The more you like to get things done at work, the less you like meetings. At least, that’s the conclusion of researchers from the University of North Carolina:
“For those driven employees who are focused on completing tasks and achieving goals, meetings are an annoying interruption to their work and productivity; job satisfaction decreases as the number of meetings they attend increases.”
Almost all the work I do relies on effective meetings. So when fellow bald man, Seth Godin posted his suggestions for meeting innovation, I felt inspired to collate a few ideas from him, Robert Gerrish and Amanda Gore and build my own set of Rules for Awesome Meetings.
This is a draft, so if you’ve seen something work well, or have some feedback, post a comment! Here’s what I’ve got so far…
PREPARATION
- Have a meeting with yourself first. Do you really need a meeting on this? Can an email suffice? (Robert Gerrish)
- Know the meeting’s intended outcomes, pitch your meeting to a co-worker and see if they’ve got an alternative route to the outcomes you desire. (Robert)
- Require participants to prepare: always read/do something before attending meeting. Not done? Can’t come. (Seth Godin)
TIMING/SPEED
- Latecomers pay a fine. (Seth – who proposes $10 in the coffee jar if you are more than two minutes later than the second-last person)
- Meetings to be booked in increments of five minutes. No more than 4 increments, unless there’s a great reason. (Seth)
- Bring an egg timer to the meeting. Out of sand? Out of time. (Seth)
- Remove all the chairs from the conference room. Things will be faster if it’s more comfortable back in your cubicle. (Seth)
- Calculate and publish cost of your meeting to the business.
ATTITUDE
- If people are going to be ‘whining donkeys’ in meetings, that’s fine, but they should be obliged to wear special ‘whining donkey ears’. Anyone with something negative to say has to don the ears. (Amanda, who insists even nudging the ears across a boardroom table will influence the quality of the meeting).
VALUE
- Don’t leave with anything unsaid. (Robert)
- Not adding value to a meeting? leave. You can always read the summary later. (Seth)
NEXT STEPS
- Discuss follow-ups and next actions. (Robert)
- Short email summary, with action items, to every attendee within ten minutes of the end of the meeting. (Seth)
CONTIUOUS IMPROVEMENT
- Rate meetings & organisers on a scale of 1 to 5 in terms of usefulness. (Seth)
So, I’m happy to advocate a combination of these for the meetings I attend, but what do you reckon? What’s missing from my list?
Title image credit: edited image of a photo by Clagnut.
This looks good, Tim – well done.
The “whining donkey” idea is silly and demeaning, though – it runs the risk of stifling legitimate criticism. Saying negative things in a meeting isn’t bad – in fact, it’s often crucial.
I much prefer the Edward de Bono Six Hats idea, where people are given *permission* to “wear the Black Hat” and make negative comments, or “wear the Red Hat” and express their feelings. It’s a respectful and productive approach – far better than calling them a donkey!
Gihan
Great post Tim.
The idea of “no chairs” is essentially a “standup” meeting, common in Scrum agile methodology and incredibly useful.
Re: preparation – you hint at it, but clear goals/objectives included in the meeting request. The number of times I’ve been asked to a meeting and had to ask “what’s the outcome?”… then not actually got a response is incredible.
Make sure OT discussion is parked and kept out of the meeting – if it’s not moving towards the outcomes, it’s OT.
I agree with Gihan re: the whining donkey – though I know the kind of “stop energy” that you’re referring too. Much better to facilitate out of such a place than use something that stifles legitimate concerns.
I’ve been in environments where any criticism, even when constructive, is considered out of bounds. Sometimes it’s important to just say “no”…
Great Post, fines are good idea, I turned up 9 minutes late to a recent meeting – it cost me $90.
No phones, no interruptions, in ;arge groups if an idea is between 2 people – they meet separately. Agree on an action plan at the end – and DONT forget the Mentos.
Some great suggestions to stimulate people to think of unusual ways to make meetings useful, as long as these ideas do not work against the goal of getting things done. Setting down rigid rules can do that if people do not focus on the right goals. This leads on to the idea that everything will be OK if everyone is positive all the time. However, constructive criticism (not destructive criticism) can be incredibly helpful. Teams that have a person that plays the role of ‘central negative’ can come to better decisions than teams that suffer from ‘Group Think’–something some people have attributed to the team that sent the Challenger crew to their death when the space shuttle exploded. Nobody wanted to put up negative opinions to challenge the decision to go ahead with the launch.
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There. One wish fulfilled
Gavin’s kind words first appeared on this blog by a spammer who was hoping the sweet words (and his link to a viagra-selling website) would stay on my site. When Gavin heard about my disappointment that such kind sentiments were from a spammer, he decided to drop by and leave the comment himself. That’s because Gavin has a great sense of humour and is awesome. Thanks Gav!
Thanks for a great post Tim – just stumbled across this. I think it’s an excellent summary/articulation of some of the issues we struggle with regularly in reining in meetings. Yuck.