How to End Your Meeting Nightmares
American businesses are losing money: billions of dollars. Some estimates even tally the total loss as high as $37 billion annually. Yet these companies are still considered successful. They are run by dedicated leaders and staffed by hardworking, skilled men and women. Their products and services are excellent and their marketing is first-class.
Even so, they continue to misplace up to $75 million every single year without even realizing it. The culprit?
Every week, staff members are required to walk away from pressing assignments and due dates to sit in groups for hours. While work crumbles on their desks and prospective clients hold on the phones, they sit and listen to endless discussions dragging on. Time, and money, slowly slip away while we sit in business meetings.
Leaders of today’s advancing companies are finally addressing the drain of this ‘necessary evil’.
Micheal Hyatt, founder and CEO of Michael Hyatt and Company, a leadership development corporation, explains the issue this way, “[our] traditional model of meetings fail. They are poorly organized, poorly run, and hardly anyone knows why they have to be there. Meetings masquerade as productivity—but our time, energy, and profit tell us otherwise.
Meetings certainly have their place. There is no reason, however, that they need to be a dreaded point of contention among your team members. Since we can’t terminate them altogether, it is up to everyone involved, from executives and team leaders to employees and entrepreneurs, to learn the fine art of how to conduct a business meeting.
It is possible to have productive conferences that don’t drain time and money...and to avoid those that are completely unnecessary.
It’s All in the Prep
This may not seem like such a big deal compared to what happens in the actual meeting - that’s where we lose time, right? - but don’t skip this step! Setting the stage before a meeting gives you a chance to iron out all those little details that will derail your gathering...and lead to endless frustration.
Once you decide that a meeting is necessary, take a minute to consider 3 essential steps to your scheduling process:
Who should be there and when are they available? Your entire office shouldn’t be required to attend every meeting. Larger groups draw out and confuse the process, so keep the audience small when possible. If the meeting absolutely requires a particular person, then make certain that they are invited and that they will be able to attend. Holding your meeting without someone whose presence is necessary is a waste of time and if you are able to continue your meeting without that person, then they were not crucial after all.
How much time do you absolutely need? Keep in mind that your conference will fill whatever amount of time you assign it. If possible, keep meetings under an hour. Most objectives can be accomplished in 30 minutes, so don’t just go for the default of 60. (Some topics take more time, however, so be aware of how your agenda can affect the time you need.) Set a start and finish time, both to encourage conciseness and for others with a full plate.
When is your calendar open? If you have several slots to choose from, avoid those right at the beginning of the day. Though we are more productive in the morning and harnessing that energy would be great, we all tend to come to work with a long to-do list. A meeting first thing can be stressful. With that in mind, try to also avoid the slump right after lunch. Between 10-11 in the morning and 3-4 in the afternoon seem to be optimum times for alert and productive meetings. Multiple meetings should also be scheduled in close succession to leave more blocks of time for work that requires deep concentration.
If possible, reserve a conference room off-site or meet virtually. This puts a very tangible finish time on your meeting that is harder to ignore than when you are in your own office.
Once you have scheduled your meeting, create a structure for your expectations. Preparing a detailed agenda ahead of time allows you to have an actual outline to follow during the meeting and a goal that must be reached by the end.
Keep to one or two topics per meeting and plan for extra time. This will cover all the questions, interruptions, and other derailments that occur naturally.
Rehearse your outline and allot each point with the approximate time you feel it should take to work through. Constructive, short meetings are impossible if you cram too much into your agenda.
Write up and send out your general outline and meeting goal so that everyone knows what to expect and encourage participants to also write out updated notes before the meeting.
If any material is required to understand the discussion, send this out to those invited to read ahead of time. This way, no one has to waste time explaining general facts that everyone should already know.With everyone on the same page at the beginning of the meeting, your chances for a productive meeting that will not derail or drag on are high!
Executing Your Meeting
After all that preparation, it is time to break other bad meeting habits that we all have. It may take some time, but carefully planned and presented meetings will add up in saved time and money in the end.
Expect prompt arrival. A bit obvious, but an endless amount of time and energy is lost as we all wait on each other to get coffee, set up our laptops, run and find a pen, forget our notes, or simply arrive late and make the rest of the office wait on us.
Eliminate the distractions.As management consultant Peter Drucker explains, “One can either meet or work: you can’t do both at the same time.” Even though someone may be physically in your meeting, you often do not have their full attention. 73% of those in meetings are completing other assignments at the same time. We all understand the reality of trying to juggle numerous projects with only so much time in the day. Still, meetings take longer when there are outside distractions and it is the facilitators’ job to make sure that those distractions are not present - including work distractions. Unless there is the possibility of an emergency, all those participating in a meeting should leave their phones at their desks. Phones in a meeting are just distractions waiting to happen.
Start with your goal.Begin the meeting by establishing the goal you identified in your preparation stage. Though everyone should know the purpose of the meeting from reading through the meeting outline sent in advance, it is always helpful to reiterate your agenda in a brief intro: “As you are aware, the purpose of this meeting is to ____.”
Make sure that everyone is focusing on the one thing you are trying to do with this meeting and delegate someone to take notes (this will come in handy when you need to review later).
Encourage participation. With everyone engaged and the agenda shared, you are free to focus on accomplishing your goal through your team’s discussion. A simple way to gain everyone’s participation is to simplify your presentations. Try to distill everything you have learned down to the length of a tweet, because this keeps others from becoming overwhelmed and distracted by slides of information. No one should be sitting there with nothing to say. If you do end up with people without anything to contribute, then they shouldn’t have been in the meeting in the first place.
Stick to your time limit and if you have followed the tips above, your team can focus on making decisions.
Tying up Loose Ends
While planning your meeting, always save a few minutes at the end to wrap up. Even a perfectly executed business meeting can leave your team members with a sense of confusion or frustration. This is the time for a quick review of what the meeting was about, a chance to reiterate the decisions you made and mention what will be happening next, and the opportunity to briefly discuss anything that needs to improve.
After the meeting concludes, gather those notes from your designated minute-taker, and send out a summary. Even though drafting these minutes can be tedious, it is important to have an extra review. Spend some time cleaning up your summary and then send it out to anyone who was involved in the meeting or the project it was related to. (This is especially helpful when applied to client meetings. A summary of your discussion allows you to show the client that you were focused and to make sure you are on the same page after all the things you may have discussed).
With the proper preparation and structure, your team and client meetings no longer need to be something you dread, or a drain on your time and resources.
Still Running Out of Time?
Sometimes we have a heavy day of work with a tight deadline and don’t have time to sit in a team meeting or even meet with a client. Walking out on clients is extremely rude and a great way to lose their business. Here are a few handy tips to employ when you don’t have time in your day for a meeting:
Make it a phone call. Would they be willing to discuss the topic on the phone? Though you may still have to put some time into it, at least you won’t have to drive to and from their office.
Shorten the meeting time. If you know you can cover the information in a shorter time span than they are requesting, then see if they would be okay with that.
Will an email do for now? Perhaps your client would be alright rescheduling...you can finish your busy day and meet with them at a time when you can really give them your attention.
Simply bow out. Sometimes you get dragged into a client meeting by a coworker, that you don’t absolutely have to attend. Send them an email letting them know that you are unable to attend, but attach the information that you would be bringing to the table and offer to send along anything else they might need.
Team and client meetings are a necessity. However, they do not need to clog your entire schedule. Sometimes it is enough to simply limit how much of your time is filled by these discussions with others.
Understanding your own boundaries and how to protect them, along with being willing to put in the groundwork for meetings you have to lead, will give you some breathing room to accomplish what really matters.
