Re:Meetings: Where Work Goes to Die
by jonnathanson on Tuesday February 14, 2012 @10:11AM
(#3590262)
"A meeting should not be a free-form discussion..."
Agreed, though if people in your office have grown accustomed to that style of meeting, then you'll need to do a lot of conditioning -- and keep a pretty short leash on things -- until they're used to a more structured agenda. Eventually, though, they'll realize just how much time and energy they save with short, focused meetings.
Let's say that you're chairing a meeting, and it's going off-track in a non-productive direction. I've found that a pretty effective cure for meeting chatter and tangential discussion is raising the specter of wasted time. This could be as simple as: "Guys, we have a lot to cover, and I want us to get out of here on time."
A statement like that does two things. First, it places the burden on the side-trackers to get back on topic by making them look like the bad guys (and not you, who might otherwise be seen as too rigid). Second, it reminds everybody that the meeting isn't happening in a magical bubble of parallel spacetime. It's ticking away very real minutes from the workday -- minutes that nobody's getting back at the end of the meeting. (For some reason, people seem to lose conscious track of time in meetings, and later wonder where the day went).
Finally, we should note that time-wasting meetings usually stem from the behavior of the meeting chair. If you demonstrate that you're willing to cave on the agenda -- or that your agenda is improperly long, vague, scattershot, improperly socialized beforehand, etc. -- then you're going to lose the room. Likewise, if you kick off your meeting with idle chatter, you're going to get idle chatter in return. (Don't open with "So, did you guys do anything fun this weekend?" and then expect anything but a 20-minute digression). It may seem unnatural to start the meeting right on topic, absent the social lubrication of small talk. But a meeting isn't the time or place for small talk, as you've pointed out.
Agreed, though if people in your office have grown accustomed to that style of meeting, then you'll need to do a lot of conditioning -- and keep a pretty short leash on things -- until they're used to a more structured agenda. Eventually, though, they'll realize just how much time and energy they save with short, focused meetings.
Let's say that you're chairing a meeting, and it's going off-track in a non-productive direction. I've found that a pretty effective cure for meeting chatter and tangential discussion is raising the specter of wasted time. This could be as simple as: "Guys, we have a lot to cover, and I want us to get out of here on time."
A statement like that does two things. First, it places the burden on the side-trackers to get back on topic by making them look like the bad guys (and not you, who might otherwise be seen as too rigid). Second, it reminds everybody that the meeting isn't happening in a magical bubble of parallel spacetime. It's ticking away very real minutes from the workday -- minutes that nobody's getting back at the end of the meeting. (For some reason, people seem to lose conscious track of time in meetings, and later wonder where the day went).
Finally, we should note that time-wasting meetings usually stem from the behavior of the meeting chair. If you demonstrate that you're willing to cave on the agenda -- or that your agenda is improperly long, vague, scattershot, improperly socialized beforehand, etc. -- then you're going to lose the room. Likewise, if you kick off your meeting with idle chatter, you're going to get idle chatter in return. (Don't open with "So, did you guys do anything fun this weekend?" and then expect anything but a 20-minute digression). It may seem unnatural to start the meeting right on topic, absent the social lubrication of small talk. But a meeting isn't the time or place for small talk, as you've pointed out.