“The majority of meetings should be discussions that lead to decisions.”
— Patrick Lencioni
Unsuck Your Meetings
Part 4: Avoiding Suckiness
Once you’ve decided that a meeting is necessary, there are a few basic elements that apply to determine whether your meeting has value and doesn’t suck.
A non-sucky meeting is one that has:
- Clear Purpose
- Energy
- Organization and Focus
- Achieved Outcomes
- Full Participation by all Attendees
Achieving this requires planning: the more important and larger the meeting, the more planning is necessary. And by the way, that’s more than saying, “Okay…where and when should we have the meeting?”[1]
The key items for your planning are:
- Purpose and Objectives
- Agenda
- Roles
Purpose & Objectives
A meeting without a Purpose is a ship without a rudder. It’s just a matter of time before you run aground.[2] And as for Objectives, it’s hard to get what you want unless you know what you want.
Purpose is the Why for having the meeting. For example:
- Understanding and Alignment: You have a message you want to send to everyone at the same time, and want to ensure everyone hears and interprets that message in the same way.[3]
- Information Data Dump: You have a bunch of changes coming and want everyone to hear about and understand them at the same time.
- Information Sharing: You want to update each other on current situations and progress.
- Collaboration: You want to get as many opinions, points of view, and ideas as possible.
- Decision-Making: You want to agree on a decision to allow you to move forward.
By the way, “We have this meeting every year (or month, or week, or day) and it’s the way we’ve always done it.” is not an acceptable Purpose.
Objectives are the Whats: What will be different as a result of the meeting? What will people do, say, or think differently? What do you need to accomplish to more forward?
It’s best to have no more than 1-4 Objectives per meeting, and each should be brief, focused, action-oriented, and written as a goal. Avoid the vague and general; use action words such as assign, determine, create, complete and produce. Some examples:
- Create an action plan
- Determine next steps
- Generate a list of ideas
- Discuss conflict issues
- Assign project responsibilities
- Decide on a path forward
Agenda
Every item on a meeting Agenda must be necessary to achieve the Purpose and Objectives. If it isn’t, either adjust your Objectives or find another method to handle the item.
Once you have the items, Sequence them in a way that helps the meeting flow toward achievement of your Objectives. Some tips:
- Handle short, urgent items first so they aren’t crowded out and become perennial ‘old business’.[4]
- Don’t leave the most important items until the end…you don’t want to run out of time to adequately cover them. Also, the earlier in the meeting they occur, the higher participants’ interest and energy levels are likely to be.
- Sequence items in a logical order, so that each accomplished item leads to the next.
Choose a Process for each item. A few examples:
- Discussion
- Brainstorming
- Presentation
- Consensus Building
- Decision-Making
Finally, identify how much Time will be allotted for each item. Be realistic; you don’t want to short-change an item, but neither do you want to over-commit time to it. When there is a firm time limit, people tend to be more focused.
Having said that all that about Agendas, a word of caution. Agendas are great. Pre-planning is great. But being locked into an Agenda is not so great. Especially if it isn’t working.
You want an Agenda that is firm yet flexible. As you create your Agenda, prepare for it to change a bit as you conduct the meeting. You want to make sure you have time for letting the meeting go where it needs to go. Often those ‘side trips’ can be the most meaningful.
Though it may be difficult, resist the temptation to over-stuff the turkey.[5] Having fewer items may provide room for unplanned yet important conversations. And if you finish the agenda early, so what? I’ve never heard anyone complain about a meeting that was too short.[6]
Roles
Meetings that suck tend to have only 2 Roles:
- Leader
- Victims
On the other hand, meetings with real value (i.e.[7], that don’t suck) have several clearly defined and assigned roles:
- Leader: Establishes the meeting Purpose, Objectives, and Agenda, and is responsible for the overall direction of the meeting.
- Facilitator: Manages how people work together in the meeting, helps participants clear up conflicts and solve problems quickly to keep the meeting moving along. (The Leader can play this role, but it can often be helpful to assign it to another person.)
- Presenter: Delivers information to participants, either as part of the large meeting or smaller breakouts.
- Scribe: Captures the important themes, ideas, and action items.[8]
- Participant: Achieves the meeting Objectives (generating ideas, analyzing information, making decisions, etc.).
Understanding and assigning the different meeting roles helps you give the meeting more structure and keep everyone focused on reaching the Objectives in the time allotted.
If it’s your meeting, resist the urge to assign everything to yourself. Share the responsibilities with others to build engagement and participation. Give people the opportunity to get involved in different ways, and rotate the roles from meeting to meeting. This can be a great coaching and development opportunity. For example, you may want to have someone who normally doesn’t take a Leadership Role be the Meeting Facilitator.
Another important element is to determine who should attend the meeting, as well as who should not.
| Should Attend | Should Not Attend |
| Subject Matter Experts who have the most knowledge about your Objectives. Key Decision Makers. Those who are Directly Affected by the Objectives. | Those Unaffected by The Objectives[9] |
Often the spirit of inclusiveness results in lots of participants who are only peripherally involved in the Objectives of the meeting, if at all. Everyone who attends should be a full participant. If you have people who can provide value to one part of the meeting, you can invite them to attend for only that part, or get their input prior to the meeting.
And if you have people who simply want to observe (tourists) you can provide a summary after the meeting.
And that’s how you unsuck your meetings. If you’re someone who is a leader and/or responsible for holding meetings, you have the most to gain from making them more valuable.
Now, if you happen to be one of those folks who likes your meetings just the way they are, this has been a colossal waste of time.[10]
If, on the other hand, you are willing to do what it takes to value up your meetings, I hope these articles will be of assistance.
There are enough things in this world that suck. Let’s make sure our meetings aren’t among them. Thanks for giving this a read.
[1] And “Who’s bringing the snacks?”
[2] Hey, another analogy!
[3]As the result of all communication is misunderstanding, perhaps “want to ensure” is a bit hopeful. Rather, “want to do everything possible to ensure” is more realistic. I’d hate for you to be disappointed.
[4] ‘Old Business’ is meeting code for “Nobody wants to be accountable for this”, “Nobody cares about this”, and/or “Nobody wants to be on the hook for a decision about this.”
[5] No analogy this, but rather a cliché, as well as tried-and-true Thanksgiving trope.
[6] Hearing “Hey, why is this meeting so short?” is as rare as having an actual elephant in the room.
[7] More Latin! Can’t you just feel the gravitas?
[8]There are several tools that automate this process, including AI. Or so I’m told.
[9] Also, individuals who love to fill the room with the sound of their own voices, or who hog all the good snacks, or who uses phrases like, “Yes, but…”, “I don’t disagree, but…”, “I’m just playing Devil’s Advocate.” Of course, I’m almost certain that you don’t have anyone like that in your organization, so never mind.
[10]Sorry…should’ve mentioned that earlier on.
Listen to “Unsuck Your Meetings, Part 4” on audio:
Ronn Lehmann advises organizations and leaders on the human factors that determine their culture. Lehmann developed the Cultural Audit Process, which is designed to provide an outside perspective of an organization’s culture: what’s important, what’s rewarded and punished, what the rules are, and how people “show up.”
Success Authorities’ book, “Conversations for Clarity: Critical Questions Leaders Must Ask Themselves” is available now at Amazon!
