How to have a productive meeting
How many times have you gone to a meeting, talked vigorously for an hour, sat down at your desk and realised you had accomplished…nothing?
It’s easy for meetings to become unproductive. Gathering a group of people together with an unclear agenda is a guaranteed time waster. Here are some tips for having a productive meeting:
A few days beforehand…
1) Plan Ahead
The purpose of meetings is to share ideas, but it’s essential to know what you want to get out of the meeting before going in. This isn’t to say you need to plan everything to the finest detail! Here is a structure I find useful, with examples:
What do I need to achieve from this meeting?
- to gain a basic of understanding of X
What information does this require?
- the purpose of X
- basic understand of how X operates
What information will they be able to provide me?
- all of the above, as this is the team that runs X.
What level of detail do I need?
- high level understanding. We have an hour booked, so this is possible.
Plans going forward
- initial understanding meeting, then follow up meetings thereafter.
Specific questions
- how often is X updated?
- time commitment for our team to get involved
- format of data for X
2) Share your plan
It’s always a good plan to share what you need to have covered with everyone else before going to your meeting. This will help them structure their thoughts before the meeting. There’s nothing worse than booking time with someone, asking them a question and having them say, “Hmmm, I don’t know anything about that! I’ll have to check in with Lucy later on. Could we schedule a meeting for next week?”
When you share your plan, you don’t need to go into the same level of detail as the above. You can simply say, “Hey Jim, I wanted to drop you an overview of what I wanted to cover in our meeting next week. I need to have a high-level understanding of the purpose and operation of X. After our initial meeting, we’ll have to schedule some follow-up meetings later on to ask some more specific questions.”
Right before the meeting…
3) Make time before the meeting
There’s nothing worse than rushing from meeting to meeting, feeling harried and forgetting what you need to cover. Make sure you have 10-15min before each meeting to sit by yourself and clear your head. It’s essential to be focused in meetings, as they have the propensity to lose track of what needs to be discussed. For all the people who read this and immediately think, “I don’t have time! I’m in meetings all day, every day!” that is not an excuse. I guarantee you that your meetings are not as productive as they could be. It is better to carve out 10 minutes to yourself to put yourself in the right frame of mind and remember what the meeting is for, then to have 3 back-to-back meetings and have to schedule follow-ups because you forgot to ask an essential question.
4) Write a priority list
Right before your meeting, you should spend a few minutes writing a list of points you need to cover, from highest priority to lowest priority. This shouldn’t be as structured as the previous plan. At this point, you should have a good idea of what needs to be covered. Writing a priority list will let you brainstorm what purpose of the meeting is and what the main points are to be covered. This will help you focus your thoughts, and will also provide you with confidence beforehand.
During the meeting…
5) Explain what you need and stick to the priority plan
You should have already shared your plan prior to the meeting. Now is the time to briefly recap this, so they understand what needs to be covered. This can be as brief as, “Like I said in the email last week, we need to have a high-level understanding of what X’s purpose is, and how it works. Specifically, I need to have A, B and C answered by the end of this. Is this OK?” It’s helpful to have your priorities written out, so you can show this in the meeting.
6) Keep an eye on the time and control the conversation
Having an idea of the structure automatically ensures you are in control of the meeting. When no one has a structure, conversations meander and you end up wasting time on irrelevant areas. Ensure you stick to your priority plan, and steer the conversation towards what you need. If the person has a tendency to drift off, it’s perfectly fine to say, “That sounds interesting, Jim. We might need to follow-up with you on that in a later discussion. In the meantime though, let’s stick to the plan for today. Can you run me through…”
After the meeting…
7) Send a follow up email
It’s extremely useful to write up notes on the meeting after it’s finished. It’s very easy to put this off, start doing other work, and when you come back to the meeting think, “Damn, I can’t remember what we talked about!” Once the meeting is concluded, write an email to all the participants with a brief overview of what was covered. This should include the following sections:
Aims (what we wanted to cover)
- we wanted to understand a high-level overview of the purpose and operations of X
Understanding (what we did cover)
- from this meeting, we understand that X was created by the Y team to facilitate the breakdown of department and employee characteristics
- we understand usage of X requires an understanding of Z
Outstanding (further information we need)
- we will need more information on what Z is; specifically when it was created, and how often it is updated
Going forward (our plans for the future)
- we will schedule a follow-up meeting with yourself and Michael, the member of your team who is responsible for Z. Can you please provide Michael’s email so we can schedule this.
Conclusion
Good meetings are all about planning. You can only gain insight on a situation when you have an understanding of the situation. Don’t be too rigid when planning meetings- you can only plan so much, since you don’t have the information from the meeting yet! Still, you should have an idea of the purpose, main points and level of detail you expect from the meeting beforehand. You should allow some time for small chat and for bouncing ideas, but ultimately there should be a high-level plan you should stick to which will help you ensure you get the information you need.
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