Nuts and Bolts Career Q&A: How can I run effective meetings?

Meetings have become non-stop in our post-pandemic realities. As we were unexpectedly separated from our informal in-person chats, meets rose to fill the gaps. They are the source of scorn among knowledge workers at all levels. For many engineers and other technical professionals, meetings now represent most of the time at work.

Generally, they are not effective. Otter.ai compiled a study of meeting trends in 2021 and identified some frightening statistics. Ineffective meetings cost employees 31 hours per month of productive time. That is nearly 20% of all available work hours wasted on meetings. Virtually all attendees (95%) in meetings lose focus. 39% of attendees reported dozing off in meetings. The cost of this wasted time is estimated to be $399B in the US alone. Unexpectedly, a survey of senior managers found that they believe 71% of meetings are ineffective and 67% fail to communicate their objectives.

We are facing an epidemic of productivity due to all this wasted meeting time. As a meeting organizer, you can turn this around! Running effective meetings will have many benefits, including increased team engagement, alignment of team members, better relationships, and better decision-making. In addition, running effective meetings will make you even more indispensable to your organization.

The magic of a great meeting is all the work that’s done beforehand.

You can make your meetings effective with a bit of thinking upfront. This will certainly add more time to the meeting for you but will ultimately save you lots of time by cutting unnecessary bloat from your meeting schedule. Make meetings effective by thinking more deeply about why you are having the meeting and who the participants should be. Plan to make sure all the participants are prepared. Dedicate some time to ensuring you have participation from the attendees. Finally, confirm the effectiveness of the meeting by getting feedback and advice from the participants. In the textbook Developing Management Skills, the authors highlight a valuable heuristic for making meetings more effective called the 5 P’s. You can see more about them here:

1. Purpose - What is the purpose of the meeting? There are three reasons for meetings: announcements, decision-making, and brainstorming. Only have an announcement meeting when one person has news that the others do not. Avoid holding the meeting when participants aren’t prepared, or the key decision-makers cannot attend. Meetings are most effective when individuals need to become committed to a path of action, or when you need to brainstorm to create options.
2. Participants - Think about the skills, size, and composition of the meeting participants. You want to make sure that the problem knowers, the solution providers, the resource controllers, and the decision makers are all included. If the meeting is too small, there may not be enough information shared, but if it is too large the discussion might be superficial. Think about the blend of participants as well. Too much homogeny of skills and too little might get done. Too different, and there may not be alignment. Also, think about whether participants are task-oriented or process-oriented. A mix will better keep things on track.
3. Planning - Meeting minutes should be distributed a few days in advance. This will allow participants to prepare for the meeting. When putting together the agenda, use action verbs for all topics. The topics should be sorted by increasing levels of controversiality, starting with the easy topics. Items listed on the agenda should be discussed. Items not on the agenda should not be. The meeting should start on time and end on time.
4. Participation - Get the most out of the meeting by starting with introductions (if necessary), establishing ground rules, and using varied media. You will want to encourage participation from all participants. At the end of the meeting, summarize key decisions, tasks, and takeaways for the participants. This will help to create a sense of accomplishment in the room.
5. Perspective - After the meeting ends, evaluate how well it went. Use the KSS methodology to do so:

Use these tips to help better plan, execute, and review your meetings. They will become more effective. These steps will help you to build up a reputation at work as someone who gets the most out of their meetings. This reputation will support your continued development throughout your career.

References:

Whetten, D. and Cameron, K. (2015). Developing Management Skills (9th ed.). Pearson.

https://otter.ai/blog/meeting-statistics