Meetings can provide an excellent forum for team building and communication yet often merely waste time. Why does an activity with so much potential become a depressing and wasteful experience?
I would suggest that the problem lies with organizations’ ineptitude in conducting meetings. Too many groups fail to run meetings well, and their poor results can almost be predicted before a meeting commences.
A meeting can be broken down into several parts:
i) Planning
ii) Execution
iii) Follow through
If any part is poorly performed, the likelihood of failure is great. This month, we’ll discuss planning.
Why have the meeting?
Many organizations schedule the same meeting at the same time on the same day each and every week. Little thought is given to the idea of whether or not the meeting is necessary. If tradition has it that Team A meets on Mondays to discuss improving process effectiveness or some other task, then Team A meets—regardless of other commitments that might make better use of that time.
Once a regular meeting time has been established, it is unusual for anyone to question the need for the meeting. The result is often a gathering that merely rehashes the points that were raised in previous meetings—since there have been no new developments since the last time the team met.
Regularly scheduled meetings need to be critiqued regularly to determine if they have outgrown their value or to determine if there is another, more effective, format or forum.
No agenda—No plan
It is surprising how many groups meet without an agenda. This is probably most frequent when a committee or team meets on a regular basis to work on the same task or issue.
Failure to have an agenda for a meeting creates at least three problems:
It leads to a lack of preparation on the part of the participants. In the turmoil of everyday operating, one does not keep at the front of mind the minutiae of previous meetings. The result is that people arrive at the meeting unprepared and valuable time is often used in trying to focus those gathered.
Another aspect of this problem is that individuals arrive at meetings without the necessary material to deal with the problems being discussed. As a result, individuals have to disrupt the meeting while they return to their workplace to retrieve necessary information—or they “wing it” and make statements that are not backed by facts, thus leading the group astray.
Meetings that don’t have agendas have a tendency to wander. The group doesn’t have a road map showing what needs to be covered during the meeting. The result is that some unimportant matters consume a lot of time while other, more important, items get short shrift, since the time for the meeting is basically over before the group starts discussing them.
Documentation Arrives too Late to be of Use
Whether the organization is a large conglomerate or a small volunteer entity, ensuring that appropriate material is distributed to the participants ahead of time is a constant challenge.
The result is that many participants see important material for the first time at the meeting that has been called to discuss it. In other cases, participants get material so close to the time of the meeting that they do not have adequate time to study the contents and therefore are not able to provide valuable input.
Secondary fallout from the late distribution of material is that individuals busy themselves reviewing the material at the meeting and miss participating in discussions about other important matters. This can be perceived as rudeness or ignorant behaviour on the part of individuals making presentations.
Meetings that are held too frequently make it difficult to have material developed and subsequently distributed in a timely fashion.
What is the Objective?
The person chairing a meeting should have an objective for the meeting. By this I mean that the Chair should set—prior to the meeting—an objective of what they want to accomplish in the meeting. If an objective is not set, it is more likely that the meeting will cover a number of issues but come to few if any conclusions. However, if the Chair has an objective of what he or she wants to accomplish, it is much easier to steer the group towards a conclusion on the issue being addressed.
The above are a few of the issues that need to be covered when planning an effective meeting. In a future article, we will discuss the issues of Execution and Follow-through, the other two components to managing successful and effective meetings.