I’ve been writing about meetings off and on for the past year or so.  Feel like
a bit of a fool.  I keep writing about how to do them better.  I even wrote a
series of 3 eBooks on creating high performing meetings… but no one bought
them :(   There just hasn’t been that much interest.  I woke up this week,
not from sleeping, but consciously on the topic of meetings.  Let me tell you
what popped for me.

Most people at work have a few favorite complaints about meetings.  You
probably have your list and have heard these from others as well:
- They take too long, not a clear agenda, no one cuts long-winded X off
- Meetings take up to big a part of their day, makes it hard to get things
  done
- People go to meetings to have status, something on the schedule, not 
  because they necessarily create value

But at the end of the day, most of us don’t get serious about changing meetings.

Why?  Well its funny, but meetings have been around since all the way back
to Garden - remember that interesting one with God, Adam, Eve and the fig
leaves. Meetings, despite all the problems, meet some important status,
social, comfort and communication needs.  They grease the political wheels
in every corporation I’ve worked with.

Meetings aren’t going away anytime soon.  Even if they are outdated in the
21st century as a way to communicate information, analyze data and make decisions.

So here’s what I thought this week, as I heard one more person talk about
how little people get done at their company… because everyone is attending
meetings all day long.  I think they described their organization as having
a “meeting culture.”

I thought, “What if you don’t improve meetings?”  What if you just leave
them be?  Meetings were around long before I started working, and they will
be here long after I quit working.  If you Google it, the estimates are that
between 11 million and 25 million meetings occur every day in the US alone.

Then I started thinking, what if  you wanted to create this dynamic
interchange between people at work?  What if it had to run at the pace
that everything else is happening?  What if it had to allow people to merge
seamlessly in a conversation,  not have one person at a time consume
large amounts of time?

What if we needed a different image, a different story to approach this type
of interaction.   What if we called them, saw them, operated in them as…
drum roll…. “Roundabouts!”

What if people participated in Roundabout interactions like they do when
driving their car?  I mean no one parks their car in a roundabout, nor do
they endlessly go in circles.  The key is to merge into a fast moving paced
sequence and exit when you don’t need to be there any longer.

What if roundabouts only occur when you need to get people coming from
different vantage points, circling the topic and then redirected in the new
direction?  What if roundabouts couldn’t occur without a convergence,
a decision to be made?  What if Roundabouts were solely focused on
coordinating effort, and getting the input and updates from multiple
people to allow you to make the best decision, and it all had to keep moving.

What if you didn’t sit in a roundabout?  What if you stood up in these
interactions?  What if you had sort of portable lecterns that people
grabbed so they could stand and still work with their notes, type on
their laptop, write on their notepad?

I told my wife that I wanted to go into the business of building portable
Roundabout stands that would fold up in the corner, but then stand up
like music stands, but flat at the top.  She suggested I not got into
manufacturing just yet.  She’s good at discerning enthusiasm and
business demand.  She didn’t write the eBooks on meetings, I did

Bottom Line:

What if we created new rules:
1. Go to meetings to be seen, be heard, be supportive, stay current and
101 other reasons, but if you want to get things done…
2. Go to a Roundabout.  My term, for  a new interaction structure that
supports multiple people rapidly addressing a series of issues, and then
taking off, with the key being concise, short, interactions, spaced exchanges
and clear exits. 

Tell me what you think.

OK, imagine you’re leading the meeting at 4pm today and you’d like to get
it to finish in 30 minutes instead of an hour, while still covering everything
that needs to be addressed.  What do you do in the meeting? 

I’m guessing what you are thinking, and actually you just missed it.  What? 
Go back, before the meeting and let me show  you something I’ve learned.

Have  you noticed how that saying things concisely is not a skill or
talent liberally given to all?  OK, that registers, right?

How about this one.  Have you noticed the number of people that feel
the need to say a point two or three times before finishing? 

What’s with that?  I’ll explain in second, but the point I wanted to make is
very few people efficiently present, discuss and conclude in a concise manner. 

OK, so people aren’t concise.  But that’s only part of it.  But let’s just guess
for a moment.  Does that mean most people take let’s say 3x to make
presentation or a point in a meeting, as it should take if they were concise?
You got it.  Did you notice the 3x?  That’s a big difference, but there’s more.

