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When Google co-founder Larry Page took over as CEO in 2011, one of the first things he did was send an email to all staff about meetings. He issued a number of new rules, including:
- No decision should ever wait for a meeting. If a meeting is absolutely necessary to make the decision, it should be scheduled immediately.
- Every meeting must result in a decision.
- The number of attendees should be limited to a maximum of 10, and must include someone who has the clear authority to make decisions.
- Participants who don’t give input should be excluded from meetings.
Page took meetings seriously. It makes sense: meaningless meetings come at a huge cost for companies, wasting hours of your most expensive employees’ time – while simultaneously giving the most obnoxious co-workers public platforms to air their unhelpful views, and fuel dissent.
It all boils down to how the chair handles a meeting, says Terry Sorour, executive coach at Leader Coaching and former senior executive of the McCarthy Motor Group. “You need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve from the meeting and a very disciplined approach to keep everybody on point.”
Here’s how to make the most of your meetings:
Set an agenda (and goal) beforehand
All participants should receive the agenda ahead of the meeting, and given a chance to give feedback on what will be discussed.
One way to keep everyone engaged, and to ensure the most efficient discussion, is to list the agenda points as questions that should be answered during the meeting.
One of the biggest problems is that there often is no real purpose to a meeting, says Sorour. “Before going into the meeting, everyone needs to know what the desired outcome or goal should be.” Often, weekly “update” meetings are the worst kind of productivity killers – make sure they have a clear purpose.
Also, share all relevant information with participants beforehand, and ask that they come prepared. Assign each agenda point to a specific person, who should be able to provide in-depth expertise on that topic.
Invite the right people
This includes you. At senior level, executives do not need to attend every meeting, says Sue Welman, executive coach at the Johannesburg-based True North Coaching and Consulting. “Ask yourself if the meeting will be the most productive use of your time – if not, delegate.”
Assign a scribe
Someone should be taking notes and making sure that everyone gets a summary after the meeting. This will avoid different interpretations of the events.
Most importantly, the agreed actions and responsibilities, in measurable and summarised format, should be sent to all participants as soon as possible after the meeting, says André Hindley, a Pretoria-based certified management consultant, executive and business coach.
Set a strict timeline
The meeting should have a specific end time and preferably a timeline for the agenda. Each agenda point should get an allocated time, to ensure that you don’t stall on one issue. No meeting should be longer than 90 minutes, says Sorour.
Ban distracting technology, including smartphones and iPads
It may look as if your colleagues are researching a point under discussion. In fact, an urgent kitten pic is demanding their attention and causing them to miss out on an important point.
When there’s no consensus
If the meeting participants cannot arrive at an agreement about a key decision, Sorour says a list of “for” and “against” factors should be compiled. Identify the key unknowns (or blockages) on these lists and appoint sub-committees to explore each of these elements by a certain deadline.
If you want to adopt a more efficient meeting culture, it is very important to be doubly strict about enforcing new rules at the start. This will confirm that you are serious about the new approach, says Welman.
Keep your meeting on track
The biggest enemies of the productive meeting are people who simply love the sound of their own voices, feel obliged to comment on every issue and interrupt other participants with their profoundly unrelated thoughts.
The key is to be firm but fair, says Sorour. Make sure that the conversation remains about the facts and don’t indulge in unfounded judgments. Stay calm and remain interested in all contributions.
When a participant ventures off topic, summarise their comments by stating: “This is what I hear you say,” followed up with: “Unfortunately I don’t see the link to the issue currently under discussion,” and quickly move the conversation back to more productive ground.
If one person is monopolising the meeting, make a point of asking other participants for their views and give everyone equal airtime.
Effective meetings, like most things in life and business, rely on effective communication, says Hindley.
“Planning and structuring meetings through mechanisms like carefully establishing the agenda, time, duration, venue and meeting stakeholders are important, but none of these will ensure an efficient meeting if the principles of effective communication are not practised during the meeting.
“These principles include the chairperson and participants’ mutual respect for and adherence to active listening (which is critically important), timing of speaking, allowance and tolerance for opposing views, differences in culture, new ideas and using the correct language to address disagreement or alternatives.”
Meeting tricks
1. Ban meetings on one particular day of the week. This is a new trend among technology companies in particular, and allows employees to plan for uninterrupted work.
2. No chairs. To cut down on unnecessary chitchat, keep all the participants standing. This is particularly effective for short daily meetings of less than 15 minutes.
3. To prevent participants interrupting each other, instate a “talking object” (like a stress ball). Only the person holding the ball is allowed to speak.
4. Use a sandglass to limit how long participants can speak.
5. Give “talking credits”. Sue Welman, executive coach at True North Coaching and Consulting, recommends affording each participant a limited number of turns to speak during a meeting. This will keep their focus on the most important inputs, and make them think twice about using their talking credit to recount that one funny anecdote from 2002. It will also democratise the meeting and give everyone an equal chance to speak. Talking credits can be made tangible by using sweets or other objects to represent them. For example, if everyone gets five turns to speak, give them five Smarties each. When they make a comment, they have to place one Smartie in the middle of the table. If they run out of Smarties, they can only speak when spoken to.
This article originally appeared in the 24 March 2016 edition of finweek. Buy and download the magazine here.
