Whether your company holds one meeting a week or dozens of meetings a day, it’s essential that this time is used efficiently and effectively. Most meetings are less effective than they could be, not because they are poorly managed, but because meeting managers spend all of their time focusing on the one or two hours that people will gather around the conference table or the video screen. Smart meeting managers know that it’s the actions you take in the three days immediately leading up to the meeting that are far more important than the meeting itself.
When does your meeting start?
The key to a successful meeting starts well in advance of your meeting’s scheduled start time. Just as any athlete knows the importance of stretching before working out, senior meeting managers know that how you spend your time in the week leading up to a meeting is just as important, if not more so, than the time of the meeting itself.
Common signs that a manager has spent too much time focusing on the meeting itself and not enough on the activity leading up to the meeting include people coming into their meetings unprepared, some people suggesting too many of the ideas, and a constant pattern of running through the items at the bottom of your agenda.
Roger Burns, a 30-year veteran of high-level meetings, describes it this way: “Often the first 20 or 30 minutes of our meetings were spent with people flipping through documents I had sent them a week ago. They hadn’t been prepared. And I had no idea what questions I was going to ask in the next few minutes.”
If you are like many, these symptoms appear more often than not. So what’s a meeting manager to do? How can you avoid these common pitfalls? The answer is simple, but it starts a week before the meeting starts.
The Three P’s of Successful Meetings: Preparation, Participation, Prioritization
Although a successful meeting requires a skilled facilitator, that’s only part of the puzzle. Equally important is the activity that has occurred prior to the meeting.
The First P: Preparation
Effective use of your meeting time depends on all parties being prepared to participate. This means that each person who attends has already read the meeting materials before the meeting takes place. In addition to this, the meeting participants should be provided with the questions to be discussed prior to the meeting.
Historically, most meetings begin with the chairman asking the attendees a question. As an example, if he were having a strategic planning meeting, a good question might be, “What do you think are the strengths of our organization?” At this point, the discussion moves around the table and each person has two minutes to process the questions, come up with a smart-sounding solution, and express the solution coherently to the group.
The problem with this method is that most good ideas don’t come in those two minutes. Good ideas come while he’s driving to work, while he’s falling asleep, while he’s taking a shower, the same times he’s probably not with his co-workers in a meeting. (Unless you routinely hold your meetings in the company locker room!) Giving each meeting participant your questions before the meeting is essential to getting the best ideas from your participants. It also gives them a reason to read the materials you’ve distributed before the meeting.
The best time to distribute materials and questions is three to seven days before the meeting. This gives participants a chance to think about the problems and questions, but not long enough to forget their good ideas and why they liked them. Recovery here is quick and obvious. You’ll accomplish more in less time, saving your organization money and enabling you to implement your ideas faster.
The Second P: Participation
Getting the best ideas from your best people is essential to a successful meeting. The other half of this equation is to gain a broad base of participation so that there is ownership in the solution rather than resentment.
If these two elements are so important to successful meetings, why is it so rare for them to occur simultaneously? The first reason it rarely happens is because the people with the best ideas are often the busiest people. Most of the time, these high-value people who are like popcorn machines full of ideas are already scheduled for other meetings when you pick meeting times. Although it is sometimes possible to reschedule your meeting to meet your availability, it is impossible to adjust every moment and for every need.
The second reason you rarely get people with your best idea on board while having a broad ownership base has to do with the dynamics within meetings. Every person within your organization is wired differently and for every person who is comfortable expressing and defending ideas in a meeting, there are others who are not. For those who are good at verbal maneuvering, gaining support in a meeting is like a sport. For those less comfortable in this environment, defending a position can feel like torture. Clearly, a place is needed to allow everyone the opportunity to participate in the solution in a way that is non-threatening, democratic, and builds ownership directly in the process.
Don’t underestimate the value of this increased involvement. Ideas, initiatives, and even directives that are perceived to have a broad base of support are implemented faster and to a higher level of quality. On top of this, you get better ideas when more people are involved, especially when the people involved are the ones closest to the action and not the ones hatched in their executive offices. All of this helps you innovate faster than the competition, get your ideas to market faster, and win the battle for consistent quality.
The Third P: Prioritization
In a perfect world, we would have unlimited time each day to do everything. Unfortunately we live on the clock each and every day. Too often, our meetings are filled with agenda items placed there in the order they appeared on our desk or in the order we jotted them down on a yellow sticky note while on the phone, without any level of importance or urgency.
The best meeting managers understand that all items on an agenda do not deserve equal weight and prioritize topics starting with the most urgent. This allows your best minutes to be spent on your most important articles.
Unfortunately, the priorities of the leader are not always the priorities of the team. There are many times when the base has a burning issue that has escaped management entirely. Effective meeting leaders have a system in place to identify and address these issues.
The benefit of having such a system is increased productivity in your most vital areas. By focusing everyone’s attention on the issues that are most important to your success, you’ll quickly see a decrease in non-value-added activity and a higher return on your efforts.
A new set of tools
Now that we’ve shifted our focus from the one-hour meeting to the full week leading up to the meeting, it’s time to add a new set of tools to your toolbox.
There are a multitude of tools already out there and considered to help you with the actual meeting: from flip charts to electronic whiteboards, from video conferencing to the latest collaboration software that allows a group of people to edit a document from locations around the world, companies have kept up with a variety of electronic meeting solutions.
A new tool in this sector of the market is huddled. Ehuddle is a web-based tool used by companies before and after the meeting to increase the effectiveness of meetings. Started by a simple email to meeting participants, ahuddle lets all meeting invitees see the questions to be asked, brainstorm possible answers, and weigh a list of possible solutions. All of this activity occurs in the days leading up to the meeting, ensuring that participants are prepared for the meeting, having already thought through the important issues and weighed each other’s possible solutions.
Ehuddle uses a proprietary online format that is anonymous and democratic. Not only does this allow his committee members who were unable to attend the meeting to give his input, but it also creates an environment where no one is afraid to suggest ideas. Ownership is built into the process because everyone has been involved in evaluating each solution.
Smart meeting managers are even using tools like huddle to set a portion of the agenda. By allowing grassroots members of any group to brainstorm and rank the issues that are important to them, the agenda automatically reflects the needs of the organization.
The return on investment for tools like huddle comes quickly. Managers recognize the money wasted on unoptimized meetings, low levels of engagement, and distracted activity. Combine this with the increased productivity, faster problem identification and resolution, and faster time to market that the tool offers and you’ll quickly see that this is money well spent.
Using this comprehensive set of tools prior to a meeting allows the leader to walk into the conference room or hold a video conference with the confidence that the foundation for a successful meeting has been laid.