Let’s say someone is relatively concise and they get through what they want
to say in one pass.  Let’s say they talk for 5 minutes to present their point. 
That would be roughly 1 to 1.5 pages of information if they were to write it out.
Do you know how long it takes you to read  a page to a page and a half?  It
takes approximately 1 minute. 

So let’s add this up.  By being verbally tangential and/or repetitive, most people
use 3 times the amount of meeting time that should be required to present
a point.  And, get this – if they were to write it out, it would actually take 1/5
the time to read as they are requiring time on the meeting floor.

Those are big numbers.  1/3 the time.  1/5 the time.  What if those were
additive?  Let see if it normally requires me 10 minutes to talk through
a point, then if I was really concise I might get that to 3 minutes, but
actually if I printed it out, it would only require the other participants
a minute or less to come up to speed.  From 10 minutes to 1 minute.

So what’s the catch?   Why doesn’t everyone submit their topic, the facts,
what they want, etc. in writing? 

Big drum roll…………  How would you fill that in?  Remember this could
mean you will get through that meeting at 4pm or much sooner.  So don’t
dodge.

The answer, like most things in the world, is that nothing is free, especially
higher performance and in the case of meetings it means that people
have to spend more time preparing for the meeting, instead of showing up
and winging it, joining the discussion… oh boy here we go again.

Ok, so tip 13b is succintly this… -  Have people present their topic
in a written form and save the dialogue for Q&A, discussion and final decisions.

But wait a moment, doesn’t that mean everyone who presents will have
to spend more time getting ready for a meeting?  Yes it does.  And let’s
look at the math on that one as well.  If it takes you an hour to write up
your presentation, which moves your presentation from the 10 minute
meeting spot mentioned above to a 1 minute read and let’s say there are
10 people in the meeting. 

If I’m that presenter it took one hour out of my schedule, but I saved
the group of 10, 9 minutes.  So I traded 60 minutes of preparation for an
90 minutes of savings in the meeting.  I’m still up, even though the
number’s don’t as overwhelmingly attractive.  Actually John Tropman,
in his book, Making Meetings Work, reports the average is more like two
to one.  Two hours of savings for every one hour spent in meeting preparation. 

There’s a host of other benefits from having the initial presentation for each
agenda topic written out.  Better focus, better outcomes, better meeting
process… I could go on, buy you are probably already ahead of me.

Oh, and that point about why do people say things 2 – 3 times.  It actually
has a number of roots.  Sometimes it’s a:
- Comfort thing, they keep reworking the material until they feel comfortable
they not left anything out… that you understand,
- Control thing, I’m going to hold the floor awhile, I kinda like it,
- Waiting for the brain to catch up, repeating is a way to allow the brain to
catch up and figure out what we’re going to say next or be asked next.
There are a lot more possibilities, but that’s three I commonly see.

Bottom Line:
One especially effective way to reduce the time spent in your next meetings
is to require participants to submit the presentation (on the screen via a
projector or printed, either is fine) in a written instead of verbal form.

Links:
Take a look at the ebooks and video’s I have on Creating Meetings that
Take Half the Time and are Twice as Effective at my new site
http://www.RodneyBrim.com

Quick, what’s the first thing you expect to see if you receive a handout
for a meeting?  I bet you said “Agenda”.  Would you be surprised if there
was no written Outcome on the same handout?  Probably not.  On both
counts you would probably fit with 90+% of the rest of the world. And
that’s a problem.

When it comes to meetings we read/think Agenda, and only assume
the Outcome.  Actually it turns out that there’s a lot of diverse definitions
floating around amongst participants in most meetings when it comes to
defining Outcome.

It’s one of the reasons the average meeting  is so much less than it could
be.  That’s right, not having a defined, shared outcome, is one
of the reasons most meetings aren’t very efficient, and why I’m
able to teach people  how to lead meetings that take half the time pretty
easily.  Stay with me and I’ll explain how that ties into Outcome and one
thing you can do to turn around the very next meeting you are leading…
for the better.

First the rap on meetings.  Most meetings consume a minimum of twice
the time resources necessary to process the information being discussed. 
During that extra 50% of the time used, most people feel a sense of boredom,
tedium or frustration… certainly not entertainment – hence the tendency
to multi-task during meetings. 

