11 Simple Tips For Having Great Meetings
From Some Of The
World's Most Productive People
Mark
Zuckerberg, Richard Branson, Nilofer Merchant, Clay Shirky, Valentina Rice, Guy
Kawasaki, and others know about getting things done, being productive, and
keeping a crowd engaged. So when they talk, we should listen. Until the meeting
is happily adjourned.
Meetings
are a boring, but necessary evil.
A recent U.K. study showed that the average office worker spends
around 16 hours in meetings each week. That’s over 800 hours a year. For a
grand total over an entire career of--are you sitting down?--37,440 hours of
meetings. That's more than 4 years of your precious time.
I
called myself Regis. Say what you want, but he knew when it was time to go to
the commercial.
There
are few tried and true strategies for running productive meetings: Be prepared, have a
leader, an agenda, a fixed time to start and stop, a conclusion and plan to
follow up. But if we have to sit around in a windowless conference room for
9,000 hours, can’t we come up with something more . . . engaging?
Here
are 10 strategies to get your office meeting off life support.
1. Pretend
you’ve already failed.
Guy Kawasaki, a business guru and best-selling author, advises business leaders
to gather their team before making critical decisions such as launching a
product or service. He suggests seizing these moments to say, "Let us
pretend that our product, our company failed. Now, what are all the possible
reasons?" The reasons may include lack of distribution, an unsophisticated
sales force, buggy software, or unreliable cloud services. According to
Kawasaki, the point is to get people imagining everything that could go wrong,
so they can take steps to remedy problems before they happen. In other words,
he says, “Conduct a pre-mortem so that you never have to conduct a
post-mortem."
2. Keep
it Novel.
Richard
Branson, Virgin founder, writes about adding novelty to freshen up meetings. He invites
thought-provoking speakers in diverse fields from astronomy to nanotechnology
to get groups thinking in “new, exploratory ways.” And he holds discussions in
innovative spaces. Though you may not possess your own private island like
Branson, he suggests that anyone can leave the desks behind and head out to the
park, because a ”change of scenery and a bit of fun does wonders for getting
people thinking differently and loosening up!” (Also see Nilofer Merchant’s TED talk on walking meetings and
Jason Yip’s guide to stand-up meetings.)
3. Pause.
Clay Shirky, an author who covers the social, economic,
and cultural effects of the Internet, has a bit of advice for those who charge
off to meetings in a frenzied, preoccupied state. Shirky learned an important
lesson when he was a student in London. To get into a receptive frame of mind
for his studies he would pause during his walk over the river Thames on his way
to the lecture hall. He wrote, “Crossing this majestic river was like passing
from one world to another. I liked standing on the bridge and enjoying the
flowing stillness in-between.” Later, Shirky applied this meditative technique
to his workplace meetings. He’d imagine the walk from his desk to the meeting
room as a similar journey that gave him time to reflect as he prepared for the
meeting. “Time taken to pause,” he wrote, “even if it is a few seconds, can be
valuable. It could be the difference between a good idea and a great idea in
your next meeting.”
4. Don't
squander youth.
Sean
Higby, COO of Newsala, a real-time media app, believes that there
is great value in the opinions of junior colleagues. He regularly invites them
to meetings and solicits their feedback. Higby says, “Their ears are often
closer to the street so they instinctually know what your customers want. Often
they're working for you because they're a fan of the industry and are up on the
latest, yet-to-be-reported trends, and their opinions are not clouded by what
other people think is not possible.”
5. Say
it in 5 words.
Christopher
Frank, an author and vice president at American Express, has some words
of wisdom for those trying to answer the question: “What exactly are we meeting
about?” He suggests a Twitter-like hack--start your meeting by asking each
person to articulate in five words or less the problem to be solved. If the
answers are inconsistent or too long, your attendees are probably not focused
on the same problem. “By clearly articulating the issue,” Frank wrote in an article for Forbes, “you will get a good idea
of the information you need, the people you should talk to and will ensure
everyone is working towards the same goal.”
6. Think
like a director.
Patrick Lencioni president of The
Table Group, a
management consulting firm, and the author of Death by Meeting, believes
that the cure for boring and unproductive meetings is to think of them as if
you were a movie director. He suggests replacing “agendas and decorum with
passion and conflict.” This will engage people and give them something to care
about. “The good news,” he says, is that “there are plenty of issues at every
meeting that have the potential for productive, relevant conflict.”
7. Get
them laughing.
Suzanne Bates, founder of Bates Communications, who coaches executives says, “Humor
actually increases your stature as a leader.” She goes on to explain that, “If
you can warm up the room and make people smile, you stand out. You gain the
respect of your colleagues, you appear confident and in control.” As a
colleague of hers added, “Who looks like a leader--the person who is stiff and
formal, or the one who can help the whole group loosen up?”
8. Bring
something to the table or don't come at all.
Al
Pittampalli, author of Read This Before Our Next Meeting, believes in requiring
those who come to your meetings to “turn up in mind and spirit and contribute
something.” This could include “asking questions, sharing insight or offering
to take on tasks.” Pittampalli suggests making this message stick by letting
everyone know that if they aren’t bringing added value they won't be invited to
future meetings.
9. Be
like a talk show host.
For
two years, Ian Fisher, an assistant managing editor at The
New York Times,
ran the newsroom’s morning meeting in which editors from different sections
battle vigorously for best play of their stories. Fisher had to allow enough
time for complicated information to be communicated as well as leave time for
discussion to deepen coverage. “But a half an hour is about a normal human's
attention span,” he says. He had to know when to bore in, and when to move on.
“I called myself Regis,” he told us. “Say what you want, but he knew when it
was time to go to the commercial."
10.
Use meetings to beget meetings.
For
those of you just getting started and trying to network your way to success,
here’s a tip from Valentina Rice, a champion networker and founder of Many
Kitchens,
an online artisanal food marketplace. Rice’s father, a prominent English
businessman, often told her, “Never leave a meeting without getting the names
of two more people to meet.”
--Camille Sweeney and Josh Gosfield are the
co-authors of The Art of
Doing: How Superachievers Do What They Do and How They Do It Well.
http://www.fastcompany.com/3013013/dialed/11-simple-tips-for-having-great-meetings-from-some-of-the-worlds-most-productive-peop?partner=newsletter
No comments:
Post a Comment