Do You Really Need A Meeting?
Meetings, Problem Solving and Decision Making
Meetings tie up time and resources, and often get in the way of completing the work that was called for by a previous meeting. Before having a meeting, you should make sure that it is really necessary.
Do You Really Need A Meeting?
We have all heard that there are only really two absolute certainties in life: death and taxes. As we have seen, to many in the organizational world, there is a third: meetings.
Meetings tie up time and resources, and often get in the way of completing the work that was called for by a previous meeting.
Before having a meeting, you should make sure that it is really necessary. We’ll look at how you can do just that. There are 10 key questions to answer before calling a meeting. They are:
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2. What Do I Really Need Or Want To Accomplish?
Let’s look at these 10 questions in more detail. Although we will be looking at the decision-making process later in this course, we will start applying some basic decision-making principles to deciding when you really do or do not need to call a meeting.
Ask yourself, what do I really need or want to accomplish at the meeting?
Your organization has a mission statement. You have a job description. The reason for the meeting must relate to your job description in the same way that your job description fits into the organization’s mission’s statement. You should also be able to state it as simply as your mission statement.
The purpose of the meeting is to…
If you cannot sum up the reason for the meeting—your meeting purpose—in a simple statement, then you are not ready to hold the meeting because you don’t know what you are trying to accomplish. We’ve all been to meetings in which no one was really sure why they were there. Not only do meetings like this waste time, effort, and money, but they leave the participants restless, irritable, discontented—and sometimes angry.
There are meetings where the task is to figure out what to do about something. That is the purpose of the meeting, and it needs to be stated in that manner: The purpose of the meeting is to decide what to do about…
As we saw earlier, meetings are usually designed to plan, report or react. If you are going to call a meeting, make sure you know which of the three (or which combination of them) you have to deal with—and make sure the people attending it know, too. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
3. Is A Meeting Really Necessary?
Once you know exactly what it is that has to be done, you have to determine if having a meeting is really the best way to get it done. What are the alternatives?
Since meetings are usually about planning, reporting, or developing a reaction
to something, the first question is:
Is this something I can do by myself?
Here we are talking about more than the ability to do something. We are also talking about access to necessary information, and expertise in understanding or interpreting it. We are also dealing with your own credibility, authority and responsibility. We are also dealing with any necessity to gain commitment by others. So the next question is:
For whom am I doing this?
If, for example, you need information available within your own department—or information you can get relatively easily—in order to make a decision about a matter that is under your jurisdiction, then you are responsible for the action. You are doing this for yourself. Therefore, if you are doing this for yourself, are you satisfied with the conclusion you arrived at personally, based on information and input that you obtained yourself, and then interpreted?
If the answer is yes, then you do not need a meeting.
If you are doing this for someone else, will they be satisfied with your conclusions based on your interpretation of information that you collected yourself?
If the answer is yes, you do not need a meeting. If it is no, call the meeting.
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4. How Do I Prepare for a Successful Meeting?
Successful meetings start long before anyone arrives in the conference room. In fact, they start before anyone is even invited. This is your meeting preparation.
As with sports, war, and even school, the better prepared you are at the start, the better your odds are of succeeding. We’ll be looking at some of these points in more detail later in this lesson, and at some of them later in this course.
Right now we just want to present the overall list. Depending upon the nature of the meeting, your position in the organization, the organizational culture, deadlines, pressure, and other considerations, some of these points may not be salient to you, or there might be other matters, which are not covered here. This planning list is not meant to be exhaustive. It is designed to get you thinking about your own situation.
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5. Handling Advance Information
When people are invited to a meeting, the first question they want answered is,
obviously:
What is the meeting about?
In many cases, they already know. It’s the monthly planning meeting, or the weekly staff meeting, the quarterly performance review meeting, and so on.
Knowing what the meeting is about gives them time to prepare for it; assemble what information they will need to present, find out what the others will be presenting, review what happened at the last meeting—if it is a regular one—or at least get their minds set to contend with the issue that will be discussed.
While there are times when it makes sense to surprise people at a meeting, it is not generally considered a good idea. They should usually have at least a broad idea of what to expect when they get to the meeting, especially of what is expected of them. If they don’t they will speculate—and gossip—in advance, and that could effectively prevent any other work from being done as people wonder what the “big surprise” meeting is going to be all about.
A meeting is part of the work day, which means people will usually be working before the meeting, at the meeting, and then go back to whatever work they were doing when the meeting is over. What you have to decide, then, is how much of their non-meeting work time do you want to tie up before the meeting starts?
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6. Preparing the Meeting Package
Regardless what background or information you provided them or they have before walking in, what do you want them to have at the meeting itself?
The first item, of course, is the agenda. Even if participants received an agenda earlier—and in most cases, they should have—there should be a new one waiting for each of them when they arrive. In many cases they will arrive with what they need, and all you have to supply is a meeting room and “meeting tools” such as chairs, notepads, pens, chalk, markers, refreshments, and such.
