Making Meetings Not Suck @ Corwin Hiebert

Dan Mangan "meeting" with peeps at CREATIVEMIX. Image by Jeremy Lim.

[Part 2 of 2]

As a counter-post to my pissy rant about how much I think meetings suck, let me share with you some ideas on how you can make meetings not suck.

The truth is I have very few traditional meetings. I prefer to process the details of project online – that’s what Smartsheet is for. Most of my face-to-face meetings with clients, prospects, or collaborators take place over coffee or pint and have nothing to do with agendas or deliverables, but they’re invaluable to my work. When I meet with someone in a less-formal setting we’re building trust and developing camaraderie. Besides, new ideas tend to struggle in a boardroom.

That being said, I’m cool with the idea of chairs, tables, WiFi, and especially a whiteboard just as long as the vision and intent for the meeting is clear. So, here’s a my take on the good, old-fashioned meetANG.

From what I’ve seen, the biggest concern from a business perspective is that entrepreneurs don’t consider meetings as billable and therefore the prep time, and the face-to-face time, are a blow to their earning potential. The way to extract more value for yourself is to setup some parameters and expectations of the meetings you’re involved with. Here’s a few un-suck ideas:

1. Before agreeing to a project include a request for a meeting schedule or provide your own schedule, one that fits your calendar. Pre-scheduled meetings are very successful at limiting the emergency or the single issue meetings.

2. Book something immediately following the scheduled meeting so that you have a hard-stop and make sure everyone knows it before the meeting starts (don’t be a clank about it though – if you act like you’re uber-popular, in demand, or “the poo” then you’re an idiot). In lieu of a good agenda this hard-stop has a tendency to push the important items up to the beginning of the meeting leaving the silly details for the end which you have to politely excuse yourself from, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of urgency on their part.

3. Work at being the best meeting attendee ever! Whether in person or on the phone, rock every meeting with a great attitude and be solutions-oriented. And be early or at least on time. When you’re late you’re not entering the meeting from a position of strength.

4. End each meeting with a summary of YOUR action items (verbal is best, writing them down is a must). Don’t worry about everyone else just make sure everyone knows that you’ve got things covered. If someone says, “Can you email that to me” tell them “Why, didn’t you take notes?” Or, just say – no.

5. If you’re the meeting leader then focus on being a totally awesome meeting initiator and facilitator. When you create an exciting culture around meeting with you clients, prospects and collaborators will be motivated to work with you. Bringing candy or cookies is the old standby but I’m sure you can come up with something awesomer. Maybe there’s a location that’s inspiring or a new way you can plan the agenda or setup so that it gives attendees a fresh look at things.

6. Leaders should send a very clear meeting invitation with all the important details. I’m a big fan of Outlook/iCal meeting requests because they keep me organized but it can be a quick email or text-message too. Include a quick agenda or some goals for the session. Try to schedule meetings at least a week out. The more time the better. A quick reminder to the attendees 36-hr prior is a good idea too.

7. Keep it short! If you have re-occurring meetings with the same people then try shortening your next meeting and see how it goes. I know some software engineers whose team meeting is no longer than 18-min per week. That’s awesome.

8. Chillax on the updates and reports. They take forever and accomplish very little. If they’re important to the context of the group/project then have participants prepare 1 or 2 highlights/issues they’re focused on.

9. Meetings should focus on action so plan agenda items that elicit discussion, interaction, dialogue, debate, and brainstorming. As soon as something concrete surfaces start looking for a person to assign it to develop further and then move on!

10. Take discussion “off-line” when at all possible. Agenda items should be as group-specific as much as possible. If a small group or two people are entering into a discussion that only pertains to them encourage a separate meeting following the current one – immediately after is ideal.

Props – Ben Kadel (Emotus Operandi) is a client of mine and he runs the best meetings EVER! With Ben, no meeting is the same, there’s no template (from what I can tell) but he’s organized, on-time, agenda-driven, but is always focused on people. He’s got a process in place for each meeting that gets everyone focused on the goals and we get stuff done!

So… do YOU have some non-suck meeting ideas? Drop them in a comment below!

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