In previous posts I mentioned that humans are not very good at multi-tasking and that you should probably leave boring meetings because they are a waste of time. But even better than that is not to have boring meetings in the first place, but rather meetings that feel so important and productive to you that you want to focus on them.
To achieve this, proper preparation by the meeting host is essential. This preparation should lead to a meeting invitation that contains the following:
- The goal of the meeting, that is, which question shall be answered or which decision shall be taken.
- Invite less than 6 people and tell everyone why they are invited. So, for everybody on the invitee list, there should be an explanation in the invitation why they, or the role they represent, is needed in the meeting. Make everybody else optional and emphasize that they can stay away from the meeting if they are not interested or if the post-meeting summary is enough for them.
- If the meeting exceeds 30 minutes, include a more detailed agenda, so that everyone can prepare properly for the meeting. The time that everyone can invest on their own before the meeting will speed up the time together in the meeting and result in overall shorter meetings.
- If the meeting exceeds 90 minutes you should include breaks in your agenda. However, I strongly advise against online meetings of such length, because this will exceed the attention span of most attendees.
- Make sure there is a moderator. Usually, this will be you as the host of the meeting. But, if not, make sure somebody else moderates the meeting.
During the meeting, the moderator has the following responsibilities:
- Make sure that the meeting stays focused on the topic. If people want to discuss other topics, suggest follow-up meetings (which can then prepared properly again).
- Leave enough time at the end of the meeting to conclude the result and follow-up actions. I have seen many meetings which exceed their end time which then leads to people leaving without knowing the result, insufficient time for a break before the next meeting and overall frustration.
And after the meeting:
- Write a summary of the results and derived actions and provide it to the participants. To make sure that others, who didn’t participate but are still interested in the topic, can also see the results, I suggest you put it onto a wiki page and provide a link there via chat or email.
If you follow these guidelines, people will see more benefit in meetings you organize, be more engaged during those meetings and thus they will be way more productive.