Meetings, meetings, meetings. We all have them. Whether they are work meetings, home meetings, coaching meetings or volunteer organization meetings, we spend many hours each day in some sort of meeting.
Have you ever wondered if they are a waste of time? Or is there a way to make your meetings more effective and productive?
For me, I’ve learned how to make all my meetings more productive. Let’s start with having an agenda ahead of time. So, an agenda doesn’t have to be a piece of paper with a numbered list of items to discuss; it could just be notes you’ve made on your phone or on a piece of paper.
When I was CEO of my company, I developed the practice of always having an agenda ahead of time and usually sent it out in advance. Sometimes it was hard to convince my direct reports to follow the same practice, but those who did so, seemed to have the most productive meetings.
At home, both Jack and I do our own version of an “agenda”. We have dinner together every evening and one or both of us may have said or texted during the day, “let’s talk about xxx during dinner.” Often, we both come to dinner with a scrap of paper where we have made a list of things to either talk about, decide on, or a trip to concept.
And for organizations whose boards I serve on, sending out an agenda ahead of time (at least three days) is definitely a best practice. I attended a board meeting yesterday and the meeting chair listed the person who would be presenting along with the amount of time that would be allocated to the topic on the written, emailed agenda. Hallelujah! No surprise, we got out of the meeting 25 minutes early.
Well, here is the big secret that most people don’t even know about.
To make your meetings most effective, summarize YOUR notes after the meeting. If you’re at a board meeting, the secretary will type up the minutes – but you may not see those minutes for months.
But if you are at a management or committee level meeting, I suggest you take notes during the meeting. Listing action items, dates, who is responsible and key points is the priority to jot down. But what if you get an idea during the meeting, but want to bring it up at another time? I used to write my questions at the top of the page with a ** next to it – which was a trigger for future action.
During my coaching sessions with my clients, I always take copious notes during our meeting and type up a recap afterwards, to make sure I have captured the most important discussion topics. I will review these notes before our next coaching session.
My most successful clients do the same thing. They type up their notes, listing their biggest “take-aways” and “a-ha’s” from our meeting. They list the action items, or suggested future discussion items and then they send it to me! Many times I am able to provide clarification for them, and they certainly are getting the most out of their coaching sessions.
How about trying this out for yourself? Next time you are in a meeting – take notes. Use headings to follow the meeting topics and bullet points. List action items in bold. Then when you return to your work station, type these notes up and email to yourself or save as a word document, filed by meeting type. If you notice you don’t have a lot of notes – is it because the meeting was not necessary? Or people went onto tangents and didn’t stay on topic. Would an email have sufficed instead of holding a meeting?
**When I would have big meetings, with lots of attendees I would do a simple calculation of the cost to the company. One hour of everyone’s salary times 140% to cover benefits. When I saw that number, I would ask myself: Will there be a positive ROI on that time investment? It made me be much more focused during my meetings. Try this technique when you are sitting in a meeting that seems to go on forever. Then share the “cost of the meeting” with the chair or your boss, and suggest next time, have fewer people attend, or just send an email.
Sometimes recurring meetings just need to be eliminated all together. It’s like hitting the reset button.
Onward and upward,
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