Effective Meetings 101 - for owners of meetings

Editor's Notes

1. We’ve all suffered boring and useless meetings. Where nothing gets done and it saps the energy. It is time to think, if we are contributing to this illness and fix it!
2. Most meetings are called by the meeting owner. Owner has an interest in getting something done. If you are the owner, ask yourself, before calling the meeting – is this meeting needed? What needs to be accomplished? Who needs to attend?
3. If you are the owner of a meeting, it is a good idea not to run it yourself. It is easy for you to miss out the participant's point of view. Get a facilitator to run the meeting for you.
4. As part of preparation for the meeting, get the facilitator up to speed on your why, who and what.
5. Now get the facilitator to own whatever needs to be done next, but not before you both have had a chance to talk about, who need not attend the meeting, what need not be done in the meeting and broadly how the meeting needs to progress.
6. As a rough guide, if the meeting is going to last an hour, you must spend an hour in preparation, before the meeting.
7. Coming up with an agenda for the meeting, is part of this preparation. But only after you take into account, what has already been done in this direction, in the earlier meetings.
8. After the meeting invite goes out, the facilitator - and you - need to ensure that all those who are needed for the meeting will show up. And on time. And with preparation, that may be required from them. These details should be part of the meeting invite itself.
9. When the meeting starts, sometimes a participant does not show up on time. Be consistent in how you deal with such a situation. Some people impose a fine that grows into a contributory dinner later. Others get the late comer to sing a song or do something similarly childish and embarrassing. The idea is to deter such occurrence in future.
10. The facilitator will have his hands full during the meeting, so it is a good idea to have a timekeeper. A person, who will keep track of agenda against the apportioned time. A timekeeper who just sits quietly is of little use. She should assert herself as needed.
11. Wait a minute? Someone also needs to note down the action items and the decisions that will come from the meeting. When an action item is noted, it is key to mention for every action - who and by when. When a decision is noted, it is important to take an action for informing others, not present in the meeting.
12. So let us have a scribe too. Sometimes, the same person can play more than one roles, but it is important to have an owner, a facilitator, a time-keeper and a scribe for every meeting.
13. What does a facilitator actually do, in meetings? A facilitator begins by ensuring that everyone understands and agrees on why they all are meeting and what are the ground rules. One example of a ground rules is - no phone calls, while the meeting is in progress. Another one is – no open laptops!
14. It is the nature of all meetings to first have an expansion, then an exploration and finally a shrinking and closure.
15. Expansion is about opening the possibilities. It is ideas. It is alternatives. It is open space. Here the facilitator encourages participation. He ensures that one person - even if she is the owner - does not monopolize the meeting.
16. Next the facilitator moves the meeting into exploration. An exploration is about evaluation. It can also be about comparisons. It is about working with what we have created in expansion. It is not ‘expansion 2’. The idea is to have a certain standard or criteria, against which exploration is done.
17. With sufficient time remaining - the facilitator finally starts shrinking the meeting towards closure. It is decisions. It is next-steps. It is actions. When actions come up, they are recorded by the scribe, along with ‘who’ and ‘by when’.
18. Towards the end of the meeting – facilitator gets team to review what went well and what needed improvement in the meeting. This helps in a better meeting next time and also makes everyone aware about the importance of following a process in running a meeting. Timekeeper – please note! (sufficient time needs to be apportioned for this)
19. In fact, if you have to do only one effective thing in a meeting, it would be to do this review towards the end of any and all meetings. It will automatically ensure that other effective practices get adopted, over time.
20. Even after the meeting is over and everyone leaves, the facilitator's job is still not over. He needs to follow up on the actions noted by the scribe.
21. Sometimes a meeting will throw up ideas and actions, that need to be taken up elsewhere or at a later time. The facilitator also needs to redirect and park them. Here is, to happy and effective meetings!