Rules for effective meetings

How often did you sit at meetings that, having exceeded 2 hours in duration, tried to solve all the problems in the world at the same time? When people, red from stuffiness, losing self-control from fatigue, begin to try to shout down each other in an attempt to find the right solution? When each meeting ends in nothing, and all the participants swear to themselves that they will never again gather for these meaningless meetings?



Original article: tvoyplan.com/2013/04/28/effective-meeting-rules

What is the effectiveness of the meeting?

If we apply the popular logic of calculating the return on investment (ROI, return on investment) to assess the effectiveness of meetings, we get something like the following:

Meeting efficiency = value of decisions made / (meeting time * number of participants * average participant salary)

Obviously, by increasing the value of the decisions made (the numerator) and reducing the meeting time and the number of participants, as well as trying to minimize the time of highly paid people (the denominator), we can maximize the return on it. Despite the fact that trying to optimize each of these parameters, you will already achieve considerable success, there is an interconnection between them and skillful balancing them - not an easy task, which is not obtained by many managers.



Therefore, the meeting is quite a costly thing, which rightly earned itself the fear and hatred among office workers. The same emotions apply to the organizers of these meetings, including you. If you want to earn the respect of your team, you must be able to conduct effective meetings.

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This article is dedicated to teaching you how to get the most out of meetings with minimal time and emotional losses to the participants.

Preparing for the meeting

Do we need a meeting?

“Meetings are a symptom of bad organization. The fewer the meetings, the better. ”- Peter Drucker,“ Effective Leader ”.

Meeting ROI is often less than calling, chatting, or instant messaging. The meeting is only necessary in those rare cases where other methods of communication will be less effective. As a rule, several of the following conditions must be met:

• Complexity. The topic under discussion is so complex that participants need to look at visual materials together so as not to fall out of the discussion thread. For example, the architecture of database entities or the complex business process of checking a loan application is discussed.
• Urgency. The topic under discussion is so urgent that the development of an action plan on this topic by e-mail will spend an inadmissibly large amount of time.
• Importance. The topic under discussion is so important that its importance covers any possible time costs for the group members to hold the meeting.

In other cases, you can safely refuse to collect the meeting.



No need to convene meetings for the wrong reason. If you are:

• want to transfer responsibility for the problem to the group,
• looking for listeners for your ideas or
• do you want to strengthen the team

then look for other ways to communicate.

Clearly identify the purpose and agenda

Like any other undertaking, without a clearly stated goal, the meeting is doomed to failure.



The goal of any meeting is a plan of action. Not “to discuss the possibilities”, not “to resolve the question”, but “to entrust such and such to do this and that to such a certain number”. Any other goal setting can lead to the meeting having no consequences.



Therefore, when setting up a meeting, clearly listed to the participants, an action plan for solving which problem or problems you want to receive and send them the resulting agenda. Written agenda will allow people to make sure that they do not spend time in pointless discussion, and the issues under discussion will relate to their area of ​​interest.



In case there is not enough time for the meeting, the issues in the agenda should be sorted by decreasing importance (then you will have time to discuss the most important) or by increasing complexity (then you will have time to close a maximum of questions).

Do not invite extra participants

Each person at the meeting will inevitably spend the general time with his speeches and questions, whether of sincere interest in the problem or just to justify his presence. At the same time, the likelihood that an additional person will know something that others do not know decreases with an increase in the number of participants. That is, in addition to the obvious increase in group time, increasing the number of participants reduces the effectiveness of the discussion.



It is recommended not to exceed the limit of 5 participants. Each participant must be sifted through the following "sieve" of questions:

• Does he have exceptional knowledge of the subject that other participants in the meeting do not possess?
• Does the topic under discussion affect his interests? Do not his interests coincide with the interests of any other participant?
• Is this person ready for a constructive discussion?
• Is it enough just to let this person know about the results of the meeting?

Meeting

The meeting organizer, that is, you, is responsible for ensuring that its goals are achieved. You should:

• monitor compliance with all the discussion rules described below
• interrupt those who violate them
• summarize group decision
• follow the agenda and determine when the group moves to the next question

So, 7 rules for effective meetings:

1. One says ... Do not let participants interrupt each other. Not only is this a manifestation of disrespect, but most likely, at the time of speaking at the same time, participants do not try to understand each other that it does not benefit the meeting as a whole.
2. ... and everyone else is listening. The key to effective discussion is that everyone in the group should follow what is said in the group. Everyone should have the same “picture” of the discussed issues. As soon as the group breaks up into several discussions or someone starts to get distracted (for example, check mail on the phone or just “go to itself”), further time will be lost until the group becomes whole again. Everything that happened while someone was “absent” will have to be repeated for him, spending all the rest on this time.
3. Get to the point! In spite of the fact that when people are tired, they want to relax and talk on abstract topics, any such withdrawal takes the time of everyone involved and keeps you away from reaching a decision. Gently return everyone to the topic of discussion.
4. Fight the problem, not the people. In the heat of discussion, participants can afford comments that others can take to a personal account. Such situations, if they are not quenched in the bud, will inevitably spoil the working atmosphere, create unnecessary tension, “disable” the affected participants, spend time and most likely prevent the group from achieving their goals. Immediately stop the discussion that went "in the wrong direction."
5. Capture everything said. This can be done by you or another participant whom you will entrust with the role of the secretary of the meeting. Without fixation, the group will begin to forget those facts or conclusions that were produced, and the effectiveness of the process will inevitably fall. In addition, records help the group to save time by allowing the speaker to simply point to one or another part of the records, rather than explaining in detail what exactly he already means from what has already been said. Fixation should take place on a sheet of paper, which is visible to the whole group, or on a blackboard hanging on the wall.
6. Take breaks. Use the tomato method (work in cycles that imply a 5-minute rest every 25 minutes of work). In my experience, meetings that last more than one and a half hours lose their effectiveness due to the fatigue of the participants. It is better to stop such meetings, postponing the continuation to another day.
7. If the group is no longer needed, disperse. As the problem is discussed, there are fewer and fewer complex issues requiring general discussion. If you understand that the problem has broken up into several tasks that require individual execution, there is no point in spending the total time for group discussion - the meeting needs to be completed. If it is too early to finish the meeting, but there are already people whose knowledge in the further discussion will not be required or whose interests will no longer be affected, let them go.

Ending the meeting

At the end of the meeting, return to its goal - the development of an action plan (also known as the meeting protocol). This protocol should:

• exist not verbally but in writing
• do not allow different interpretations
• be written in a language that will be clear in two months
• for each item contain responsible for the execution and term

Send out (you or the secretary of the meeting) the minutes to all participants and those responsible - this is one more step towards the fact that everything said will be executed.