by Justin Bariso
Done right, meetings are a great way of leveraging teams to get work done faster and better. Here’s three ways to help you make sure that happens.
So, you’re sitting at your desk, trying to get some work done. Suddenly, a meeting invite pops up on your screen saying something like this:
If you haven’t guessed already, this meeting is likely to be a big waste of time. But don’t put all the blame on the poor clueless project manager. Chances are, he or she’s just doing what they’ve seen done over and over again, or maybe were even trained to do.
Or, let’s be honest: You may be the one sending out meeting invites like this.
I used to. But several years ago, I worked on a project for a global nonprofit that changed the way I looked at meetings. We interviewed a number of highly effective managers and meeting facilitators to learn more about how they used meetings to get work done.
The task was simple: Find a way to make meetings more effective and efficient.
In doing so, a few simple rules became clear for making the most of our meetings. A big one was this:
Every meeting should have:
- An agenda (sent at least 24 hours before)
- A person assigned to follow up on each task
- A summary and notes
I’m not the only one who feels strongly about this. In an article for MIT Sloan Management Review, organizational science and psychology professors Steven Rogelberg, Cliff Scott, and John Kello recommend that organizers send out an agenda along with relevant background material ahead of the meeting, with enough time for participants to review.
At Apple, Steve Jobs knew how to use meetings to get things done. He instilled the habit of designating a person responsible for following up on every task, and listing this on the meeting notes. That person even had a title—he or she was the “Directly Responsible Individual.”
Let’s break down each of these requirements and see why they’re so vital to your meeting’s success. (more…)
