Shubhro is one of Chris' Spring 2012 Professional Speaking students at Carnegie Mellon. Here he writes about meetings.
The Meat of Meetings
Meetings get a very bad rap in business
because very little gets achieved in them.[1]
Then again 65% of the time in a work week involves meetings of some, kind be it
a stand-up SCRUM meeting for 5 minutes or a formal product launch meeting for
half an hour. The key is not to run away from them but, as a meeting organizer
, identify how to make them more productive. As we can see from the above
Dilbert comic , the key is actually to have few meetings which are more
effective. Then the first question that needs answering is "Do we need to
meet?" . Human beings are social animals and hence we prefer face-to-face
interaction. But many a times a lot can be achieve using a memo or an email
with just a follow-up call to ensure that the message was conveyed properly and
to clarify any doubts. One should hold a meeting only when absolutely
necessary. That brings us to the first point of our PCF model to successful meeting,
that is "Purpose".
Purpose
Without purpose a meeting is just sharing
of unrelated emotional statements about things that bother us. Purpose is what
we define when we answer the question "Do we need a meeting?". For a
meeting to be successful it needs to have a well defined purpose regarding what
needs to be achieved in the meeting. This also provides a way to quantify the
success of the meeting. Marissa Mayer, Google's vice-president of search
product, says that she always has a strategic mandate and strict direction for
all her meetings , even the 5 minute ones.1 Purpose is what guides
the meeting Agenda.
Agenda
Agenda is a tool that make participants of
a meeting think of what they want to achieve in the meeting.
It is also the first form of formal communication with the
participants of the meeting. Hence an agenda needs to be crisp and clear. It
should not be more than a page long and it should highlight the purpose of the
meeting as well as the attending members, time and place of the meeting and any
other important points relevant to the meeting.
Participants
Participants form the most important part
of a meeting and hence they should be selected carefully. A meeting with more
than 10 participants is rarely productive. Hence
we must identify people who bring value to the meeting. We must also identify
people who are enthusiastic and provide a momentum to the meeting as show in
the adjoining diagram. On the other hand we must avoid inviting people who
bring the energy of the group down.
Presentation
This involves certain points which are applicable to any kind of
presentations. One must begin the presentation with an introduction of all the
members in the meeting. This should be followed by stating the point and
purpose of the meet. It is also important for the convener of the meeting to be
energetic and involved in the discussion. Visual aids are often helpful in
making the meeting interesting.
Participation
One must ensure participation of all members in a meeting. A meeting
with only a few involved members and the rest passive, is unproductive and a
wastage of time for most. Hence as a conductor of the meeting, one must ask
questions to get passive participants to talk and put forth their ideas. After
all, the purpose of a meeting is to exchange ideas to modify group knowledge.
Summarization
Last but not the least , it is extremely essential to leave aside 10
minutes at the end to summarize the proceedings of the meeting. During this
time action items assigned to people during discussion phase can be reviewed. Key items noted by the scribe
can be mentioned and most importantly follow-up action needs to be defined
which may be in the form of a follow-up meeting, an email with the minutes of
the meeting, an action chart with deadlines for action items etc. This phase
defines the concrete results of the meeting.[2]
Minutes of meetings
The last phase of a meeting that occurs after the conclusion of the
meeting is the follow up phase. This ensures that the outcomes of the meeting
are not foregone conclusions. The most important tool to avoid this is
minutes-of-the-meeting that was taken down by the assigned scribe for the
meeting. This should be sent out to all attendees of the meeting in order to
remind them of the major points of discussion of the meeting as well as
important conclusions/decisions.
Action Items
Finally Action-items taken by various
members of the meeting needs to be followed up so as to ensure that they are
completed by the set deadline. A meeting without further action is just a
meeting for the sake of meeting.
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