select members, it is not worth everyone’s time to have a meeting. This piece of advice is certainly contrary to some beliefs that all teams must sit on the “same page” at all times. However, our friends at ProductPlan explain the logic behind this tip. If a product manager were to host a one-hour meeting for 9 people, they would be consuming not one-hour, but nine-hours of productivity, one for each of the members called to the meeting. This is an extremely large cost, and may not actually be worth communicating the information in-person. This is a crucial trade-off that we as product managers should keep in behind before holding a meeting.
2. DEFINE a crisp agenda.
To ensure efficiency across meetings, we MUST outline an agenda. This will keep our meeting focused and ensure that they do not drag longer than they need to be. A great way to create a clean, relevant agenda is by structuring it around three points:
I. The starting point. How is this product doing? What is going well? What could use some work?
II. The ending point. What outcomes do we want to achieve? By when?
III. The path in-between. What are the strategies, tactics, and resources we can use to achieve these outcomes?
Our agenda should reflect these three landmarks. We must refer to this agenda consistently to check up on progress.
3. SAY who’s responsible for what.
At the start of every meeting, we must make sure that all members who are present understand why they are present. Why attend something if you have no reason to be there? By going from person to person and verbally stating what each person is responsible for, we as product managers create much more meaningful meetings. This could look like:
“Brooke is going to be in charge of _______,”
“John promises that he will take on _______,”
Or ,“Nathan is qualified enough to tackle _______.”
Our team members are more likely to pay attention after having received an official role in the “grand plan” of things. They feel important, which increases engagement and results in greater productivity over time. This can all stem from simply making it verbally clear what each team member is responsible for. Plus, it saves us from wasting time repeating things in the future.
4. WRITE out long-term goals.
Long-term thinking through a goal-oriented approach is a method of development that never fails to create a successful team. We must constantly remind our team, clearly, what we are working towards. This keeps our team members both motivated and on-track. The best way to do accomplish this, is to physically write out our long-term goals every meeting. This not only dramatizes our goals, but also acts as a visual memory aid. Humans remember written ideas much better than they do verbalized ones. We can make sure our goals “stick” by presenting them in word form.
5. DOCUMENT the meeting.
This sounds simple and straightforward, but meeting minutes are our only reliable fallback source of information if we forget anything. Don’t leave it up to memory to remember everything. Meeting minutes should be written up and sent them out to attendees as a friendly reminder of the progress we have made. Here’s a free Google docs agenda/meeting minutes template, on us: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Q2QQiw1L_PtmcGtWeY5j1atWasSLZVlzCjBNMk9vUIk/edit?usp=sharing
6. GIVE amazing and memorable key takeaways.
At the end of every meeting, we must summarize everything in a way that is brief, executable, and exciting. This means listing takeaways, identifying action items, and assigning owners to each action item. When describing action items, we should always think about how we can make them as tangible as possible. Should George work on improving the look of the company’s mobile app? Or should George re-design the three-panel layout on the main page of the company’s mobile app? Be as specific and execution-focused as possible. Being too specific is always better than too vague. Once again, shortly after the meeting, product managers should send a terse, summarizing note to all meeting attendees.
7. BUILD relationships.
Finally, be human! Engineers, designers, and whomever else we may be managing are all human at the end of the day. The best way to get others to buy-into our ideas is to build connections with them. Networking, listening, and bantering are all vital to being a good leader in the product management role. We should always build trust with individuals who can propel us and our vision further. Furthermore, by fostering a culture of inclusion, diversity, and thought, we can create an excellent environment where everybody on our team wants to contribute to the greater vision. Once that happens, we as product managers have succeeded!
Overall, being straight to the point is crucial to conducting successful meetings within our product teams. Communication is an integral skill within the realm of product management, and the best managers understand how to employ great communication to hold efficient meetings. Additionally, having a set structure for every meeting will only set us up for success in the future. The more organized we are, the more effective our standup meetings are!
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As always, we are committed to creating the next generation of Product leaders and hope you will come join our MProduct community. If you want to keep up with what we are doing, follow us on Medium and LinkedIn, or check out our website here!
Go Blue!
MProduct Links:
Medium: https://medium.com/mproduct
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mproduct
Website: https://www.mproduct.org/
References:
Andre Theus. VP of Marketing at ProductPlan. “9 Meeting Tips for Product Managers.” Product Roadmap Software by ProductPlan, 26 Oct. 2019, https://www.productplan.com/9-meeting-tips-product-managers/.
Kao, Clement. “Effective Meetings for Product Managers.” Product Manager HQ, 10 Feb. 2019, https://www.productmanagerhq.com/2018/08/effective-meetings-for-product-managers/.
Khanna, Pranav. “How to Run a Product Team.” Medium, Product Management Insider, 10 June 2019, https://medium.com/pminsider/how-to-run-a-product-team-fdbee3385c3a.
