Meetings Bloody Meetings*

by Jon Jenkins and Gerrit Visser

Why is it that most managers seem to complain about meetings and few do anything about it. These are a few of the comments you hear about meetings.

•  "Several people come late to meetings and leave early."
•  "Eric never comes to departmental meetings. He arranges his appointments with clients that way."
•  "The same issues comes up over and over and nothing really changes."
•  "Meetings are just rubber stamps of decisions that have already been made."
•  "All the decisions are made in the hall around here."

In additions there is growing concern about the cost of meetings. Here is an estimate of the cost of meeting by position in the US.

What Meetings Cost U.S. Businesses

According to the Wall Street Journal report on Wharton Centre For Applied Research, the average CEO in the United States spends 17 hours a week in meetings that costs the company $42,500 per year. Senior executives spend 23 hours a week in meetings and cost up to $46,000.00 per year each. Middle managers spend 11 hours a week in meetings and cost up to $20,000.00 a year each. Bernie DeKoven has created a meeting meter that you can set up on a pc and watch the cost run up during the meeting.

This says nothing about the time wasted while in the meeting like people arriving late, people with key information cancelling at the last minute and getting off the topic. See Gerard P. Kaufhold's "The Cost Of Meetings: What They Never Taught You about Meetings in Business School"

Are the hundreds of thousands of euros that it costs a company to hold meetings worth it? To answer that question we need to ask:
- Does holding all of these meetings increase income or safety, reduce costs or improve performance?
- Are the participants more committed to the decisions made at the meetings?
- Is the improvement equal to or more than the cost of the meeting?

If the answers are no, then look at the way the meetings are led. Leading a meeting has three phases, preparation, leading and follow-up. This article will focus on preparation. This is the area most often lacking.

The following steps will help to improve your meetings.

1. List the topics to be covered during the meeting.

List the topics for the meeting. They should be clear and specific. Don't say communications if you mean a new telephone system is going to be installed. If you say review the budget do you mean to have people understand it and its implications or do you want an action planned?

2. Define the goals for the meeting.

State the meeting's overall goal or objective. This is the purpose of the meeting and it should be as specific as possible.

Decide the goal for each topic they can be one of three kinds: exchanging information, decision-making or social occasions. State topic goals in practical terms.

The goal may be to make people aware of something. So it could be stated as "to make staff aware the vacation schedule is on the intranet and questions can be brought to Nancy."

The goal may be to prepare the group to use the information in their work. Time will be needed to process the information. The goal might be stated as "to be able to use a new requisition form." Time might be spent discussing the differences between the old form and the new one.

3. Describe the deliverable for the meeting as a whole and each of the topics.

Then state the deliverable. The deliverable is a concrete product that the participants will walk out of the session with.

If the goal is to create a third quarter action plan then the deliverable might be stated as: "a list of action points, due dates and responsible persons."

4. Put the topics in a logical sequence.

The topics need to be put into a logical sequence. This is traditionally the agenda. Some items should be covered before others.

5. Decide the process that will achieve the goal and deliverable for each of the topics.

What is the process that is going to be used to achieve the goal of the session? Each kind of topic goal has a different group process. For example, some decision making processes have 5 phases: 1) clarifying the topic, 2) generating ideas, 3) discussing the ideas, 4) combining ideas or selecting among the ideas and 5) making the decision.

Exchanging information has at least 3 phases: 1) getting the information on the table, 2) clarifying any misconceptions, and 3) processing the information by the group. Now is the time to look at time. How long is needed for each topic? Most people underestimate how much time is required to deal with a topic effectively.

6. Decide who will lead the session about each of the topics.

Decide who is able to lead the group through the process in a neutral and professional way. The manager does not have to lead the meeting sometimes it is more effective to contribute to the discussion from the side of the table rather than from in front.

Sometimes it is appropriate to bring in an outside facilitator to lead the meeting.

7. Decide who needs to be present at the meeting.

Everyone who will be affected by the decisions or the information should be represented. If some one cannot be there then a plan needs to be created to communicate the decisions and information to them.

8. Determine what information needs to be available in the meeting.

Is all the information required at the meeting going to be present? All of the relevant facts that people will need to make a decision should be present in the meeting. Relaying on people's memory or assuming that "everyone" know is not helpful. What information should be sent ahead of the meeting and what should be presented at the meeting?

The following is an example of the first afternoon sessions of a 3-day meeting. Successful meetings are not hard to create but planning is essential.

Time	Topic	Objectives	Deliverable	Process & who
13:30- 14:30	Hands on training for coordinators	Partaicipants gain assurance and skills in using new Forum software	Department knowledge system and the forum software on overhead sheets	Susan leads training session on new software.
14:30-15:00	Meeting Expectations	Participants put specific needs, concerns and issues on the table	A list of expectations on a flip chart	Maureen leads a brainstorm session on expectations

Useful links:

Avery, Christopher M. "Fads and Gimmicks, What Will They Think of Next?"

DeKoven, Bernie site "Deep Fun" has useful information and a meeting meter that counts the cost as the meeting is being held.

Kaufhold, Gerard P., "The Cost Of Meetings: What They Never Taught You about Meetings in Business School"

*A reference to John Cleese's training video "Meetings Bloody Meetings".