Meetings: Stand and Deliver
Today, I’m working through our Radical Time Management workshop with a group of business owners who have signed up to QUB’s CPD programme. One aspect of today will be to discuss how to decide whether a meeting is really necessary, how to get out of meetings, delegate someone to go in your place. However, should it arise that a meeting is entirely necessary, then here are the rules.
I debated whether to call this blog post, Stand, Breathe and Deliver, or perhaps The Oxygenated Highwayman. You figure it out!
What a Meeting is Not
A meeting is not:
- A talking shop, for discussing and debating.
- An opportunity to catch up with the social gossip within your organisation.
- A chance to bitch about the staff/management en masse.
If your meetings include any of these activities, eliminate them and reclaim your time.
At All Costs, Avoid Having a Meeting At All
Few people enjoy meetings. Become the darling of your management team by suggesting sane alternatives:
- Pick up the phone and ask a question.
- Send an email with Voting Buttons or a Survey to elicit opinions or a series of swift decisions.
- If you need only keep people informed or share documents:
- learn how to use Google Docs
- if you have more money to spend, ask IT to set up a simple intranet site
- if you fancy yourself a competent writer, start an internal blog.
If a meeting is still considered necessary, hold a Stand-Up Meeting – see below.
There are only three rules. Stand, Breathe and Deliver.
Hold a Stand-Up Meeting
Stand-up meetings are characterised by the following:
- Invite the team involved on a project, not every manager in the building.
- Attendees stand, rather than sit.
- Meetings are generally brief (5-15 minutes), due to the eventual discomfort of standing so long in one place.
- There are no life-draining, convoluted series of welcomes, points arising, matters pertaining thereunto, thank-yous, discussions, deliberations or any other such nonsense.
I reserve my right to indulge in a little sarcasm, having once worked for an organisation where full-day meetings (with tea-breaks and specially ordered-in lunch) were too regular to dismiss as anomalies; they were planned this way.
- All members are encouraged to speak (briefly), sometimes using a visual prompt (such as a conch, as in Lord of the Flies).
- Updates state progress, impediments to progress and prompt immediate solutions. I have seen this format work extremely well in software development companies, where it has been adopted enthusiastically, probably because it fits snugly with the Agile project management style.
Have a Meeting in a Forest (or Other Non-Man-Made Location)
Get your staff or managers out of the office for an hour, and into nature. I highly recommend beside a gushing waterfall. You can almost get drunk on the high oxygen in such places. Oxygen, exercise, and space are all essential for energy, creativity, problem-solving, motivation, brainstorming, and those of us who are right-brain dominant (for which our schools, colleges, workplaces and world have no place to play).
If this is impossible (due to narrow-mindedness, what else?), a local cafe might provide at least a walk in the fresh air, which always invigorates thinking.
Insist on Delivery
Assign tasks to named individuals. Ensure everyone is sent a summary of the main points by email. I recommend a massively pared-down version of minutes, if at all.
Insist on Delivery Before the Four Horsemen of Armageddon Arrive
Interpret this how you will. Insist on delivery of the tasks assigned to individuals before either the universe implodes, the staff retention rate reaches unacceptable levels, the FSA sends their men in black coats, profits sink, or Friday is upon you. In other words, date tasks.
Further, ask for a (not necessarily written) report on how the task went at the beginning of the next meeting. Slackers and procrastinators will soon get used to being held accountable to their peers. When you encounter persistent, malignant non-compliance, train or fire. It’s a simple deterrant.
That’s about all I have to say. Trust me. I’ve been there. Think of what my new BFF Richard Koch would say.
Koch would say 80% of meetings are a waste of time. And, 80% of time your spent at meetings is wasted. He’d tell you to prioritise and choose the 20% of meetings that are a effective use of your time, and attend those. And, be aware that while you’re there, you’ll only find 20% of THAT time is actually effectively spent.
In other words, go back to where I said, At All Costs, Avoid Having a Meeting at All.
Let me give you a snapshot of how it *doesn’t* work…
Imagine you work for, say, a council in Enniskillen. You’re the community services officer. There are at least 26 of you across Northern Ireland. A government department calls a meeting of all community services officers in Northern Ireland.
They won’t pick a central location, like Cookstown or Portadown. It’ll be in the middle of Belfast, at their well-appointed offices, where there is no parking, in some awful traffic hotspot.
The meeting is scheduled at 11am, because no civil servant would travel to a meeting for 9am; oh, and forget breakfast meetings.
Do you arrive on time? Of course not, you freak. No-one arrives on time. If this meeting gets started before 11:20am, it will because of an act of incredible, fortuitous synchronicity. Planets would have to be aligned before that happens. Besides, you need a scone and tea before you can even think about doing any discussion.
If there are minutes of previous meetings to go through, they’ll be verbatim. No discernible action points for the assembled throng; and if there are, the person tasked to do them will have a ministerial excuse as to why they haven’t happened.
“Matters arising” never stays on target. It weaves hither and thither, meandering mindlessly through 10 pages of points. If there’s a Minister, or other elected representative in the room, you can forget that meeting being done in an hour.
An hour. Did I really say an hour? If you get out of here before two o’clock, it’s only because an act of God has intervened. They ALL have to have their say; they’ve been doing it for years, and they do not understand terms like brevity, or relevancy. Older, more senior officers will use phrases like “more discussion”, “a bigger debate”, “further consultation”. These are ruses for more meetings, and less action. They’ve only ten years left til retirement – why break the habits of a lifetime?
You might think that this is exaggeration. During my recent work appraisal, I was reproached for aiming to have all meetings done in 45 minutes, unless they were based on some serious, head-stretching, potential-for-good work. Take note, tax-payer: if you want to reduce the deficit, tell your elected representatives to stop paying mileage to workers. No one will attend unless they’re getting paid 42.5p per mile…
@Disgruntled Public Sector Worker. I have only one thing to say to you.
Any jobs going? Sounds brilliant. ;P
Seriously though, that should be addressed. Maybe a running commentary on twitter backedup with a nice youtube vid will get everyones arse into gear, then those points (very VERY valid points) can be implemented properly.
In fact I dont know why meetings are not video’ed and made public…why the hell not…
Disgruntled Public Sector Worker, I wish I could say that your experience is uncommon, but I know otherwise, from talking to many people, for whom meetings are almost always a distraction and waste of time. Many employees talk of meetings being imposed on them, and having to attend such regularly for no reason at all. A previous manager I had refused to go to any meetings, and always adopted the Stand-up Meeting approach, without even knowing it. He asked what the problems were, offered solutions and left. Simple.
Justin, love the idea of videoing meetings! Can’t see it taking off though.