Running great meetings

Meetings have a bad name. It’s fair enough, we’ve all sat through poorly run meetings where time seems to stand still, where you aren’t making a contribution, and where no decision is reached despite all the talking.

But, the issue isn’t with the meetings themselves. The issue is how they are run.

You see, well-run meetings can be a thing of beauty. Some of my favourite times at work are, gasp, at meetings. Product management guild sessions. Weekly exec meetings. 30-day sessions.

As product managers, we spend a lot of time in meetings. In fact, I often tell people that, for me at least, meetings are the job. Product managers should treat running effective meetings as a skill to get better at. So, I have collected a few tips and tricks on running meetings that might be a good memory jog.

If you are running a meeting:

1. First and foremost, identify your objective. What must be accomplished by the end of the meeting that couldn’t be accomplished without bringing these people together?
2. Use this objective to create an agenda. This doesn’t have to be over-engineered, a series of bulletpoints will do.
3. Depending on the type of meeting, you might want to estimate an amount of time for each agenda item. Having a limited amount of time will help everyone stay on topic.
4. Always bring together the smallest number of people, based on the objective and agenda. When you run a meeting, approach your responsibility as if you are being handed a portion of someone’s life.
5. Send out the objective and agenda beforehand, ideally as part of the meeting invite, but with plenty of time for attendees to digest.
6. Control lateness. One of our Property squads does this by placing a tick next to someone’s name if they turn up late to a stand-up. Five ticks = morning tea for the squad. I will often say as a joke that latecomers owe me a $1 for every minute they are late, which is my way of making it clear that I’m not cool with it. (Andreessen Horowitz actually do this for real, except it’s $10 per minute).
7. Run the meeting from the agenda. Sometimes I bring along my TimeTimer to keep people to time — mostly when it’s a large group where there are lots of “talkers” or people with strong opinions.
8. Make sure you capture the actions from the meeting, and communicate those actions afterwards. Oftentimes I’ll use our wiki to record what took place, and to assign actions.
9. Sometimes, it can be useful to start a meeting with the Rules of Engagement. This is usually only necessary when it’s a large group discussion, in which case I usually run the meeting differentlyanyway (for example, getting people to break into small groups). However, making a few things explcit, like ‘Silence = consent”, can make things more efficient. Of course, you can always use Robert’s Rules of Order ;-P

If you are attending a meeting:

• Ask for the agenda of each meeting beforehand
• Ask the organiser if you must attend and why
• Ask yourself How much value will I get from this meeting? and How much value can I contribute to this meeting?
• If the meeting organiser fails to end her session with specific next actions, take the initiative to ask what happens next

What other tips would you add?