👨🔬 E. Regnath · 📆 Mar. 2023 · 🧪 Draft 0.1 ·
All meetings consume time and money. Many meetings waste time and money. Here are 12 rules for running a meeting efficiently.
- Share Goal & Agenda upfront: What should be the outcome? What will be discussed? Not answering both questions means the meeting is unnecessary.
- Flag people as optional: Flag most people as optional and let them decide whether the meeting is valuable to them. Allow them to leave early so that they dare to join. Hint: If you can check mails during a meeting, you are optional. If everyone can check mails, the meeting is optional.
- Be prepared: You don’t need five people to watch one person look up numbers in a report.
- Make notes: Decisions and Action Items that are not written down and tracked will be forgotten.
- Start on time: Waiting for latecomers might seem like a nice gesture but is disrespectful towards the people that joined on time. Either truly start 9:00 or schedule for 9:05.
- Discuss with ≤5 people: If you have more than 5 people, your meeting should be a single-person show (presentation/status report), a parallel collaboration (e.g. conceptboard), or a voting. Remember: On TV, you never see discussion rounds with more than 5 people and there are reasons for it.
- Discuss at least three ideas. One idea is bad, two ideas is an argument, three ideas is a discussion.
- Have a parking lot for off-topics: Whenever a discussion starts drifting off, make a note of the idea/concern and deal with it later. Stay focused on the agenda/outcome unless the off-topic is a blocking issue for everyone.
- Be clear, not clever: Avoid technical jargon and use concise and easy words. Not everyone has the same knowledge background, language/pronunciation skills or WiFi stability.
- Silence is confirmation. Do not wait for positive verbal feedback. Ask for concerns and/or collect votes using the Approval Voting System (ask for all the OKs).
- Practice active listening. People won’t hear your idea unless you’ve heard theirs.
- Don’t follow these rules. Follow the principles they reflect.