In our work lives, few things generate as much complaint, unhappiness or despair as meetings. Constructive and enjoyable meetings do happen but they are exceptional. We walk out of them (physically or virtually) saying "That was a really good meeting" in amazement, as if we had seen someone famous in the supermarket or been given an interesting balloon by an attractive stranger.
More often, our meetings are characterised by some kind of loss: influence, potential, time, energy, or some combination of them all. When we complain about meetings, the complaint falls into two broad categories:
- I wasn't in it, and that made me feel bad, or
- I was in it, the meeting was bad, and that made me feel bad.
How can a meeting make us feel bad? Well, in lots of ways: it isn't structured or organised, a single person or topic dominates proceedings entirely, there is no agenda, there is such a rigorously structured agenda it throttles the life out of the conversation, there are no outputs, there are no recorded actions, there is no progress, nothing gets better. We despair of a meeting when our voices aren’t heard, and we can’t effect any change.
The natural response is to try to have fewer meetings. But that doesn't address those issues - the absence of meetings doesn’t increase understanding, can't speed progress, and won’t make things better. We can’t make ourselves heard in an empty room. There was a fad a few years ago of using a meeting cost calculator, and working out exactly how much our ineffective meetings were costing us. The problem wasn’t solved, and we just added guilt and anxiety to our growing list of reasons to be cheerless.
I’m in favour now of letting the pendulum swing to the other side. Let’s have more meetings, but just make them better. I think there are five reasons to get together.
- To Discuss: What are we doing, and how do we feel about it?
- To Design: What is this going to look like?
- To Plan: How should we go about this?
- To Decide: What should we do next?
- To Review: How well did that go?
Maybe if we stated clearly why we were meeting, only invited the right people for that part of the conversation, and shared what happened with all concerned, we might make this a better experience. Sometimes you just have to make your own interesting balloon.
Communication, or lack of it, is the foundation of trust; having reasons for being in a meeting is good, but the roles and remits of those attending the meeting are also invaluable.
Am I here to listen and learn, comment and critique, or take this forward somehow?
Many meetings die of a lack of clear roles and the same people (usually extroverts for managers) commanding the meeting.