Not Another Meeting

Do you sometimes wish you could bury your head in ice during those boring, content zero, bla bla bla meetings? Corporate America struggles to find the line between running a kingdom and the chaos of no leadership. In an effort to find that line, meetings to distribute information, gain insight, get feedback and educate became routine and normal. The down side is the effectiveness of meetings are seldom evaluated. The balance of producing excellent results against a total waste of time/dollars.
Raise your hands:
- Have you ever sat in an unproductive meeting?
- Have you ever heard repetitive information?
- Have you been in a meeting that didn't apply to you or your work?
- Have you ever heard a presentation so disorganized it was worthless?
- Have you ever had to work overtime to make up for time wasted in meetings?
- Have you ever sat through a meeting that was chaired by someone only interested in hearing his own voice?
- Have you ever taken caffeinated drinks, chocolate, sugar or gum to stay awake?
- Have you ever thought about plunging a pencil into your right hand?
OK, the last one was a bit much but maybe.... Yet over and over both we and our employees have these meeting experiences. Quantity of meetings does not mean a better educated employee, it does not mean the presenter is good or important, and it does not mean the company is better than prior to the meeting.
Suggestions on DO NOT:
- Act flippant at serious questions or blow off concerns based on anger, misunderstanding or not knowing enough about the subject. Everyone should be treated with respect.
- Hesitate to expect employees to be respectful to you (and others) in the meeting. Gently but firmly insist upon no side bar discussions, no sleeping, no eating (if that is your policy), no text messaging, no I-pods, no answering e-mails, and anything you feel disrupts a good fast meeting. If everyone concentrates, it produces a better product in a shorter amount of time. Many times people are doing these because they should not be in your meeting.
- Have a meeting when a memo or e-mail can get out the information.
- Have a meeting right after lunch or right before quitting time.
- Make stupid jokes.
- Invite people who have nothing to add, nothing to learn, or no business being there.
- Repeat information for late arrivals (let them catch up on their own time.)
- Review charts and graphs step-by-step in meetings. It puts people to sleep.
- Hand out copies of your overheads until the end of the meeting.
- Use overheads unless there is no other way to tell your story. They are over-used and the dark room puts people to sleep.
- Have a Q&A session unless you plan to answer every question (either at the meeting or in follow-up form).
- Call a meeting if you are angry - settle down or your presentation will either scare, make defensive, or make angry the attendees.
Suggestions to DO:
- Start exactly on time, every time.
- Tell the participants the exact time the meeting will end and end it at that time.
- Send an agenda out before the meeting.
- Tell the attendees ahead of time what you want from them or the purpose of the meeting. This allows them to think prior to the meeting; shortening the think time saves money.
- Send any material (attachments, graphs, charts) they should read BEFORE the meeting to keep you from reading in the meeting. This saves time and it is boring to hear people read.
- Only use a dark room if you have something really really exciting to present which includes sound and action.
- Supply note books & pens if you expect people to make notes. Or make sure you tell them they must bring to the meeting themselves.
- KISS: Keep it short & simple.
- Set a goal for the meeting and track if you met that goal.
- Have a trusted person tell you how the meeting really went. Accepting their feedback with thanks and taking the facts into consideration not defensively.
- Be innovative. If your voice or presentation skills are lacking, find something or some way to present the information in another way. Use a junior employee to help talk. Use music to make an impact. Use a different location than is normally used for meetings.
- Hold several small meetings rather than one huge meeting where people are a number not a name. People listen better if they feel special to your subject.
- Hold more meetings that compliment, give inspiration, award, or encourage than are simply informational or negative.
- Ask a heckler to stop, meet with you later one-on-one, and do it respectfully. Eject them from the meeting if their one aim is to disrupt.
- Stay in control. Give respect and demand respect.
- Ask all your employees to hold their meetings with the same set of rules. Ask to see their goals for the meetings and if they met their goals.
- Occasionally track the amount of time spent on meetings multiplied by the number of employees attending multiplied by each of their hourly salaries. It is sobering and it may be affecting your production.
- Realize time is money. Money (or what it does if you are non-profit) is why your organization exists. Making meetings productive is essential to that bottom line.