Additionally meetings also don’t generate effective long term output, so
they and the information in them, has to be recycled, repeated multiple
times.  If meetings were compared to any other resource, they would be
rated as being incredibly time consuming, and costly, for the value
generated.  Typically the amount of time lost in a single meeting is the
equivalent of a whole day’s productivity for a member of the team. Ouch!

OK, so what does that have to do with Outcome and why draw the
distinction between agenda and outcome?  Let me share with you my
top 3 functions that Outcome plays in a meeting. 

1. Without a Defined Outcome, the meeting doesn’t have a reference to
determine value.  Where do you, where does the group, expect to get, and
what tangibles do they expect to have by the end of the meeting? 
Meetings suffer when they don’t have a responsibility to reach an outcome.

2. A Defined Outcome is not only the destination; it is a course
correcting reference process throughout the meeting.  It’s the
first decision point for whom to include in a meeting.   It should be the
hidden value-add question in your mind for every conversation…
e.g. “Is this discussion going to help us get to our defined outcome?” 
It is the guide that helps you make effective trade-offs  on how to spend
time throughout the meeting.

3. The Defined Outcome is the basis for creating an Agenda, as
the Agenda essentially represents the topics that need to be addressed
to reach your intended Outcome.  Think of your agenda as simply the
work plan to reach the Outcome.  Defining the Outcome is essential for
defining Who is going to attend; What’s going to be addressed; and
When you make course corrections in each and every meeting.

Bottom Line: Establishing a defined and shared outcome across the
participants for every meeting is a critical starting point and alignment
guide for every business meeting you lead.  And it is lacking as
an active, in your face, resource for a majority of business meetings.
Don’t let it be in yours.

Here’s two tips:
1. Go watch a free 10 minute video I’ve put on on using Outcomes
in Meetings you can get access to it by signing up on this page
http://rodneybrim.com/info/video

2.  Go read an ebook on the topic and other keys to creating
great meetings that I’ve made available for free at
http://rodneybrim.com/info/ebooks

Someone said to me the other day.  “You are a structured thinker.”  Let me
ask you something.  “What would people say about your thought
process if they crawled inside your head?”  Would they say “this is
incredible!” or “Wow, you apply learning really quickly” or “yikes, your
thought process looks like my teenage daughter’s room, stuff gets dropped
all over the place.”   Have you ever thought about the fact that the way you
process thoughts in your head isn’t a given?

We could probably all profit from a regular review or tune-up of how
we manage our thought process, especially as it applies to our time spent
at work.  But that’s  not where this blog is leading, although it wouldn’t be
a bad blog to go explore that concept.

Since I started consulting with ManagePro 18 years ago, I have been
talking to people about getting stuff out of their head and into ManagePro
so that they have more head room to be creative.  Our minds are not that
great at storing lots of todos, plus it creates a lot of clutter.  I noticed
in a blog this morning that David Allen is saying the same thing.

First question, Do you think that revealing the concept of getting the details
out of your head and into a larger system changes the way people operate?
The concept that it will better leverage the details and follow-through, while
creating more brain space to be creative or create a higher level of value?

I can’t tell you how many people have come up to me and said, “Thank you
so much for sharing that concept, that has totally transformed the way
I handle the small stuff and my resulting creativity has just gone through
the roof.”    NOT!  It doesn’t work that way!  Or rather it hasn’t for me. 

Stay with me, I’m getting to the point (probably doesn’t seem like it),
but this one has a bit of detour. Actually I’m stepping around several
thoughts my head would like to point out, and my fingers type, but
I’m stearing this blog back to how you and I think… and specifically
how to influence that process.

David proposes a structure (Collect, Process, Organize, Review, Do),
in his Getting Things Done methodology which is a good one, but again
nothing really earth shaking.  But I began to think, if you don’t
operate that way in your head, then why would you operate
that way with tasks coming across your desk?

David made a comment at the end of his last newsletter, “If you think
unruly and unfocused committees in your company or your community
can be a frustrating waste of time, try the one in your head.”

