Managing Meetings - a few tips

Ok, so we are all trying to figure out what to do in these tumultuous times - so what's one of the things we do, we meet. About ten years ago I was fortunate to meet (;-) Andy Blum, a founder of the Trium Group. He was retained when I was at Alias Wavefront to help our team through some tough times. He did great. I would recommend them (and him) for anyone that is struggling with strategy, process and 'getting things done'.

Andy spent a portion of that week long session talking about process improvement and one of the points was how to manage meetings better. He had a simple metric that he suggested be applied to all meeting requests. And it is easy to remember too.

1. Is the meeting Informational in nature? Meaning that we are all gathering to listen and be informed. If so, tell everyone one first. Maybe you can post the information first, so people can do some homework. This is an 'I' nformation meeting

2. Is the meeting where decisions need to be made? If so, this is a 'D'ecision meeting. Letting people know that they will be expected to weigh in on a topic and vote is critical, as they may need some Information first. (Many times you have a hybrid meeting, starts with I and ends with D. How many meetings were D meetings but were cloaked as I meetings. And nothing was decided, and everyone was frustrated as a result.

3. Is the meeting being called to gather ideas? This is a 'B'rainstorming meeting. There are a lot of ways to manage this specific type of meeting, but the outcome and strategy behind it are very different than the other two. Let people know in advance that they may need to do a bit of research first (maybe), but to come with a spirit of creativity (essential for this type of meeting. Don't try to make this into a D meeting, schedule that one later.

4. The final type of meeting is the catch-all and what Andy called the No Agenda meeting. This is what I like meals for. We get together, no agenda in mind, but typicality interesting conversations occur unexpectedly. Sometimes, you need to actually plan for a No Agenda meeting, just to get at the good stuff that is underneath the surface (oh, maybe that's a hidden agenda meeting.)

I was exposed to this 4 part idea over ten years ago and still think about each meeting I attend. I see now that I will start using this in my actual meeting invitation so that people know if it is I, D, B or NA.

I would love to hear if you have strategies for making your meetings more effective.

(Oh, I remember trying to have the meetings standing up... that lasted two meetings.)

Here are some other resources on Effective Meetings