Make your Meetings more Productive

I have conducted meetings which turned out to be long, unfocussed, exhausting and highly sub-optimal.

Ever been in a meeting that feels like this?

There were some meetings riddled with awkward silences, and some where I lacked surety and conviction on why I’m even conducting the meeting. My lack of surety reflected in the other attendees too, leading to half-hearted responses, uncomfortable pauses and a restlessness to get out of the meeting.

So I retrospected on a few such meetings to come up with a way to ensure my meetings are water-tight, laser-focused, time-bound and productive. Here are my realisations:

1. Two types of meetings
2. Preparation is the key to success

Two types of meetings

I realised that meetings are usually conducted for 1 or both of the following reasons:

1. Information transfer
2. Decision making

Information transfer meetings

As the name suggests, these are meetings where information is to be shared among attendees. These are status updates, daily stand-ups, product demo presentations, AMAs, interviews etc. They’re a great way to make sure everyone involved is on the same page.

How to ensure Information transfer meetings are effective?
One of the best ways to make sure information transfer meetings are effective is to decide the Questions to be answered in the meeting beforehand. A very good example of this is the Daily Scrum meeting of the Agile product development framework: Scrum. It has a fixed format with 3 questions which participants have to answer daily:

1. What did you do yesterday?
2. What will you do today?
3. Are you stuck anywhere?

This gives immense clarity to the participants on the structure of the meeting and they can prepare their answers well in advance — making the meetings short and sweet (ideally just 15 minutes).

Another example of an information transfer meeting could be a Mentor meeting. Let’s say you have reached out to a senior industry expert, requesting her guidance. You have a meeting scheduled with her, and you’re anxious to not waste her precious time.

A great way to ensure she’s mentally prepared and you get the answers you’re looking for is: Send her a list of questions, few hours before the meeting. Tell her this is what you want to discuss. It has a few clear advantages:

1. It indicates you care enough to not want to waste her time
2. She will appreciate your sincere effort in making the meeting a success
3. Since she will get to think through in advance, the quality of her answers will be far better than what you could get from an ad-hoc conversation.

In short, for an information transfer meeting, writing down the Questions to be answered, inevitably makes it more productive.

Decision making meetings

This is the second kind of meetings, where the goal is to make a decision or gather information to help make a decision. These could be Sprint Planning meetings where the scope of work for the next week is to be decided, or Budget Planning meetings where the monthly budget will be worked out. Whatever the context, these meetings have 2 common elements:

1. The decision makers
2. The advisors

Decision makers are the ones who take the final call at the end of discussion, considering all the viewpoints that are shared — typically team leaders or meeting hosts. Advisors are the ones who share their opinions, advice or expertise on the subject to guide the decision makers.

How to ensure Decision making meetings are effective?

1. Make up your mind first
   If you’re the decision maker, it’s best to make up your own mind before the meeting. Answer the question: “What would you have decided, if no one else was available to give you suggestions?”
2. In the meeting, get perspectives & opinions
   Use the actual meeting to say “This is what I was thinking we should do, what do you think?”. Get perspectives and blindspots which you may have missed. Consider or discard the inputs as you deem fit. The new information you got from the meeting will either reinforce your original decision or alter it with valid arguments. Either ways, you’ve made progress.
3. If you’re the decision maker, you do the homework
   The decision maker is the one closest to the decision being made. No one else is going to put as much thought, mindshare or research behind the decision as you will. Don’t use meetings as a substitute for the efforts you would personally have to take for the decision. Rather, use the meeting as a supplementary way to get ideas and perspectives you hadn’t thought of, thus enriching your decision making process.

Preparation is the key to success

Lastly, whether it is an information transfer meeting or a decision making one, a common denominator for success is preparation. Taking time out before the meeting for the following points, goes a long way in making it a success:

1. Ask yourself “Why am I conducting this meeting?”
2. Come up with the Objective or Agenda of the meeting, by answering the above question
3. Write down the Questions or Decisions to be discussed in the meeting
4. Share the Agenda well in advance with the participants
5. Ask them to write down their thoughts on the discussion points, before the meeting

In my experience, a well-planned meeting quite often turns out to be a well-executed one.

I hope some of my learnings here will help you optimise your meetings, make them less lengthy, more focussed, and significantly more productive.