Meeting, My Favorite "Four-letter" Word

Too often, meetings are a distraction from the real, harder work that needs to get done.

• Is there an agenda, or is someone just filling seats to look busy or important? 
• If you want me to know something, report on something, or take some action, what are we covering that can’t be shared in a five-minute conversation, in an email, on a Wiki, or via some other online collaboration tool?
• Is this a presentation (where you talk and talk and talk) or a conversation (that I and everyone else in the room can contribute something valuable to)?
• Why have you invited ME to this meeting? What, specifically, is my role? (Because, believe it or not, I don't want to coast through it. I want to prepare and make this meeting as productive as possible.)
• And most importantly… what specific problem are we going to solve?

If you haven’t defined a problem, you shouldn’t be scheduling a meeting.
  
The next time you organize a meeting, shake things up. Throw out your agenda or discussion points. Instead, try setting up the event like this:



1. Define the problem you want to solve, and define your goals or desired outcomes.

2. Then, in your meeting, if it appears your goals aren’t on target, redefine them appropriately, and agree how to solve the problem.

3. Wrap up by defining who is responsible for doing what, why, and when as you go out and do the good work necessary to resolve the problem.

***

P.S. Harvard Business Review has some GREAT posts on how to make meetings meaningful:

Should you stay or should you go now? Check out this simple, brilliant decision tree you can use to decide whether or not to accept or decline a meeting. Take a screen cap, post it next to your monitor, and make it your Truth.

Shake up the silos. If you want to share knowledge across your departments, solve real problems, and make collaboration a practice (not just a buzzword), read this article and give the suggestions a whirl.

P.P.S. I also love Jason Zimdar’s post over at 37Signals – he’s created a script you can use to determine if you really need to interrupt a colleague with a spontaneous mini-meeting or if you can become your own collaboration tool. (If you don’t follow 37Signals blog, you should. It’s smart, practical, straightforward. Just like their products. And, no, EPI is not an affiliate or partner. I’m just a fangirl.)