Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

It's Only Common Sense: Run Better Meetings

Editor's Note: To listen to Dan's weekly column, as you've always done in the past, click here. For the written transcript, keep reading...Why do we have meetings? I think companies sometimes have meetings because they don’t know what else to do. Pretty scary, isn’t it? There are all kinds of meetings and most are ineffective as hell. Often the political dynamics of meetings do nothing but prevent anything from being accomplished. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? I'm talking about meetings where each department head does his best to make himself look good at the expense of the other department heads.

These meetings are closely related to what I call “execution” meetings: Meetings where the sole purpose is to turn someone in, someone who has not been doing a good job and must suffer the consequences. Those types of meetings are always fun to take part in, but only if you’re not the person being executed.

I read the other day that executives can spend up to 50% of their time in meetings. Give me a break! Half of their time in meetings? Man, that just doesn't come anywhere close to being productive, does it? Just what are they talking about at these meetings? What can they be going over that is so important?

I used to work for a guy who was an information junkie. He had to know everything that was going on down to the smallest detail. He was also the kind of guy who liked to sit behind his big, oversized oak desk and wait for the information to come to him.

Those of us on his management team would spend all day Monday collecting data so we would be prepared for our meeting with him at 4:30 that afternoon. We all had a very good handle on what was going on in our departments, so we could have just stopped by, stood in his office with our hands in our pockets for five minutes, and told him everything he needed to know about how things were going, but that was not what he wanted. That would have been too easy. Instead, we spent an entire day preparing charts and graphs just the way he liked them so we could feed him the same information he could have found himself if he would just plug in the computer on his desk.

Working for this guy afforded me one of the most valuable lessons of my life: It taught me what not to do when managing a group of people. I learned to respect the time of others by using my time more effectively. I learned that my job is to empower my people and to remove obstacles that stood in the way of them doing a good job. This means not making them waste their time keeping me informed of things I should be able to find out on my own.

I am on a personal campaign to make meetings as productive and important as possible and that important things come out of every meeting of which I am a part.

My tips for running very effective, productive meetings:

1. Make sure you need to hold the meeting in the first place. Can the issue be covered in only one meeting? Does this mean that nothing else will do but to have the meeting? Make sure you know what you want to accomplish by holding the meeting in the first place.
2. Invite only those who matter--those directly involved with the issue to be discussed. If someone comes up to you later complaining about not being invited, ask him, "Why?" If he doesn't have a good reason, fire him because he is exactly the kind of person who never met a meeting he didn’t like, and even though he is spending 50% of his time in meetings, he is still not happy. This guy should be kicked out of your organization faster than you can say, “This meeting is over.”
3. Have a clear agenda and send it out in advance so that everyone will come to the meeting prepared.
4. As part of the agenda, let each person know what he or she needs to bring.
5. Let people know how long the meeting will last. If it’s more than 37 minutes, you’re wasting time.
6. Make sure the meeting starts on time--down to the second--whether or not everyone invited has arrived. Do this for a while; they’ll get the message.
7. Stick to the agenda. Do not let people stray. You are there to handle specific issues--stick to them.
8. Take notes. If it is your meeting, you take the notes. It's also a great way to control the meeting and the overall project. Whoever takes and publishes the notes controls all.
9. Define firm actions, who will be responsible for performing each action, and by what date each action should be completed.
10. Recap the actions taken and assigned in the meeting.
11. Set a time for the next meeting.
12. Publish the meeting notes by the end of the day.      

That’s it. If you follow these 12 simple guidelines you will get a lot more out of your meetings and out of your life, too. I can guarantee that you will not be spending half of your life in meetings any more.

It’s only common sense.