Then this interesting connection went together in my head.  It started
with thinking about an ebook I recently published, actually three, on
creating high value business meetings, and in the 2nd book on Process,
I talk about the fact that meetings work best when you steer the
participants to interact in a repeated 4 step cycle or dance of:
     1. Recognition (what’s next, how much time,
what’s the value, where are we?)
     2. Report (let’s get the facts, the status,
the problem, accurately and concisely)
     3. Review (what are we going to do with those facts,
implications & next steps)
     4. Re-create (do those facts represent possible
opportunities and options if we get creative about how we constuct them?)

There’s some parallels between the structure I advocate in groups or meetings
and David’s GTD process.  But here’s the thing.

To have effective meetings, the leader has to adopt an active stance in
steering the group through this 4 step sequence on each major
agenda item. If the leader doesn’t actively steer the process, the process
get’s steered by all sorts of other factors.  Predictably.
Ready for the big insight?

OK, here’s the payoff for staying with me (drum roll)..
>>> IT”S THE SAME IN YOUR HEAD.
If you don’t actively steer the process your mind uses to manage all
that stuff whirling around inside, it gets steered by all sorts of other
factors and stimuli.

Get it?  You have to be much more active with your thought process,
than you (or I) realized, if you are intending to change the value you create
with your time.  Simply reading, simply buying new technology, simply
attending a seminar… none of those things can do the one thing you need
to do, and that is actively take charge of how you manage the internal
conversation and focusing process in your head.

And you manage a new process best by employing a new structure.
One that has time limits and steps to it.  One that you use today, tomorrow,
the day after that, and the next day after that as well, until the new structure
gets woven into your thought process as “the way to do things.”

Bottom Line:
Most of us have an internal thought and organization process that’s as
inefficient as the last meeting we were just grumbling about attending.
You can change that, but to do so you have to take an active stance
in the process, exactly like you need to do when managing a meeting
for high value.  You don’t need to control the process, as much as you
need to steer it and apply/adhere to a new struture or process. 
Check out my short ebooks on meeting process and
you’ll understand better what I’m talking about.

    Click to Order

What if I could show you how to get 4x the value out of meeting minutes?
Ok, maybe it’s not 4x the value, maybe it’s 10x, then again maybe it is double
the value;  but whatever it is, it is only partially related to the content
and a lot to do with the positioning… by which I mean the time you
publish (write) them.

Let me ask you a question.  If meeting minutes are sent to you, how often
do you read them?  Truthfully.  Right that’s what I thought… rarely, and
a skim at best.

How about when minutes are read at the beginning of a meeting, how
engaged and valuable do you find that?  Or is that your favorite time
to scan emails on your phone, or follow along numbly in preparation
for getting to what you need to talk about in the meeting?

Both are examples of positioning of meeting minutes after the fact,
and both represent (yawn) low value.   Pity the person who has to
write them up each week.

Some people just do away with meeting minutes, but that leaves you
exposed to trying to remember stuff when critical decisions get made in
meetings and aren’t documented.

What should you do?  Here’s the secret to getting it right.

Meeting minutes are best done live! Think of them as an
executive summary that briefly summarizes the options considered
by person or position, and the decision made.    But the magic or the
big impact comes from having them completed in a visual (project
it on the wall or large screen) manner for everyone to see.

At first you’ll be amazed at how many people say, “Hey, I didn’t say
it that way” or “That’s not what I meant” or something else.  See, when
you do it live, it forces a level of clarity that never happens when you
deliver meeting minutes after the fact.

John Tropman in his book, Making Meetings Work, notes that
without a real-time summary, “many times meeting participants do
not really know what they have decided until somebody…”
summarizes it verbally on the screen.

Actually I find the large screen is much better environment than
summarizing verbally, because then you can leverage the information
much better for documentation and follow-up, which you’ll see in my
new book coming out next month on meetings.

The title is Redefining How to Create High Value Business
Meetings – Everything you have learned is probably correct,
BUT IT DOESN’T WORK.

When you do meeting minutes live and visible to everyone,
you lose all the conjecture about “who said what” and you gain
clarity and speed in your decision making.  Do it at your next meeting.

Bottom Line:

Meeting minutes; we don’t read them when they’re sent out,
don’t listen intently when they are read.  Turn boring meeting
minutes into a high value exercise by:
1.  structuring them as an Executive Summary of the issues reviewed
and decisions made on each topic addressed,
2. but the best part, the opportunity to turn them into something
of dramatic value, is to do them live as a wrap-up to the meeting
conversation, not after the fact.

