How Can You Make Your Meetings More Effective?

As an engineer, I hated meetings. They were boring. People used them as opportunities get on their soap boxes. Rarely did anything get accomplished.

How can you make your meeting more effective? Here are some ideas:

• Know what you want to accomplish in a meeting before it starts
• Communicate what the goals are for people before the meeting starts
• Take tangents offline (acknowledge they are good points but discuss them later)
• Assign action items
• Agree on when and how you will follow up
• Document the discussion and action items in writing
• End early

I'll tackle the last point first. A good friend and prior boss of mine, Larry Weber, used to say we would all be more productive if an hour was 40 minutes. We allocate an hour for meetings and often expand the meeting to the time allotted. Often, the most costly resource in a company is compensation so use people's time wisely.

If people do not know what the meeting is about, the meeting may flounder or people will hijack it for their agenda. Decide what it is about and what you want to accomplish before you walk in the door. This does not mean that all meetings need to have hard facts or actions at their heart. It is OK to have a meeting to give people a chance to provide their opinion on a matter. The important point is to acknowledge that and make sure every member at the meeting understands the goals.

Finally, whenever you can you should not leave things ambiguous. If there are task identified as a result of the meeting, you should not leave before you identify owners, specify when the task should be completed and how you will track the task.

If it is your meeting, provide leadership and drive. If it is someone else's meeting do no let them waste your time.

More later ...