The next question, of course, is: Do you want them to know everything you do, to have all the information that you do?
There is some information that may not be any of their project/programme purpose, or that might limit or interfere with the way they approach the items on the agenda. Stating that one approach is your favorite, or the CEO’s, or the least favorite, could very likely shape the outcome of the meeting by cutting off or at least limiting people’s ability to look at all possible approaches, actions, and solutions. This may also apply to withholding information pertinent to their study and discussion, such as not telling them that you are locked into working exclusively with one supplier, or that engineering is six months behind schedule, or that changes in import/export regulations will determine the actual production run.
It is a lot like cooking. No matter how experienced, talented or creative a chef might be, if all you give them to work with is three eggs, they are going to cook eggs—not a steak, not even a chicken.
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7. Avoiding Distraction
No matter
what the topic of the meeting is, or how important it is to you, personally, the odds are
that some attendees will have other things on their minds.
There is nothing you can do about that, but you can usually prevent them from making their issues the topic of the meeting or from having other outside distractions or issues take over the meeting—but not always. Some internal events, such as the death of a co-worker, or external occurrences, such as a major event can overwhelm the most pressing organization project/programme purpose. The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon, in Washington, D. C., halted a great deal of project/programme purpose – and normal life— around the world for days, and, in some cases, weeks and months.
Sometimes the best way to deal with an event that is on everyone’s mind is to accept it, let everyone talk about it for a little while, let them work it out of their system, and then steer the focus and conversation to the topic of the meeting. This sort of conversation can actually help people bond, and improve the members’ ability to work together as a group, as well as minimize such issues as distractions if they are not dealt with.
As far as avoiding other distractions are concerned, where you hold the meeting can be a major factor. What is there in the room to distract them? What can they see? Hear? Touch? Smell? Make sure that the meeting location is as quiet, comfortable and as distraction-free as possible.
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8. How Long Is A Meeting?
As with a rope, there is no perfect meeting length. As a rule, however, it should not last more than an hour. Too long a meeting, like too long a rope, is unwieldy and cumbersome, and often winds up getting tied in knots. Too short a meeting, like too short a rope, does not give you enough time—or length—to get everything tied up nicely and neatly. Meetings often expand to fill the time allotted to them if they are too long. If they are too short, people can feel that there was not enough time to deal with the issues at hand.
When planning a meeting, ask yourself the following questions:
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9. What Is A Good Time For A Meeting?
Some people will tell you that there is no such thing as a good time for a meeting.
Even so, some times are better or worse than others.
Many people, especially managers, have things to take care of as soon as they get in to work. Thus, while having a meeting first thing in the morning may seem “efficient,” it can actually delay other work. If participants have to come in early—on their own time—to take care of things before they even get to the meeting, this could lead to resentments which could make them less than enthusiastic participants.
Instead of scheduling a meeting at the very time the workday starts, you might want to give people an hour to get their day organized and take care of their immediate concerns.
Since the human metabolism tends to slow down as we digest, after-lunch meetings are not usually very productive.
If the meeting can be expected to drag on—based on the topic and/or the participants—you might want to weigh the effects this would have on people’s attitudes if it cut into their lunchtime, or lasted past the close of project/programme purpose.
On the other hand, you might purposely schedule the meeting for an hour before lunch, or an hour before closing time, to motivate attendees to make sure that the meeting does not drag on and on and on.
Most consultants agree that people are usually the most awake and energetic for mid-morning meetings, especially if you have some refreshments available.
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10. Choose Participants Wisely
While most of the time spent planning a meeting must be spent on setting the agenda and making sure that the people will be prepared to deal with the issues in front of them, you also need to think about who your attendees will be.
Could this meeting of these specific people cause more problems than it solves?
In a perfect organization filled with perfect employees, personalities and politics would never interfere with the principles and issues that need to be the focus of a meeting. While people will act like professionals and work together when they need to, there’s no sense in making more trouble for yourself than you need to. There are times, however, when two people find it difficult to get along. If you can avoid trouble by not putting two specific people in the same room at the same time without interfering with your goal—do so. If you can’t however, then it becomes their problem; and let them know it is theirs, and that they have to solve it.
We Have A Schedule Here, People
The simplest way to make sure people stay focused and on track is to give them a detailed agenda, and make sure that every one follows it.
Not only should the agenda list what is to be discussed, and in what order, but it also helps to have a detailed timeline that says when specific topics are to be dealt with, and for how long. If, for example, you have allotted 10 minutes to explain the problem, make sure that your explanation does not last more than 10 minutes. When things start to drag on, or people start to wander off topic, bring them back to the subject at hand. In some ways, a meeting is like a busload of people. The driver actually determines where they are going and how they get there—and when.
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