The most important 10 minutes of every meeting
If you can only do one thing today to improve every meeting you run, this article is for you. If you are already doing this, then do it more consistently, do it better, and you’ll improve your meetings.
That one thing is to think about, write, and communicate an objective for every meeting you run.
If you have no time for any other improvements or preparation, at least spend 10 min. before you send a meeting invite and include a single sentence about why the meeting exists. This is incredibly powerful because it gives you something to always fall back on to make the meeting effective. It gives the participants something to anchor on to help you through the meeting.
Many times I’ve found myself woefully underprepared for a meeting. Even at the last minute (i.e. the first minute of the meeting), writing a clear objective on a whiteboard for everyone to reference can be a game changer for any given meeting.
How do you write a good objective?
I don’t think there’s a magic answer here, but I do think there are some practices that can help you do this if you’ve never done it before. It can feel almost presumptuous to write your first meeting objective. You might ask yourself if I am really that confident that this is the reason we’re meeting. But if you’re willing to spend thousands of dollars of your organizations money in a meeting, then feeling some stress about writing an objective is appropriate.
Step 1: Ask yourself some questions
There are three questions you should ask yourself in order to form a good objective
Why does this meeting exist?
What prompted this meeting in the first place?
Why should everyone else attend this meeting?
The goal here is for you to resolve in your own mind why the meeting is happening. If you have clarity on that, the rest is just wordsmithing. If you can’t answer that clearly or be confident in why the meeting exists, no objective you write will ever be as valuable as you want it to be.
One of the most effective points of reflection is what prompted the meeting in the first place. Did it come from a problem? Is it a part of a system of working that you are implementing for the first time or changing? Did someone else ask you to set the meeting? Is there a specific decision that has to be made?
Answering these questions in your own mind even if you never write out a formal objective will help you. It will give you a point to always come back to in order to guide and direct the meeting.
Step 2: Write a draft objective
The next step is to take the confidence and clarity of mind you’ve formed above and write a draft objective. Here, some formality helps. Start with “The purpose of this meeting is to…” and write whatever comes to the top of your mind. Write more than one sentence. Write whatever you need to in order to express your purpose for the meeting.
This is like 4th grade writing class. I was terrible at this. It takes practice. No one will see it. Just write what is on your mind. Don’t edit, don’t proof read, don’t spell check, just write. I know it hurts, it’s hard, it isn’t good, and there’s no way this will be right. Just write.
Step 2b: Write another one
You don’t have to do this. But I bet you’ll want to. If you immediately think of edits to your meeting objective draft, DON’T MAKE THEM!!! Just write another one. This helps you take the change you see and cascade it through the rest of the statement without having the sunk cost fallacy driving you to keep certain parts of the first one you like. So often we want to change one word or two while writing, but keep the ‘good stuff’. However, words need to fit together and flow and often times swapping out a few words and trying to make the whole feel right is harder than we think.
Step 3: Edit based on your own perspective
Pick the one you like and start editing. Typically this means cutting things. If the statement has an expression of what you’ll be doing in the meeting, cut it out. That’s what an agenda is for. If the meeting says who will be in the meeting, cut it out, that’s what the attendee list is for. If the meeting invite says when it will be, cut it out, that’s what the calendar is for. If the invite includes multiple things, try to narrow it down to one clear objective. This isn’t always possible, but often a statement with multiple objectives either points to the need for more than one meeting or a higher order objective that needs to be clearly understood. By stating these sub-objectives, the attendees don’t actually think clearly about what we’re trying to accomplish.
Step:4: Edit by thinking of all attendees
Ok, now a fun step. Take the objective you’ve written and imagine reading it out loud (which is what you should do to start the meeting) to every one of the people you are going to invite to the meeting. This will do two things. First, it will help you know how clear your objective is. Can everyone understand it at the same level? Are you using certain loaded words or terms that need to be defined or expanded on in the statement? This can help you put the final touches on the objective, but has the ancillary benefit of clarifying two other parts of the meeting — supporting content and attendee list. If you read the objective in your mind to a potential attendee and you realize that they wouldn’t understand it or be able to participate, then you have gained a great deal before even sending the invite. You now know they either shouldn’t be there or you need to prepare them ahead of time for the meeting.
Step 5: Revisit the objective
The final step in writing a meeting objective is to revisit it before the meeting. I think it is better to change the objective of the meeting at the very last minute (i.e. right before you read it to kick off the meeting) if the change makes it more accurate, than it is to start a meeting with a bad objective. Depending on the meeting, you’ll prep to varying degree. Revisiting the objective and updating it as needed can help ensure that anything that changed before the meeting is captured to help make the meeting as relevant as possible.
What’s next?
We touched on some other aspects of a meeting that can make it effective. We’ll expand on these in future posts. From agenda setting to meeting timing and length, we’ll try to give you to the tools you need to level up your meeting skills and grow your career! In the meantime, make sure you know why a meeting exists and write out the objective before you start!
