You arrive in the meeting room at 9:58am; the meeting is scheduled for a 10am start. You look around the empty room and wonder, “Am I in the right room?” You check the meeting invite on your blackberry, but sure enough, you’re sitting in the correct place. As the clock ticks over to 10am, you’re still sitting there alone, thinking about the emails you haven’t read and the report you haven’t finished. At 10:03, the door opens a crack and Bob sticks his head cautiously through, the look on his face asking “is this the right room?” He sees you, smiles, then opens the door fully and comes through. “Phew, I’m not late”, he thinks. Bob sits down across from you, opens his laptop and starts clicking away.
Over the next 5 minutes a few other people come one by one through the door, until at around 10:12 Dave, the meeting organiser, comes rushing through the door in a flurry, laptop in hand. “Sorry everyone” he says, “I was stuck in another meeting.” Dave opens his laptop and turns on the projector. As the projector shines it’s faint blue glow on the blank wall, you see Dave looking frustrated and clicking repeatedly. The projector won’t connect. “I think I have to restart my laptop” he says. Six minutes later, approaching 10:20, Dave starts the meeting.
There is no agenda, so you’re still a little unsure what the meeting is about. It turns out however that Dave isn’t too sure what he wants from the meeting either, and the discussion starts to turn in circles. Bob and Susan are discussing something separately, you can’t quite tell as you can’t really hear them over the other voices in the room. Suddenly you hear a phone ringing, and Mary reaches into her bag for her mobile phone, answers it. At 10:40 Mark stands up and announces he has to leave, he has another meeting. When the remaining attendees pile out of the room at 10:58, there are no action points to take away, no follow-up discussed, no one has recorded any minutes, and you still don’t really know what the meeting was about. The last to leave the room is Henrik, who has not said a single word since entering the room, but who has probably replied to at least 15 emails.
A good meeting can be an amazing thing: a group of minds with a common goal coming together to achieve something.
The problem with meetings though is that so many of them are “bad” meetings. We’ve all been in our share of bad meetings, and we know what a bad meeting is… A bad meeting is a waste of time, productivity and money.
For many people, it is not unusual to spend more than 4 hours a day in meetings. For some, it is even more. I regularly spend up to 75% of my normal working hours in meetings. With such a large time investment, it’s important to me that meetings are as efficient and useful as possible.
Here’s my list of dos and don’ts for having a worthwhile, efficient meeting:
- Be on time. You should be able to plan your day to let you get to where you need to be by the time the meeting starts. If you know you will be late, it’s polite to let the meeting organiser know beforehand.
- If you have to leave the meeting early, say so at the start of the meeting.
- Pay attention – don’t read your emails or work on other things. It’s disrespectful and distracting to the other people in the meeting. It’s also incredibly inefficient if things need to be repeated because you were busy emptying your inbox.
- Leave your laptop lids closed – if you need your computer to take notes, then you should just be taking notes.
- Turn your phone off or put it on silent.
- When you’re in the meeting, stay in the meeting. Don’t run in and out every 2 minutes for a call or to talk to someone. It is distracting for everyone.
- There should only be one conversation at a time.
- Stay on track. If side discussions come up, then make a note and take them offline.
- Be involved. If you are at a one hour meeting and you don’t say anything, then what value have you brought to the conversation? Why were you there in the first place?
As the meeting organiser:
- Set a clear purpose and goals of the meeting, and distribute beforehand.
- Set an agenda for the meeting and distribute beforehand.
- Act as a timekeeper – and stick to the time.
- Record the minutes from the meeting and distribute afterwards. Include clear action points.
- Make sure there are clear next steps discussed and decided upon at the meeting.
- Invite the right people and not more than that. As the number of attendees in a meeting increases, the efficiency decreases.
Ask participants for comments or additions to the agenda.
Special tips for voice conferences:
- Be on time – it is just like any f2f meeting. When you turn up late, it is distracting for the others on the call, and wastes everybody’s time.
- Choose a quiet spot where you have good reception. If there is background noise near where you are, then try to go on mute when you’re not speaking.
- Pay attention! Don’t write emails or work on other things in the background.
- Never attend a voice conference when you are in transit on a public train, in a car, or worse, walking down the street. It is noisy, distracting, and you can’t really focus on the conversation.
- At the start of the call, everyone should have a short 30-second “check-in” to announce themselves. A check-in could be a very quick hello, an update on how things are going for them, what they have been doing, etc. This makes it easier to be able to involve yourself in the call later, and ensures that everyone can “be involved” right from the start.
- If telcos are a constant part of your work life, then it pays to invest in good voice conference equipment. There is nothing worse than dialling in to a conference with a collection of people in the room on the other side who are impossible to hear or understand.
