You're Doing Meetings Wrong: How to Make Them More Effective. (Part 1)

I think most of us are doing business meetings wrong in several ways and in part 1 here I'd like to dive into the first three of six total ways you are doing meetings wrong below and offer you some solutions. Here's what I'll discuss:

• Do you really need to meet in the first place?
• Let's stop the insanity of endless back-to-back meetings
• Agenda much?

I'm going to take some strong stances in this article, and I might be calling out some bad behaviors, so let me just apologize in advance. I don't mean to offend anyone, but I do mean to call meetings out on their B.S. so let's dive in and examine these first three.

Another Meeting That Should Have Been An Email

Yep, let's start there, do you really need this meeting? I mean really, Really, REALLY, need it? Do every single one of the invitees need, really NEED to attend? I challenge you to consider if holding a meeting is the best way to accomplish what you are trying to get done. Can you write an email, make a phone call, or better yet a text to get this done? Can this be a conversation or poll on something like Slack or MS Teams? If so don't have the meeting. Make sure that when you do have a meeting you are extremely thoughtful about the purpose of the meeting, who needs to attend, and how you will run the meeting. Think about this: In your meeting, are participants just listening to irrelevant chatter that doesn't impact their work? If so, there might be a better approach. This is a great gauge of how well your meetings are designed, check to see if people are just waiting around to speak for a few minutes and zoning out for the majority of the time. If that is happening, then this is not likely a good use of anyone's time. Be thoughtful and considerate in your planning, and strive to only conduct efficient and engaging meetings that actually accomplish something!

We are probably having too many meetings, and hence our next issue...

Back-to-Back Meetings All Day, Every Day

I remember a time in my working life (not that long ago) when my calendar was booked with back-to-back meetings from the beginning of the workday, right up until the end. Sometimes even well past the end of the day and into the evening. Can you relate to this? Does your calendar look something like this?

Let's be blunt, this is insane! I can tell you when I had meetings all day every day with no breaks in between them, there was no time, except at night and into the late hours to even start on work and tasks. This is not sustainable and makes your life hell. If this sounds familiar to you, I understand and sympathize with you because I have been there and I'm sorry. Let this article be the rallying cry for you to get out of this abusive relationship with your calendar. Do whatever it takes to free up space, start blocking off time for you to get actual work done, and don't give up those blocks no matter what. If you are leading a project for the love of all that's good in this world, DO NOT subject your team(s) to this. Make sure that everyone on your project, team, or department has enough time in the day outside of meetings to focus on the tasks that are created by the meetings. One great strategy is to focus on blocking of time for Deep Work, (for more on that see the book Deep Work by Cal Newport), where you stop multitasking and focus on single threading your important tasks and make your calendar more like the image below.

No Agendas

Are you scheduling meetings without agendas? Are you throwing meetings on someone's calendar without clearly describing the purpose of the meeting and giving them an agenda? Do you ever look at your calendar, see a meeting, and have no idea what it is going to be about? If you have said yes to any of the above, I'm sorry, but I think we can do better. There is simply no excuse for doing or allowing this. If you do it, now is the time to change. If the topic, decision, or task(s) are important enough to meet about, then it is certainly important enough to write an agenda. This agenda can even be simple bullet points about what you need to discuss. You don't have to go so far as to create a minute-by-minute breakdown, although, there is nothing wrong with doing that if you can be so detailed. If a meeting is significant and lengthy, try your best to plan in detail. You could even allocate specific time for each agenda item. There are tools that can help with this, even a tool I use, mem.ai, can generate relevant discussion points for your next meeting agenda based on your past notes, meetings, and knowledge.

In Part 2, I'll cover the next three ways you are doing meetings wrong:

• Dreaded monologuing
• Weak outcomes
• Note-taking via a printing press

So stay tuned for the next article on that in a few days.

Please offer your thoughts in the comments below, and reach out directly with any thoughts or questions.

To your growth and prosperity,

Michael Martin

ERP Specialist and Certified FocalPoint Business and Executive Coach

Mobile: 610-331-0469 

E-mail: mmartin@focalpointcoaching.com