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Not All Meetings Are the Same (At Least, They Shouldn’t Be)

Writer's picture: Brian WhitmarshBrian Whitmarsh

Introductions – 5 min

In my career, I’ve routinely run into a frustrating pattern of meetings not being specialized for a purpose. And what I mean by that, is that even though I get invited to “status meetings”, “workshops”, “staff meetings”, and more, they all have very ill-defined boundaries. They all end up being “solving meetings”. Delivering status, but there is a reported issue or blockage? Someone starts trying to solution for it at that point. Meeting to develop a new process? Trying to solve for every possible exception case.


Company Overview – 15 min

So, why is this bad? Generally, you need different participants for different types of meeting activities. When you start blending all meetings together, you end up wasting a lot of people’s time, both through them having to sit through portions that are not relevant to them, and due to your meetings likely ending up much longer than they really need to be. And I’m one of those people that has more important things to do. (But in fairness, I probably also am guilty of extending meetings through tangents and delving, as well.)

Hopefully, it is obvious; the broader the scope of your meeting, the more people you need (or want). The less direction or the more flexible the agenda, the longer your meeting is going to take (or more likely you are mid-discussion when everyone bails to go to their next meeting). And the looser the boundaries of the purpose, the less likely you are to achieve any real goals of the meeting.

Upcoming Deliverables – 30 min

There’s good reason that meeting culture has a bad rap. It is because they are overused, too long, involve too many people, and for actual producers, it takes them away from their productive work. So, how to fix it? First step: define the types of meetings along with what the goals are for each. Next, have an agenda shared prior to the meeting. Have a meeting leader or moderator that is empowered to keep the group on track and will cut off discussion that does not fit the purpose. You have to be OK to stop discussion that you know has value, because you know it is not valuable to everyone there at the time. I’ve also seen the idea of having limited meeting times (or departmentally setting no-meeting blocks), but unfortunately, I haven’t seen it work. People always tend to think their meeting is too important and violate those rules, but if you can get it to work, more power to you.


Next Steps – 10 min

I’d also suggest considering alternatives. Maybe deliver status through a team chat or messaging board. The same can be used for info gathering that isn’t going to benefit from a lot of verbal back-and-forth. Look for quicker ways to achieve your goals without pulling everyone together.

In short, one of the best ways to improve meeting culture is to try and kill unnecessary meetings. But, there will be necessary ones, so make sure everyone is clear of the purpose and format before turning it into a free-for-all.

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