You have all seen the worst in a meeting: meandering topics, waffle, people saying words that mean nothing, run over time and so on.
Meetings are actually a simple activity all teams in an organisation need to do. There are only three reasons for a meeting and you can characterise everything into one of these three:
There is NO other reason for a meeting.
What else do meetings need to be successful now we know there are only three reasons for a meeting:
- Create an Agenda
- Write the purpose of the meeting at the top of the agenda
- Each agenda item should be for one of the three reasons. When creating an agenda put the Decision items first, Discussion items second and Information ones last. Decisions take more mental energy, so they need to be first when attendees are fresh
- Have standing rules with your meetings: Discipline, stick to timings; invitees; behaviours; etc
- The person running the meeting should facilitate based on the purpose and agenda, nothing else
- At the end of the meeting there are usually outcomes or actions arising from the meeting:
- For a decision you need to record the decision and then communicate it accordingly
- For discussion items there are usually actions given to people as a result of the discussion. These are actions arising that need a Who, What and When allocated
- For an Information topic it is sometimes of value to share the summary points of the information passed, usually it doesn’t matter
It is important to allocate an appropriate amount of time to a meeting, to invite the right people to the meeting and to stick to the purpose. Some meetings will start with sharing information and then jump to a decision that is needed and then on to something else. It is strongly recommended that Decision meetings are not mixed with other topics. Typically, a commercial organisation will conduct a bid review for a commercial offer; this is a decision meeting and it is rarely mixed with a weekly update on general information.
In summary, meetings are easy, get prepared, know the purpose of the meeting, stick to the purpose and create some standing rules for the conduct of meetings and your organisation’s communications and effectiveness will improve.
If you would like to see an example of agenda and rules write to us at [email protected]
