Want to have great meetings? Agendas are not enough
Meetings are the lifeblood of many organizations. Want to know the health of your organization? Examine your meetings. Conducting surveys and interviewing staff members are tactics that might give you some smoke signals. But, if you want to find the fires, take a hard look at your meetings.
While many organizations do examine their meetings, it’s often reactionary and rarely results in meaningful change. Such reactionary examinations are usually conducted after something bad has happened, like a missed deadline. Or, they may be sparked by a fist-waving leader who has had enough of bad meetings! Ironically, a meeting may be called specifically to address meeting problems. At that meeting, someone makes the bold claim that “Every meeting must have an agenda!”. Someone else shouts, “Meetings must start on time!” and another shrieks, “Meetings must have documented action items!”
Everyone agrees to these groundbreaking ideas; some feel better, a few raise an eyebrow.
This article is for the eyebrow raisers.
Below are some real ways to fix your meetings. I’m no expert, just someone who has failed, experimented a lot, and succeeded enough to have a well-informed view of what works.
1. Have a plan, not just an agenda
What is an agenda? The dictionary defines it as “a list of items to be discussed at a formal meeting”. OK, that sounds important, but let’s break that down. Having a list doesn’t make those things come true. And discussion is not always the best tactic for getting something done. Yes, a list of what you want to do or cover is important, but that is just the “what”. It’s not the “how”. To have a good meeting, you must prepare the how. You must have a plan. The dictionary defines a plan as “a detailed proposal for doing or achieving something”. Now that’s more like it.
You might be saying to yourself, “Isn’t the meeting the plan?” No, it isn’t. As much as we would like it to be, just putting people together and making an agenda doesn’t magically create an effective meeting. While the agenda might be for them, the plan is for you. A plan goes further than an agenda. It accounts for the pitfalls, the personalities, the timing, the tools, the risks. An agenda doesn’t do any of that. An agenda is like a recipe with only the ingredients and none of the cooking instructions.
2. Make a timeline
Even if your meeting is only 30 minutes, make a timeline down to the minute. Include everything from beginning to end, and be realistic about the minutes that each portion is likely to take. I’ve been made fun of for my down-to-the-minute meeting and workshop timelines, but they have saved me from overestimating and underestimating what gets done. It’s also been my savior when a derailment happens. Rather than scrambling in the moment, I can easily look at my timeline, see how much time we’ve lost, and determine what can be cut, which leads to my next tip.
3. Prepare for the meeting derailer
You know this person. You might be this person. (If you are, it’s cool. You’re welcome here.) The meeting derailer laughs at your agenda. If you plan to cover 5 items in order, they want to start with #3, and spend 45 minutes on it. The dead giveaway of a derailer, amazingly, is that they will often begin the derailment by saying, “I don’t want to derail the meeting, but….” Yes, you do, Derailer. We see you. God forbid you decide to start with intros, the derailer will be licking their chops. Your agenda is toast.
So what can you do? Here’s the thing. Derailers gonna derail. It’s going to happen. It’s on you as the meeting organizer to know that and to plan for it. You can do a few things.
- Don’t invite that person. Ask yourself if that person really needs to be there. If not, problem solved. If they have to play some role in the meeting, try the next option.
- Meet with the derailer separately in advance. It may be worth your time to schedule a separate 1:1 meeting with the derailer just to cover their part. They will love it. They will feel special. You’ll get what you need, and your meeting won’t suck.
- Eliminate openings for derailment. To do this, you must eliminate things like introductions and discussions. Silent meetings can be incredibly effective. Anti-derailment is one key benefit.
- Build the derailment into the meeting. This is a special case where you may be facilitating a workshop for a team or simply can’t do any of the above. Build in a buffer and be clear upfront with your stakeholders that the meeting will end on time so if the beginning goes long, it means some things simply don’t get covered.
- The parking lot. I don’t love this one, but it can work. You say upfront that there will be a parking lot for topics that the meeting can’t fully address and that the parking lot will be addressed at a later date. I don’t like this method because it usually leads to more, unnecessary meetings.
However you choose to have an effective meeting (yes, it is a choice), you must plan for the derailers. If not, you are likely left with meetings that lead to meetings that lead to meetings. And that’s no way to live.
4. Do some scenario planning
Even with a great plan, meetings are unpredictable beasts, so you must plan for the unexpected and know what you will do if certain things happen. For example, in many workshops I have led, a leader will want to say a few words to kick things off. This can be fine. I’ll usually agree to a certain amount of time, say 10 minutes. I’ll also make it clear that if the ten minutes turn into 11minutes, we will need to cut out certain sections of the workshop or meeting. I make it clear that it’s a trade-off. I also encourage skipping the intro as intros aren’t always helpful and often are hurtful to the meeting, but that’s another article. In any case, some leaders stick to the 10 minutes and some don’t. I can’t always tell who will do what, so I plan for a 10 minute, 20 minute, 30 minute, and more scenario. Before it happens, I have a clear idea of what I will do to recover the meeting. I don’t need to figure it out in the moment which allows me to continue to focus on the purpose of the meeting.
5. Decide how you will collaborate
Aside from the town hall, where one person is addressing a large group, most meetings are intended to be collaborative. An agenda item might read:
“Discuss possible names for new product launch”.
Without a plan for how this happens, this agenda item comes loaded with risks, such as:
- Hierarchical domination where only the leaders speak because there was no plan to level the playing field.
- “Expert” domination where everyone defers to the person who has named things before, which somehow reduces everyone else’s ability to come up with names for something
- No plan for how this agenda item ends. Discussion leads to discussion leads to discussion.
Instead, try for a set of agenda items like:
“Silently generate possible names on sticky notes for new product launch — 3 minutes”
“Silently organize names into similar groups — 2 minutes”
“Silently vote with sticky dots on the most exciting names to determine the winner — 3 minutes”
6. Test your tools
This has never been more important. I’m writing this mid-pandemic and many of us only meet virtually now. And it may stay that way for some time. This means we use various tools to meet and collaborate virtually. Not all tools are equal. Don’t assume they will support your meeting plan. Just because a tool has breakout rooms, don’t assume the rooms can be used intuitively. Just because a tool has a virtual whiteboard, don’t assume it will support your ability to make decisions in your meeting. Test all of it.
If you try any or all of these, I’m confident you’ll see positive results. Remember, the plan is for you as the meeting manager, not for them as the meeting participants. They don’t ever need to see it or know about it, but I assure you, if you have a plan, they will feel the difference and so will you!
