Poorly planned and facilitated meetings are one of the biggest annoyances I’ve had to deal with in my career (second only to indecisiveness). A lot has changed in terms of technology but the amount of “bad” meetings I’ve had to go through has stayed relatively the same. This frustrating fact has made me want to share what I’ve learnt leading engineering teams in the past four years in a simple blueprint we can all (strive to) use to plan better meetings. Show I’ll start by summarising the real cost of bad meetings, then share how to decrease the number of suboptimal meetings we attend, both as participants and coordinators. The cost of bad meetingsMost of us can spot the telltale signs of a bad meeting from miles away. We’ve all sat in at least one “last-minute” meeting that clearly lacked purpose and preparation and was marred with confusion about participants’ roles, unclear next steps and a lack of decisive follow-through. The result: huge frustrations for everyone involved. Given that the amount of meetings has more than doubled in the last half a century (and it’s still increasing), this potentially wasted time leaves us no choice but to work past our end of the day or even during the weekends to catch up on “productive work”. The result is a snowball of issues including burnout, cynicism and disengagement, which translate into enormously expensive problems for employers. Aside from participants’ feelings of irritation and confusion, poorly organised meetings cost a lot of money. A recent study from 2019 by Doodle has calculated that a whopping 541 billion dollars in employee time are lost, for companies in the US, UK, Germany and Switzerland alone. Two-thirds of meetings are found to be “unnecessary” or “a waste of time”. According to the report, roughly 24 billion hours of useless meetings could be put to better use, either for better meetings or asynchronous work. If good meetings were hard to achieve before 2019, the post-pandemic remote work has added new challenges. The need for more human connection during Covid-19 has led to an increased number of virtual meetings. However, as new research points out, the productive ones have also become shorter. That’s because it’s difficult to keep a large group focused for large amounts of time. Poorly structured, badly timed and ineffectively run virtual meetings are a brain-killer. Virtual meetings require a higher degree of consideration and preparation to not be over-taxing, leading to what we now infamously called the “Zoom fatigue”. Virtual meetings also require an experienced coordinator who can guide participants through the various stages of the meeting and inspire their creativity and imagination even more than in person. Without a facilitator, a virtual group will rarely generate more than incoherent noise. Good meetings start with great questionsAlmost everything in life, meetings included, can be understood easier by asking the right questions. This is true for every stage of a meeting: preparing, starting, focusing, information-gathering and decision-making. There are two types of questions: A Questions and B Questions. Let’s see some examples and use-cases when each type works best. Imagine a team has a meeting about improving their hiring process. A Question: “The first thing we want to talk about are inputs. What are the inputs to our hiring process?” B Question: “Imagine you are about to develop our team’s hiring. What information would you need to start?” The A Question is straightforward and asks exactly what the meeting coordinator wants to know. These sorts of questions are the norm. Most of us ask them daily, on auto-pilot, because we rarely have enough time to think about what to ask and how to ask it. The problem with this type of question is that will often lead to an awkward pause from the meeting participants, while they scratch their heads to answer something, anything. The answers will rarely have any breadth. By contrast, B Questions are much better because they stimulate participants to imagine themselves doing the task:
Great questions checklist
⚠️ CaveatBe careful not to put the wrong image in peoples’ heads. For example: “Imagine you’re about to develop our team’s hiring process. Things go exceptionally well and your boss is so happy with the results that she decides to promote you. What information would you need to start?” This is a B Question alright, but instead of helping participants visualise the right things, you’ve now lost them in daydreaming about their upcoming promotion. Could’ve, should’ve, would’veChoosing the right question verb is important in the right context. Sometimes we want to generate the maximum amount of ideas and other times we want a problem resolution or a decision for participants to buy into. Once you start asking questions, the group will begin to respond. Some responses will be in line with the question, others will be unclear, and some will be irrelevant to the discussion. There’s a very strong impulse in all of us to tell people which is which… However, let’s look at how rephrasing the answer to a question not only disarms conflicts before they start but also generates better answers. ⚠️ CaveatThere’s always a trade-off between speed and quality that applies to meetings as well. To create ownership and buy-in, let the group create the idea/solution instead of feeding it to them. An effective decision (ED) needs the right decision (RD) with the right commitment to it (CD).
Therefore, if you have a good option in your mind and you see that the group has overlooked it, you can float your idea but ask participants to identify its benefits and record that option in their own words. That’s a three-part act:
Before you even book a meeting, ask yourself what you what people to have in their heads (knowledge), hearts (beliefs) and hands (actions, results) that they didn’t have before this meeting. There’s a huge difference between throwing a meeting in people’s calendars hoping that you’ll figure out what to do during the meeting and scheduling meetings that have substance and will likely not leave participants tired, confused and frustrated. The difference is preparation. A good meeting has all the 5Ps:
Below are some questions to ask ourselves when we prepare each of the P above. Ground rules or group manners are a set of agreed behaviours that participants will follow when interacting with each other. People who work well together for a long time will have no problem self-correcting back to their spoken (or unspoken) ground rules. With newly formed groups it’s more challenging to start, but over time, the results will pay off. Below are examples of ground rules to be agreed with the group. 💡Not every company will have an Agile coach to help facilitate meetings, but if you can get one and they’re good facilitators, you’ll have more time to immerse yourself as a participant and the quality of the meeting will probably be higher. In summary, here’s a simple checklist to ask ourselves before each meeting:
💡 If you want to know more about facilitating better meetings, I strongly recommend The Secrets of Facilitation by M. Wilkinson. What does the 5 P's stand for?The 5 areas you need to make decisions about are: PRODUCT, PRICE, PROMOTION, PLACE AND PEOPLE. Although the 5 Ps are somewhat controllable, they are always subject to your internal and external marketing environments.
What are the 5 steps involved in conducting a successful meeting?Meetings can be smooth, productive and even fun.. Plan ahead. ... . Establish ground rules–and follow them. ... . Keep the Time. ... . Keep the Focus. ... . Close with action plan.. What are the 4 P's of meetings?Use this template to identify and explain the 4 Ps required to run an effective meeting: Purpose, Product, People, and Process.
What are the five 5 meeting structures?We've put together a list of five below.. Brainstorming or innovation meetings.. Planning meetings.. Kick-off meetings.. Retrospective or post-mortem meetings.. Decision-making or problem-solving meetings.. |
