Meeting Madness: Making Meetings More Productive

Feel like you’re spending way too much of your workday sitting in meetings that never seem to accomplish anything?  An agenda is a good start but not sufficient.

Many years ago, I was an internal consultant to a Vice President who wanted to change the culture of his organization.  As part of our initial assessment, I observed many meetings which consumed much of the workweek of his leadership team.  Many of these meetings had 25 or more attendees.  They all had an agenda with topics, times and presenters.  In one particularly long, arduous meeting with 42 people in attendance, all of whom were busy at their laptops, a young and obviously frustrated presenter stood before them for 20 minutes rolling through a powerpoint presentation with nary an eye glancing up from the laptops. I caught the presenter out in the hallway and asked if he got what he needed.  “No”, he said “ I needed approval from someone who was supposed to be at the meeting but wasn’t.”  42 people and the one person he needed approval from wasn’t there?  What’s wrong with this picture?

Agenda topics provide the content and generally the time of each segment but what’s often missing is a clear and specific objective or outcome. And who must be present to achieve that objective. Is the objective to make a decision, solve a problem or to generate ideas?  (Be careful about topics in which the sole objective to communicate information.  This can often be done more effectively outside of a meeting. ) In the case of our young presenter, this simple step may have shown that the meeting really wasn’t the right forum for what he needed to do.  A one on one could have been much quicker and more effective.

If you’re being asked (or required) to attend someone else’s meeting, ask them to be clear on the expected outcome of each agenda item and what your role is in that outcome.  If they can’t provide a clear answer, use your time how you see fit.

We live in a complex world where multiple perspectives are often required for idea generation and development or good decisions.   So people meeting together is not in itself a problem.  Try getting clearer on your expected outcome and who the critical players are to achieve that outcome and see if your meetings don’t start to take on much more productive feel.