Make your meetings productive

What are the biggest productivity killers in the workplace? March Madness brackets are a temporary distraction, but college basketball is in the rear view mirror for now. Fantasy football leagues run amuck, but they are on hold due to the football strike.

But regardless of the season, excessive and poorly run meetings can gum up the best of organizations. Too many of us have been dragged into unnecessary, soul-crushing, time-consuming meetings that have unclear objectives, or perhaps no objectives at all. On the positive side, these meetings have probably provided Scott Adams with enough material to write Dilbert cartoons for another 20 years. Here are some ideas for getting more out of your meetings.

Establish objectives before you schedule the meeting. Too many meetings occur simply because they have always occurred, and they are re-scheduled on a regular basis. “We’ve always had this meeting” is not a good reason to continue it. Make sure you know what you want to accomplish before you pull people together, and check after your meeting to see if you have succeeded.

Create an agenda and get it to people before the meeting. In addition to the standard meeting time, location and participant information, your agenda should identify the topics for discussion and which attendees will be responsible for covering them. Getting your agenda to people before the meeting provides the opportunity for participants to prepare, bring the right material, and leaves little room for excuses.

Invite the right people, which really means don’t invite everyone. How many times have you sat through a meeting that you didn’t need to attend and left feeling like you had wasted an hour (or more) of your life? Meeting schedulers tend to err on the side of inviting too many people. Invite the people who can help you reach your objectives, as well as individuals who need to provide input.

Clearly assign responsibility for follow-up actions during the meeting, and establish a deadline for their completion. You don’t want to leave a meeting with uncertainty on who is supposed to do what. Make it clear at the meeting, and reiterate the assignments by sending out a list of action items promptly after the meeting.

Start and end on time. It’s no fun showing up for a meeting on time and having to wait around for stragglers to wander in before the meeting can get started. Likewise, people have busy schedules and don’t appreciate meetings running into overtime.

Have individuals who engage in filibustering drawn and quartered. Doing this just once goes a long way to making sure attendees are focused and don’t go off on unnecessary tangents in future meetings. If this approach is a bit extreme for your corporate culture, take the role of meeting leader seriously and take responsibility for keeping the meeting on track and reigning in those who stray from the agenda. You’ve invited people for a reason. Make sure that each of them has the opportunity to be heard.

Take a walk on the wild side and outlaw meetings for one day a week and see if you and your business can survive. Who knows, you may find the productivity gains from “no meetings” days worth doing on a permanent basis.

Do you have a business question or topic that would make a good column? Send your ideas or questions to jeff.neuville@b-assistnc.com and share your business experience with others.