Check out ManagePro as a Meeting Management software that
supports you in both capturing the summary live, but easily
converting that into trackable action items.

I read a great blog with several helpful suggestions for managing
meetings the other day.  It’s entitled 9 Tips for Efficient Meetings.
For me, the omission in this article raised a very important
question – which is “What’s Most Important in Meetings?”

Stay with me and I’ll summarize what the article said, what it
omitted, and why the answer to that question about what’s
important in meetings is critical.

First here’s a summary of the blog’s suggestions:
1. Make people show up on time
2. Always have an agenda
3. Invite the right people
4. Use email effectively
5. Use meetings to argue
6. Record your decisions
7. Kill the Powerpoints
8. Get everyone talking
9. End on time

The biggest omission in this blog is in point #6, which was basically
a suggestion to make sure you capture meeting notes to ”give you a way
to pass on the meeting’s contents to people who need to know about the
discussion, but can’t come…”

When I read this, I’m yelling “No, No, No, the biggest reason to
capture meeting minutes is not to inform,  it’s to support action!”
And by-the-way, meeting minutes do a horrible job of supporting
action and follow-through.  For most, meeting notes are something
that gets filed away and 99% of the people never read them.

But back to when I quit yelling inside.

I realized that fundamentally people approach meetings with something
that is designated as most important.  I’m sure you do as well.  It could
be a number of things, but for this article and for most meetings, it’s
all about the discussion.  The discussion is most important, and
consequently you read in this blog and others, a number of tips about
how to have an efficient discussion.

That got me thinking.  I don’t think or operate that way.  For me,
what’s most important in meetings is action, not the discussion.

I’m not terribly interested in all the talk, except that it helps to review
what’s been done to-date, what are the decision points at hand and
what action needs to take place.  Ultimately the past, present and
future action steps are what’s important… not the talking.

I use ManagePro to manage meetings, because I want to track, plan,
review and assign action items within the meeting in real time.  Meeting
minutes become a quick synopsis of the discussion content, what got
accomplished, and mostly a series of new tasks that once entered in the
meeting are already showing up on individual’s calendars and todo lists.

Again, I need the documentation primarily to help me drive action,
not capture who said what.

Bottom Line:

We all prioritize something in meetings.  If you check, I believe you’ll
find that most people prioritize the discussion as what’s most important
in the meeting process.  I think that’s worth reconsidering.  You’ll get
much more out of meetings if you prioritize supporting action, instead
of “mike” time.

Link: – ManagePro (Meeting) Management Software

I’ll cut to the chase in the first paragraph on this blog.
Unbridled business meetings are inherently unsatisfying.

 

 Meeting Satisfaction: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Put another way, meetings are like football, you need sidelines, an
end zone, and players who stop playing when either is crossed,
otherwise it just becomes a game of “keep-away” or catch. Keep reading and
let’s talk about how to change that… to make meetings more satisfying.

All meetings need direction (to an outcome), whether that is managed by
the meeting leader or moderator, or internally by the group.  But meetings
also need a way to course correct when the topic or process is no longer
relevant to the group’s intended outcome or best environment.

Think of how the following activities take away from your satisfaction with
a meeting:

1. Someone talks too long, talks in circles, monopolizes the floor…
2. The focus of the conversation drifts off topic…
3. The conversation moves from collaborative to posturing (ex. proving
a point, proving how knowledgeable one is, making my voice heard as well -
even if it has already been said or covered…)

These behaviors typically make most of us groan and look at our watch,
but they are also relatively common.  Why?

My take, is that it’s common because most meetings don’t have someone
who does an effective job at active moderation.  You know, the necessary
interrupt and redirection process that is required to do timely course
corrections and keep a meeting process in the effective sweet zone.

Do you agree?

If those behaviors are fairly common, why the lack of meeting moderation?
Is it a constitutional right to talk in meetings?  Are we discomforted by
interrupting “out of bound” behavior?  Are we afraid of making others
upset?  Maybe someone will attempt to moderate, and the person
who has the mike will just continue – like the format of the news talk
shows where people talk/shout over each other – charming.

