Nov 2010 23
Ever sit in a office room, with a lot of people, and don’t really know why you were even invited?
Specially Europe has a culture, to organize much more meetings than needed.
As you should value the time of your colleges, here’s my list of recommendations for meetings:
- No Meeting at all
My favorite rule. Is it really needed? Would a short call solve it too?
If thats possible, do not meet at all. They are disruptive to the flow of work for everyone. - Less is more
Try to invite as less people as possible.
Any meeting with more than 7 people is a workshop. Or a Presentation.
Organize them differently. - Agenda and Targets
Always know what you want to have at the end of the meeting. And prepare your colleges.
Write them what you together should have achieved in the end.
Also a note: people normally will not read more than 2 paragraphs in the invitation. - Time-boxed Topics
Specially on recurring meetings, make common stuff Time-boxed.
i.e. the Presentation of what was done since last meeting.
Most of the time, 2 mins are enough to recap what happens. But a lot of the people would go on for 15 minutes on that. - Use Data
A great Idea from Marissa Mayer. Try to encourage the use of Data over Politics.
Mayer believes this mindset can demoralize employees, so she goes out of her way to make the approval process a science. Google chooses designs on a clearly defined set of metrics and how well they perform against those metrics. Designs are chosen based on merit and evidence, not personal relationships.
And if you do not have the Data, get out and find some. - Recap in the end
Before ending the meeting, recap what is the result, and the action points.
So everybody is aligned and focused in starting doing the Action points. - Action Points must have a Name and due date
Its like if you meet a friend and say “Lets go for a coffee someday”…
You normally will never go until you define when and where. - Send notes within 24 hours
Anything later will blur what happened in there.
Also i recommend post it to a wiki for everyone to check back (even guys who were not on the meeting).
Further Links:
This post was inspired by my friend christian and his post.
And due to he has no comments activated,… i just needed to make it into an own one 