"No one retains a thing"
Let's review
Meetings frequently accelerate in the latter stages because everyone wants out. But a quick recap at the end can go a long way toward ensuring that everyone is on the same page. Pamela Schindler, director of the Center for Applied Management at Wittenberg University, has been researching how to make meetings an efficient "process of work" for years. She believes that meetings should have a clear outcome that is recapped at the end in a five-minute synthesis report. If you want everyone to walk out knowing exactly what they're supposed to do, don't leave without "thinking through the meeting," as Schindler says, by revisiting the major points. And Schindler says that clarifying the potential outcomes, the next steps, and who is responsible for each step has another upside: "The real joy of synthesis is realizing how many meetings you won't need."
"We've been having the same weekly meeting since the Carter administration"
Continually take your company's pulse
Nietzsche claimed that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, but that doesn't explain the slow death of attending the same depressing weekly meeting year after year after year. However, a company can be quickly resurrected through an analysis of what's working and ditching what isn't. Sean McLaughlin, CEO of Eze Castle Software, a Boston-based company that makes software for investment management, constantly reevaluates the effectiveness of his company's meetings. His reassessments have led to decisions such as wiping out all meetings on Monday. McLaughlin realized his employees needed a clean, unfettered day to coalesce their thoughts, get organized, and plan for the week, and that his type-A go-getters were getting "Sunday fever" and preparing for Monday instead of relaxing or hanging out with their kids.
Eze Castle also uses what it calls a "barn cat," a roving problem-solver whose functions include meeting watchdog, dropping in randomly to ensure that meetings are productive and not spreading malaise. McLaughlin thinks it's critical to evaluate how meetings are working because they're a microcosm of the company and a definer of culture. He's not afraid of change--he says that in a couple of years, Eze Castle Software might have a completely different outlook on how meetings should be run.
"I don't have time to read this article"
Learn, and live by, the golden rule
Don't hold meetings for meetings' sake. Amen.
Meeting adjourned.
Sidebar: And if nothing's working? More meetings!
Meetings can be likened to an engine that drives a company forward and thus needs the occasional tune-up. Unless, of course, said company can't get started and never even leaves the driveway, in which case a total overhaul is necessary. And how should a manager fix a dead, nonstarting engine? Pat Lencioni suggests a lot more meetings.
Lencioni, CEO of the management consulting firm the Table Group and author of the recently published Death by Meeting, says that the main reason for unproductive and inefficient meetings is the attempt to make them everything to everybody. Lencioni refers to "meeting stew," a bad mix of disparate elements such as monthly tactical goals, administrative details, and big-picture issues, all of them addressed in a preordained chunk of time. "It's a case of all the ingredients tasting good, but thrown together it tastes terrible," says Lencioni. "And human beings aren't smart enough to shift context quickly." Without explicit directives, meetings ramble, managers babble, eyes roll back in heads, and the chances for success are shot.
Lencioni suggests having distinct types of meetings. A given company's lineup might include a five-minute daily check-in strictly for immediate concerns and to ensure nothing falls through the cracks; a weekly tactical that includes a one-minute quick hit of priorities for each person, followed by a progress review and an agenda-setting for the week ahead; and a longer monthly strategic for executives to delve into a couple of topics without the restraint of deadlines. If that sounds like a lot of time in meetings, think of how many e-mail strings and cubicle drop-ins could be avoided by means of a mere 300 seconds a day of clearing up issues.
Lencioni doesn't want to hear that e-mail and IM make it acceptable to skip meetings. "A table is still the best piece of technology to sit around and figure out how things work," he insists. Hence, the Table Group.
Mike Maddock, president of the Chicago advertising agency Maddock Douglas, is a believer. In addition to a mandatory five-minute executive daily (which requires calling in from the road), the company blocks off six hours on Mondays and holds meetings back-to-back-to-back. They start with a town-hall gathering, followed by tightly scheduled breakout meetings meant to address weekly goals and get different departments in sync. Maddock feels this approach has eliminated a lot of the redundant, ad hoc "hey, you got a minute?" conversations that break up the work processes much more than regularly scheduled programming. "Giving Monday morning over to hammering out issues is an investment in the rest of the week," he says. "Through fewer interruptions, we gain a lot of that time back."