What jumps out at me, is that many people are not very good at
self moderating when it comes to effective meeting behavior.
They struggle to contribute in short sound bytes, such that the
interaction pulls relevant information from multiple sources
and stays collaborative in nature.  This gets compounded
by the leader or the group in effect seeming to struggle with
enforcing effective meeting moderation as well.

Perhaps the answer to meeting moderation is a simple
device that anyone in the meeting can use (and that
everyone agrees to abide by) to call “time out” on
any person’s discussion.   Some groups use a bell or
something else audible.  I’m curious, what works for you?

Bottom Line:

Every effective business meeting needs someone or all the participants
to actively participate in enforcing boundaries so that the process and
content of a discussion stays aligned with the outcome.   Meeting
satisfaction seems to be directly tied to staying within the outcome bounds.�
Participants who have the meeting skills to communiate in short (twitter like)
sound bytes, help to keep the meeting  process satisfyingly outcome aligned,
and interactive.

Links:
Satisfaction with Meetings – (2of3) – Attaining Outcomes is Personal
Satisfaction with Meetings – (1of3) – Reduce the Length
Meetings as a Form of Collaboration

I attended a long distance meeting yesterday that serves as a starting point
for how not to create a satisfying meeting experience.  We started with
introductions, but no stated agenda or defined outcome.  We then proceeded
to a discussion of the need for deliverables that had already been created…
and top it all off, the leader conducted the meeting in a slow deliberate pace
that had no apparent sensitivity to the outside demands bearing down
on each of the participants.

I bet that sounds like some of the meetings you attend.  Not very satisfying
are they?  In fact I find myself getting frustrated and looking for a way to
escape, take-over or multi-task on the side.  I’m not very good at just being
patient.  I would bet that each one of us tends to use one or more of those
four options to get through meetings on a daily basis.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.  Meetings don’t have to be as frustrating
as they so often are.  They don’t have to be so seemingly disconnected from
the demands and stacks of deliverables just outside the door.

So here’s a 2nd action item you can invoke to immediately improve meeting
satisfaction.

Focus on the outcome.  Let me say it again, focus on the outcome.
Don’t start without stating the intended outcome.  Don’t adopt a pace or
extend a conversation that isn’t aligned with the intended outcome and
the time left to achieve it.  Focus on the outcome to guide you through
the entire meeting process.

But there’s one more key to consider when focusing on outcomes.  The key
is that ultimately outcomes are personal.  Meeting satisfaction is directly
influenced by whether or not members feel their outcomes are achieved.

Briggs, et al documented an important bit of research in this area:
“Results support the propositions that satisfaction with meeting process and
satisfaction with meeting outcome are both a function of an individual’s
perceived net goal attainment with respect to the meeting.”

In effect, we all come to meetings with some form of an agenda, or develop
one pretty quickly once we are there.  Satisfaction with a meeting is directly
influenced by whether or not it’s getting to your outcomes and agenda.

Back to the suggestion for improving meeting satisfaction, because now
it looks better defined as “focus on the outcome for each person in
attendance” – perhaps best phrased in the question to each, “What do
you need to get out of this meeting?”

Bottom Line:

Meetings are inherently more satisfying when they are organized around
meeting the objectives of the participants.  A focus on outcome is the
powerful measuring critera by which meeting purpose, pace, amount of time
spent on discussion, and a host of other decisions can be made.  A focus
on achieving outcomes in meetings is the starting point, middle checkpoint,
and the close you want to use to help improve satisfaction with meetings.

Links:
Satisfaction with Meetings – (1of3) Reduce the Meeting Length

Meetings are a funny part of most business cultures.  Part necessity, part
plague.  They are commonly decried as immense time consumers without
equivalent value… yet we continue to hold them and attend them, almost
like the need for meetings is part of our tribal DNA.  In fact meetings are
the most common way people at work get together.

Given that it seems meetings are here to stay, I’d like to cover in this and
the subsequent two blogs, 3 things you can do to improve satisfaction for
meeting participants.  As long as you are going to have them, might as
well create a satisfying experience.  Right?

Ready?  Here’s the first thing to do to improve participant’s satisfaction.

Whatever time you’re spending in meetings today, cut it.  Start by
reducing meeting time by at least 50%.  You can structure this in a variety
of ways, here’s a couple of examples:

1. No meetings after a certain time in the morning.  E.g. you have to get
through all your meetings before 11am.
2. Structure meetings as a stand-up versus sit-down environment.
3. Cut the time allotment for each regular scheduled meeting in half.
4. Invoke a highly visible timer for conversation and use a meeting monitor
to “pull the mike” on people who over-extend without the group’s permission.

