I have a lot of experience having my time wasted in meetings that don’t serve a purpose other than to “have a meeting”. They don’t make a decision, they don’t make the participants better or smarter or more valuable, and they don’t convey information very well. What they did do is show me how not to use meetings, and give me time to write down some rules for having meetings and a classification system for different kinds of meetings, which I share with you, now.
General principles
- Meetings are an admission of failure — that asymmetric means of accomplishing something were insufficiently executed and that written or visual communication, dashboards, and other technology failed to deliver on it’s promised value either because it was intrinsically not up to the task or, more likely, people were too distracted, impatient, lackadaisical, or incompetent to use them to achieve the goal.
- In serious organizations, every meeting should be recorded (in a data-driven telemetric meter reading) as an opportunity for training, doctrinal adjustment, or technological improvement, and the sum of those meters should be the impetus for funding change. The cost of having meetings is that you pay for future improvements that eliminate the need for meetings.
- Meetings with lots of people do not accomplish work, make decisions, or set policy.
- Meetings should not be used to make decisions, the decision maker may convene meetings that produce options, but there should not be meetings that make decisions unless there is a voting panel that needs to meet to cast votes. Otherwise the basic principle is that decisions should generate meetings, but that meetings don’t make decisions.
- the ideal outcome of workshops and de-briefs are courses of action that don’t require decisions (other than to follow them) because the decisions inherent to their outcomes make themselves.
- Meetings between a few people across disciplines or organization cannot achieve objectives they are not able to assert authority over by making one-way decisions, spending money, or holding people or organizations accountable.
- Meetings held in secret, or whose deliberations, decisions, or outcomes are secret, are only as valuable as the information they create minus the fiction they cause (value = information – friction).
- Meetings that have more than one group with different domains of expertise are usually not valuable.
- Meetings between groups with inherently different skills in presentation and/or selling are inherently unbalanced and probably useless to the group with lessor skills.
Kinds of meetings in general
- Briefing – this is a top-down or center-out communication to set tone, expectations, and agenda of a project or initiative
- 60 mins
- more than 10 people
- De-brief – this is a formal, process-driven unpacking of events that have already completed, such as a project or response to crisis, to unearth opportunities for improvement and document lessons learned.
- multiple 60 minute sessions, if necessary
- 1 facilitator + support staff
- all parties in the action being de-briefed
- Boards – this is a governance activity where a panel of authority is presented to by a pool of those who are accountable to that panel of authority
- 60 mins
- board of 1-5 people
- pool of 1-5 people
- Breakout – this is a deep-dive presentation about a technological innovation akin to a conference presentation.
- 50 minutes
- 10-40 people
- Workshop – a gathering to actively work on a specific task and achieve a milestone or outcome by the end of the meeting
- 60-120 minutes
- 2-7 people
- Standup – a quick update to share progress amongst peers, socialize decisions, and raise up obstacles.
- 15 mins
- 5-7 people
- One-on-one – a meeting between two people of different levels –> senior-subordinate, mentor-mentee, etc.; to coach, guide, instruct, or correct.
- 30 mins
- 2 people
Meeting taxonomy
Management meetings
- Business review – a board
- did we meet our commitments to the success of the overall business?;
- what were those contributions?;
- what are the root causes of our failures?
- Business systems review – a board
- are our processes and procedures
- eliminating friction?;
- eliminating waste?;
- and amplifying the effectiveness of our contributors?;
- and what are the root causes and proposed changes of our failures?
- are our processes and procedures
- Initiative progress – a board
- are projects on-schedule?;
- and what are we doing eliminate the barriers to delivering their commitments?
- Project status – a workshop
- is this particular project on-schedule?;
- and what are the barriers to delivering on our commitments we can’t remove by ourselves?
Technical meetings
- Innovation showcase – a breakout
- what problem prompted this work?;
- what challenges were encountered?;
- how were they overcome?;
- demonstration?;
- next-steps?;
- how to use?;
- how to contribute?;
- q&a?
- Innovation business review – a board
- does what we build change the world?;
- are we sharing and collaborating?;
- are we identifying valid problems and solving them with aplomb?;
- do we satisfy the authentic needs of creatives to be creative?;
- and what are the root causes of our failures?
- Technical systems review – a board
- does our technology give the business flexibility to deal with change?;
- do disparate efforts interoperate?;
- does what we build have inherent value that exceeds the costs of operating or maintaining it over time?;
- and what are the root causes of our failures?
- Design review – a workshop
- does this discrete implementation work (functional, waste-free, meets requirements, etc)?;
- it is safe?;
- is it elegant?;
- and does it interoperate with current and future needs?
Universal meetings
- After-action review – a de-brief
- What were we trying to accomplish?;
- Where did we meet our objectives?;
- Where did we miss our objectives?;
- What decisions we made or actions we took caused our results?;
- What do we learn from this experience?;
- How are we going to apply those learnings?
- Check-in – a one-on-one
- what have you accomplished?;
- what is working?;
- what is not working?;
- what is next?;
- how are you feeling (1 = bad, 5 = good)?;
- what will make the biggest improvement in your life, work, or the organization?;
- what is the next action that you can take to make this happen?;
- please add this item to the agenda of our next meeting.
- Planning – a workshop
- What is the customer pain that needs solving?;
- When does it need to be solved?;
- How much is it worth to solve it?;
- What are the current solutions and why aren’t they good enough?;
- What are we not allowed to do / What are our constraints?;
- How are we going to solve it?;
- What are the milestones at 25%, 50%, and 75% that we’ll use to see if things are going well?;
- Who is allowed to change the plan?;
- When is the solution going to be available to the customer?;
- Brainstorming – a workshop
- What is the customer pain that needs solving?;
- What are our constraints?;
- What is the outcome and next step?
- Daily checkpoint – a briefing
- Is everyone here?;
- What is the plan?;
- How has the plan changed since last update?;
- Broadcast information: Receive & Acknowledge;
- “Let’s be careful out there”.