Working on complex, multidisciplinary problems requires sharing information and making decisions with other people. Meetings can be powerful tools to align on a path forward, inspire the team, and build relationships.
Unfortunately, too many meetings are ineffective. They’re draining instead of energizing. And just not worth the cost.
How can we keep the benefits of good meetings, while eliminating the bad ones?
Steven Rogelberg offers some advice, based on research studies, in his book “The Surprising Science of Meetings.” I pulled out a few simple changes that are relevant for portfolio and product development meetings. You can apply all of these tips to both in-person and remote meetings.
Meeting problem #1: No breaks between meetings
Even if people find meetings to be effective, back-to-back meetings can be difficult. There’s no buffer time for absorbing the content of the last meeting, reflecting, knocking out some action items, bio breaks, or simply traveling to or logging into the next meeting without arriving late. That means that people aren’t able to take action from your meetings, or they’re joining late, frustrated, or unprepared to dive into your topic right away.
A simple fix: Make your meetings shorter than the average.
Since many people end up scheduling 30 min or 1 hr meetings because of the defaults in scheduling tools, people can find themselves with packed schedules. Make your 1 hr meetings 50 min or your 30 min meetings 25 mins by default to automatically give people back some time.
Plus, according to Parkinson’s law, work expands to fill the time allotted, so you might be surprised by how much you’re able to get done when you allocate less time.
You can change your calendar defaults on Microsoft Outlook by going to Options -> Calendar. You also “end appointments and meetings early” to carve some time off the typical defaults.
For Google Calendar, you go to Settings and change the default event duration. You can also select “Speedy meetings” and it will change the default duration options from 15, 20, 30, 45, 60, 90, and 120 minutes to 15, 20, 25, 40, 50, 80, and 110 minutes.
Meeting problem #2: Large meetings that aren’t a good return on investment
Large meetings are especially a challenge for portfolio discussions and multidisciplinary problems. Topics that often require pulling together multiple viewpoints to reveal blind spots and make informed decisions.
In an attempt to keep everyone informed, I’ve seen standard meetings grow to more than 30 people with maybe five main players talking in a 1-hour meeting. Large meetings might be worth the cost if they’re designed well, but it’s worth examining if alternative methods could yield the same benefits.
Simple fixes: Review the guest list, leverage pre-meeting input, share meeting notes, and create smaller working groups.
Rogelberg gives some good advice about how to decide if someone should be involved in a meeting. He suggests that we ask ourselves, given our goals,
- Who has information about the topic?
- Who are the key decision-makers and important stakeholders for that issue?
- Who will need the information that will be discussed?
- And who needs to implement the decision or act on the issue?
That’s the list of people we need to consider when designing the meeting experience. However, they don’t all need to attend the meeting.
You can ask the people on this list for information, questions, or comments before the meeting. You can also take meeting notes and share them with the broader group afterwards. And finally, if you make it clear when you need a decision vs. want to create awareness about a topic, decision-makers can decide whether they need a meeting to discuss the issue and ask questions or if reviewing the material or sending a delegate is enough.
These nuances of ways to build buy-in are important. In my experience, smaller meetings (often referred to by people who didn’t attend as “closed-door” meetings) are ineffective at creating wider change if they don’t engage a broader audience before and after the meeting. Information tends to stay in the room as people rush off to their next meeting, widening the knowledge divide between groups.
Smaller working groups are also a good way to get engagement and input from a lot of people without inviting everyone to the meeting. You could hold a team meeting to discuss a problem, and then break into smaller groups to further elaborate the sub-problems and potential solutions, pulling the insights together at the end.
As a side note, large meetings like off-sites and PI Planning tend to be good returns on investments if they’re fluid enough to allow multiple smaller conversations in parallel. We’ll talk more about the impact of the meeting format next.
Meeting problem #3: Not achieving the desired outcome by the end of the meeting.
People tend to like meetings (some more than others) when they help make progress toward goals and build relationships.
But the standard meeting templates aren’t always effective for achieving the results we want. Discussions could fall short of their goals if individuals don’t share key information or insights. Presentations (a typical fixture of meetings) are not always the most effective way for people to absorb information.
Simple fix: Change the format
Rogelberg shared some research studies that suggested that individuals are not likely to share all of the relevant information they have about a problem in a typical sequential discussion format. Without that information, risky ideas can move forward unmitigated, or opportunities can be lost.
We can address these issues in a few ways. One is by removing some of the “production blockers” in normal meetings by letting people absorb information and generate ideas at their own pace, instead of relying on a standard sequential discussion.
Another is to remove social pressure by having people work individually before compiling and discussing insights.
And a third way to surface diverse insights is to design the meeting in a way that requires everyone’s full participation.
Changing the format of our meetings could help to achieve those goals. This could look like instead of using meeting time to present content, letting participants read first, and spend most of the meeting discussing it. This gives them time to absorb the information and formulate questions and comments about it.
Silent idea generation is another tool that leads to better overall results and a wider set of information to be shared. Breaking up a decision over multiple sessions could give more time for insights and questions to arise.
This might also look like not having a typical meeting and instead leveraging tools like wikis and group chats to share information and generate ideas asynchronously. I like resources like Gamestorming for more ideas about how to mix up the meeting format.
Meeting problem #4: Negativity derails the meeting
Constructive conflict can be good, if it’s based around ideas. But negative energy can deflate the creative and empathetic powers of the team. Unfortunately, when working on a high-stakes complex challenge, it’s easy to identify problems and frustration may be high.
Simple fix: Start with something positive.
This has been shown to lead to better outcomes, more creative ideas, and a higher likelihood of reaching consensus. Positivity makes us more creative. Rogelberg points out that researchers from St. Louis University found that research participants in a positive mood outperformed those in a negative or neutral mood in a creative task.
Rather than kicking off a meeting with a list of problems to solve, consider reiterating an inspiring vision. Focus on the positive change you want to create.
I recommend blending this advice with Carson Tate’s advice on productivity styles, to focus on the positive aspects of who you’re serving, what you’re doing, how you’ll be doing it, and why you’re doing it to craft messages that will resonate with everyone in the group.
With some simple changes, we can make our meetings more effective, or find alternative ways to make progress as a team toward our big goals.
Which simple fix will you try out?
