Personal productivity is one thing, but maintaining productivity during meetings can be even more challenging. Since you may not be involved in every meeting that happens in your company, it’s smart to set guidelines for meetings so the precious time you and your employees spend around the conference table is well spent.
Rule 1: All meetings should have an agenda
The agenda should be defined before the meeting occurs and sent to the group for review. This provides time for any attendees to provide comments or additions, if needed, and to prepare. That way, the schedule can be adjusted accordingly instead of going past the end time (which is breaking a rule!). Try to provide the agenda 48 hours before the meeting and make sure that when you send the agenda out you request feedback.
Rule 2: There should be a defined leader
Typically the meeting lead will be the person who organized the meeting. In the occasion that the meeting is organized by someone who cannot attend the meeting, it is up to the organizer to appoint a leader. The organizer and/or meeting lead will be responsible for sending out the meeting maker, managing attendance, sending out the agenda and for keeping the meeting on task. It is also important to make sure you have designated a scribe. Everyone should take their own notes but you should have someone officially memorialize what happened in the meeting and send the notes out immediately following the meeting for review, action and feedback.
Rule 3: Stick to an end time
This should be relatively easy as long as the agenda has been set. This means the meeting lead should be watching how much time is spent on each item and moving the meeting along if need be. Should the conversation linger too long on any given subject, it is up to the leader to alert the group. This will result in minimizing time spent on other subjects or moving the conversation to a follow-up meeting. If you start going down a path that is off topic but important capture it in a “parking lot” to go back to at a later date.
Rule 4: Keep headcount down
While sometimes “all-hands” meetings are necessary, most of the time it’s possible to have key individuals or decision makers in the room without inviting the whole team. This is important to maintaining company productivity so you don’t have everyone halting work. Ensure you have representation from each of the departments or individuals that need to be involved and if their direct reports need to be informed, have them share that during regularly scheduled team meetings.
Abiding by these meeting best practices not only sets a standard for productivity at your company, it also helps everyone to be more efficient.
Managing your time effectively is a hallmark of good leadership. For a blueprint on how to manage meetings, contact me.
By Blair Koch