But, there’s actually an even better way to reduce meeting time and make
the organization more effective at the same time.

If you think about it, a large percentage of time spent in meetings is spent
on what I call verbal documenting.  My observation is that more than 50%
of the time is spent on verbal documenting.

What do I mean by that?   By verbal documenting, I mean things like verbal
status reports, verbal discussion, verbal summaries, verbal representations
of pro’s and con’s.  I use the word verbal, because most of what transpires
isn’t written down.

So here’s where it gets really interesting.  Verbal documentation is extremely
inefficient.  Not only is it slow (takes a lot longer to hear people verbally walk
through a thought process, then read a dictation of what they said – probably
a minimum of 5 times as long), but the follow-up is bad because we all forgot
most of what we hear within 72 hours.  Verbal documentation in meetings is
a poorly recorded, but routinely used management on the fly of (often) critical
information.

By-the-way, the typical meeting documentation, if not verbal, is a powerpoint
deck, which doesn’t do a lot for information efficiency or performance
improvement either,  but that’s another blog.  Back to the topic.

So here’s what to do if you want to improve satisfaction with meetings,
reduce the time you spend in meetings and turn a corner on your productivity.

Reward written not verbal documentation. Tie reduction of time spent in
meetings into a result of completing written documentation.  Documenting
progress updates, status summaries, next steps in a business management
program like ManagePro, not only sharply reduces the amount of time needed
for meeting review, it actually helps you get more value out of the information
that’s written – because it is clearly actionable and can be easily followed up on.

If team members write out the documentation, reward them by allowing them
to attend in shorter durations or skip the meeting all together.  I mean if you
need them to explain or discuss, you can always call them in when that issue is
on the table.  One CTO issued the following memo:  Any developer or QA engineer
who submits a progress report online is exempted from attending the weekly
status meeting. The result was overwhelming.

Bottom Line:

One of the biggest things you can do to improve satisfaction with meetings
in most organizations is to reduce the amount of time spent in them.  But
don’t just cut meeting time, make that result contingent upon or a reward
for documenting in information management or group support systems.
Software that will allow you to leverage information more effectively…
much more effectively then leveraging recall on past conversations.

Meetings.  What a time sink, and yet the need for collaboration requires having meetings.  I participated in a meeting that was scheduled for 30 minutes.  It in fact continued for 90 minutes, and had to be rescheduled for a second session because we still didn’t get to our deliverables.

Right.  And you probably have to sit through a lot more of those than I do. Collaboration through meetings is no easy task to master, is it?  That’s part of the reason you need to use software like ManagePro for meeting management, but that’s another conversation.  Back to the topic.

It got me thinking (I usually start thinking about a way to reframe things or alternative options when things get frustrating) about ways to reinvent meetings to save us all a lot of time.  I’ll share 3 of them – let me know what you think.

1.  Meetings should only treat participants as blind if, in fact, they are so. E.g. Don’t read out loud what’s written – drop the microphone and let the participants read it in 1/10th the time it will take you to verbally walk through the points.  The meeting will already being moving faster.

2.  Don’t tie up the podium when you can manipulate data. If you want feedback, let people write/key it in.  Update the presentation document in real time.  Get to the data in an interactive manner. Move from thought to data, instead of going through voice as much as you can… you have to get to data input at some point, get there faster.  Try running meetings with the mute on…

3.  Start from the ending and work your way back.  I notice a number of people define the outcome for the meeting, and then engage in a pace or process that has no hope, absolutely no hope, of reaching that outcome within the alloted time. The best way I know to work backwards in a meeting is to be super honest about what you can accomplish in the time allotted and then live with those limitations.  It’s not the federal budget, you can’t spend what you don’t have without immediate repercussions.

Bottom Line:
1. Participants should read, not listen, we’re not blind.
2. Interact with the data as much as possible, not once removed by conversation.
3. Start from the end, treat time like money, and realize this is not the federal budget, you can’t print the stuff when you run out.

Links:

Meeting Management – an Untapped area in IT Management Systems

Meetings are a Matter of Precious Time