I hate bad meetings. It's partly due to my fundamental impatience and partly to my experience of how productive and even fun a good meeting can be. Fortunately for me, I'm seldom at the effect of lousy meetings: I'm generally either facilitating (in which case I better be able to make it useful, or why are you paying me), or it's a meeting in my own company (and if I can't keep those from being bad, yikes.)
So the title of this article appealed to me: Meetings Suck? Make Them Better. The author, Tom Searcy, offers great, simple advice: Keep them as short as possible; don't overwhelm people with information and data; involve everybody; follow up. As is often the case when I read good articles, I thought to myself - Right on! This is straightforward and practical. Everybody should do this. And then my next thought: If the solution is so simple, why are so many meetings still so bad?
This really interests me. When the solution(s) to a seemingly intractable problem are so simple, I get curious about why the problem still exists. I believe meetings are bad for three main reasons, each which involves the mindset of the person in charge:
- We don't clarify the 'who.' In a bad meeting, most of the attendees are sitting there wondering what's in it for them...and generally concluding that the answer is 'not much.' Poor meetings generally consist of somebody talking and everyone else is pretending to listen, or a conversation that only involves a couple of the people present.
Try this: think about how costly group meetings are in terms of people-hours. Seriously: if you're holding an hour-long meeting for the top 15 people in your company or department, that's hugely expensive. Rather than thinking of it as a necessary evil, think of it as a major investment on which you need to get a good return. Three things that help: 1) only focus on those topics that are important and useful to all or most of the people in the meeting, 2) only invite those people who need to understand, buy into, or act on the topics being discussed, and 3) give people the information they need in order to understand why they're at the meeting. And that leads us to the next point...
- We don't clarify the 'why.' Recently a friend of mine regaled me a with a tale of a particularly awful meeting he'd been required to attend. He said, "The worst thing about it was that no one really knew why we were there, what the meeting was supposed to be about, or what was expected of us. Beyond a superficial 'We're meeting about our 2013 goals' memo that went out beforehand, we had zero useful information. And it didn't get any better...I left not knowing any more about the purpose of the meeting than when I walked in."
This is shockingly common. Back to my earlier comment about how expensive meetings are: I'll bet you anything if the leader of the rambling, unfocused meeting my friend described was paying a lawyer $500 or $600 an hour, he or she would go into each conversation with that lawyer being pretty clear: Here's what we're talking about, here's what I hope to accomplish, and here's what I expect from you. And a team meeting is hugely more costly per hour than that - it makes sense to be at least as clear!
To help with this, clarify and then share, in advance of a meeting, four things: what are we talking about (topic); how long will we spend on it (time); who's primarily responsible for the topic (owner); and why are we talking about it - that is, what do we hope to accomplish (goal). Imagine getting an agenda before a meeting that clearly and simply stated the topics, time, owners, and goals! And then imagine the leader actually keeping the meeting focused on the stated agenda. We use this approach in our own meetings and in meetings we facilitate. And those meetings, I am proud to say, do not suck.
- We don't clarify the 'what's next.' This goes to Searcy's advice about follow-up. Even if you have a good meeting, one that feels focused and productive, if nothing happens afterwards...it's a still a bad meeting. If the next steps after a meeting aren't clear or simply don't happen - people will experience the meeting as a kind of bait-and-switch...good while it lasted, but ultimately useless. And if you're the responsible party, you'll lose credibility. Clear, tangible outcomes from a meeting you run aren't just a nice-to-do, they're an important signal to others that you're competent and trustworthy.
You can do two things to make good follow-up more likely. As you wrap up each topic, make sure the group agrees on what's going to happen next, when it will be done, and who will do it. Say it out loud, write it down, and distribute it after the meeting. Then keep it alive: Find a way to check in with the person responsible, to see how it's going and whether they need support. When it's completed, have the 'owner' share that with the group. If it slips, engage the team in figuring out how to get it back on track. If you deal with the commitments you make in meetings as though they're real and important, others will start to do the same. And more of the important stuff will get done.
Think about meetings as an investment on which you want to get a great return. It's the best way I know to motivate yourself to focus on clarifying the who, why and what's next when you're in charge of a meeting. And when you have to attend bad meetings that you don't run, you can try asking the leader : "How can I help you get a better return on the time and effort we're putting into this meeting?" He or she probably hasn't thought about it this way, and your question may spark a great conversation...and a better meeting.
(NOTE: An earlier version of this article appeared here in July of 2012)
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