Over the years, from non-profit organizations to large corporations to small 3-person businesses, I’ve witnessed an amazing phenomenon that seems to universally hold true across the board: Internally, you’ll find a direct correlation between the organization’s culture and the quantity & length of their meetings. In general, teams who meet for long period of time, who always meet, and who have lots of people in every meeting without thinking carefully first about who’s really required to be there seem to be the same organizations who are resistant or slow to change and the mid-management level and lower, and who typically see an unfortunate ratio of # of total meeting man hours-to-things actually being done as a result of the meetings.
Here’s a few ideas that have helped organizations make the shift:
1) Ask the question. Before every meeting, someone should be expected, without fear, to ask the question, “Is everyone here really necessary in this meeting?” TIme is money, so be bold about being a great steward of the CEO’s resources he/she trusts you to manage.
2) Determine a starting AND stopping time. When you determine this ahead of time, before the opportunity for people to take rabbit trails and pursue personal agendas, you keep the focus on the real reason for the meeting: The action item following the meeting.
3) Who, what, when: Never leave a meeting without these 3 assigned for every action item discussed. Seems simple, but ask yourself how many metings you’ve sat in on that were brainstorming meetings. Everyone left excited, but who was held accountable, to what, by when?
4) Elect a champion. When you’ve determined that an idea or initiative will be pursued, remember: Nothing happens if someone doesn’t champion it. Assign someone who ultimately will champion a timely conclusion, and decide to allow the champion to hold everyone accountable to the agreed-upon tasks.
5) What’s next? Many initiatives get stuck because no one ever stops to say, “OK, we’re here, we need to get there, what’s the NEXT thing we can do?”
6) Be bold, be brief, be gone. Cultures that consistently infuse passion, creativity and brainstorming into their environment encourage multiple opportunities to collaborate. If your culture does that, you should find yourself over time having more planned and spontaneous “collaborations”, and fewer and fewer long, drawn-out meetings.
7) Allow everything to be up for renegotiation. Just because Monday morning meetings worked for a while, doesn’t mean they’re the most efficient AND effective way to operate today. “This is how we’ve always done it” is a slippery slope to mediocrity. Insist on a culture where anyone, any time, respectfully and honorably can simply ask the question, “Why are we doing this (task, meeting, process, method) in the first place? Who said we can’t change it if it makes us better?”
8) Be about solutions. People who spot holes in your team, problems in your process are tremendous assets, IF they bring solutions and/or ideas to get to solutions with their insights. If a problem is being tackled, someone speak up and remind the group, “let’s be about solutions.”
Remember, the less time spent in a meeting, the more energy, time and excitement you’ll have leftover to research, discover and act on solving the very problems you met to solve in the first place.
