The Most Painful Problem in Business

That phrase is taken from the subtitle of Patrick Lencioni’s book Death by Meeting (which is a great read btw).  Lately I’ve been overwhelmed with complaints about bad meetings or suggestions for making better ones.   In a recent Fast Company blog post Paul Glover wrote about the cost of bad meetings and provides an interesting way to calculate the economic impact on businesses.  It will blow your mind.  Also, Gina Trapani who writes the Work Smart blog wrote recently about making meetings better.

Why all this talk about meetings?  Because most of them are lousy.  They suck time and energy out of organizations, reduce productivity and kill innovation.  I can hear the chorus starting now “kill the meetings – kill the meetings”, but we can’t do that.

Meetings (at least well-run productive meetings) are important.  They allow us to share information effectively.  They give us opportunities to collaborate and make decisions.  For some organizations they are the life blood of productivity.  Here are just a few tips (not necessarily original to me) that will make your meetings more effective.

1. Engage – effective meetings are ones where participants are actively engaged in the meeting.  They pay attention, ask questions, respectfully challenge others, share their opinions, and solicit information from others.  Lousy meetings are where people daydream, play games on their blackberries and ignore the snoring from the guy next to them.
2. Be prepared – imagine a meeting where everyone walks in and they are ready to meet – they know what the meeting objective is, they’ve done their homework, they have the information they need with them, they are ready to work together to meet the meeting objective.  That would be incredible.
3. Plan ahead – Some meetings are designed to share information while others are to solve problems.  Meetings can be used to plan, strategize and collaborate.  Before you schedule a meeting, know what kind of meeting you want. Set an agenda and think about how much time you’ll need for each part of the agenda.  Invite only those people who really need to be there.  Make sure everyone who is invited knows everything you know about the meeting so that they can be as prepared as you are.
4. Consider the facilities – while this won’t win you the gracious host award, some meetings don’t need water, coffee and cookies provided.  Some meetings shouldn’t even have chairs provided.  If you want a quick status report from 5-10 people, have a stand-up meeting.  I guarantee people will keep the meeting moving.  But, if you need people to focus for several hours on a complex task make sure they can be comfortable, remove distractions and provide breaks.
5. Take responsibility – okay, this one may be harder, but it may be the most important.  If your organization has bad meetings that always start 10-15 minutes late, run long and don’t seem to accomplish anything it’s your job to do something about it.  Lead by example and radically change the way you run meetings.  If you and just an attendee respectfully suggest ways to make meetings better (you could forward this blog post). 

Meetings can be the highlight of your day – something to look forward to.  For that to happen we need to pay attention to the process.  To paraphrase Smokey the Bear, you – and only you – can help stop bad meetings.

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