How to Hold the Right Meeting

Meeting problems occur across all sorts of meeting types. However, some problems are more prevalent in certain types of meetings. In addition, we have found that not having a clear understanding of the type of meeting you are holding in the first place will magnify the problems you are likely to experience.

This guide breaks down the six most common meeting types, how they differ, and how to effectively run each one, so you’re never stuck having the wrong meeting.

Type 1 - Status/Informational Meetings

Example meeting types - Common types of meetings that fall into this category include: Daily status meeting, Standup meeting, Weekly status meeting, Quarterly All Hands Meeting, Safety Review Meeting, Deliverable Review Meeting, KPI Review meeting

When to have them:

• These are the most common types of meetings. You should have them on a period that corresponds to how often new information is available and is useful to the attendees. Do not have status or informational meetings if there is nothing to talk about.

Inputs & Outputs:

• Everyone should come to these meetings prepared to quickly communicate their completed activities, current/next steps, and any blocking issues/concerns.

• Everyone should walk out of the meeting with an understanding of:

1. What teams/individuals are doing
2. Overall how everything is going
3. What the main issues / problems are

Key Roles:

• Leader / Organizer – Keep the meeting on pace.
• Note taker – I advocate everyone keeping notes for themselves, but having a person assigned every meeting to take notes definitely helps hold everyone accountable.
• Participants – Everyone should provide their status.

Common Pitfalls:

• Scheduling status meetings too frequently. If the update from most of your team member is “I am working on same thing as yesterday, no changes” then you should probably have these meetings less frequently.
• Allowing people to use status meetings as a discussion forum. If someone tries to Hijack your meeting and use it as a brainstorming forum, you should ask them to setup a separate discussion.

Key Suggestions:

• Timing - For daily status meetings, try to keep these meetings under 2 minutes for every person who is giving an update. For example a team of 5 should be able to hold a status meeting in 10 minutes. Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly Meetings can be longer, but if you have a meeting longer than 50 minutes, you should schedule breaks.
• Pace – These meetings should be a fast as possible. Keep track of the time during the status updates. Additionally, doing status meetings standing up helps improve the pace because no one wants to stand for 30+ minutes.
• Time of Day – I recommend status meetings first thing in the morning. It will help everyone focus on what they need to be doing during that day, and it will help avoid breaking up the day with a meeting.

Type 2 - Problem Solving/Decision Making Meetings

Example meeting types - Common types of meetings that fall into this category include: Issue review, Triage Meeting, Post Mortem Meeting, Emergency issue meeting, and Prioritization Meeting

When to have them:

• If there is a large issue that needs to be resolved or a set of decisions that needs to be made that require input from multiple people.

Inputs & Outputs:

• Prior to the meeting, all participants should be made aware of the problems or decisions that need to be made and solved. In addition all supporting materials should be provided prior to the meeting.
• At the end of the meeting the problems should all have next steps. If decisions were needed, then they should be documented.
• Notes from the meeting should be sent to all stakeholders (not just participants) to ensure that everyone is aware of next steps and decisions.

Key Roles:

• Leader / Organizer – Should be responsible for setting the agenda for the problems and decisions that needs to be focused on. If a discussion point is out of the scope of the meeting, it should be tabled or put into a parking lot for a future discussion.
• Participants – All participants should focus on understanding:

1. The problem or decision
2. The potential outcomes
3. The decision on the next steps.

Common Pitfalls:

• Inviting too many people. There is a humus quote that states “We are all dumber as a group than we are individually”. Having too many chefs into the kitchen does not always make the product better. Be sure to just invite only the right people required for closure.
• Not having a key participant present. If a person required to solve the problem or make the decision is not available, then try to reschedule the meeting. Holding the meeting without them will just waste the time of the other participants.
• Meeting not focused on the highest priority items. How many meetings have participated in where the low priority items were given more discussion time than the high priority items? Prioritize the agenda with the highest priority items being discussed first.

Key Suggestions:

• Rooms with Whiteboards – Try to have these meetings face to face where everyone can share a common whiteboard. If you can’t have everyone in the same room, use screen sharing with annotation.
• Supporting Materials – Understand that everyone will not be able to read all supporting materials for the meeting. When you send out the invite, include the summary data points and materials that are critical to the discussion. Due to blackberry, iPhone, and outlook meeting/calendar behavior issues, I recommend putting these materials into a separate email from the meeting invite.

Type 3 - Planning/Ideation Meetings

Example meeting types - Common types of meetings that fall into this category include: Strategic Planning, Brainstorming Session, Project planning, Requirements / Scope Analysis

When to have them:

• You know your objective, and you want to get ideas on how to achieve your objective. Think of these types of meetings as you would think about vacation planning (e.g. Where do I want to go, How am I going to get there, What path will I take, what will I do along the way, what do I need to bring, who will go on the trip with me). The most common type of Planning/Ideation meeting is the Brainstorming session.

Inputs & Outputs:

• Planning / Ideation meetings must have a defined end point. Without a general concept of vision of what you are planning or brainstorming about, your meeting will not flow.
• The outputs from these meetings can be very different; they range from a single concept and how to achieve it, to group of concepts to explore further.

Key Roles:

• Facilitator – The meeting facilitator should be responsible for: getting the right people in the room, setting the defined end point/objective, and helping to guide people’s thinking by asking insightful questions, preventing the team from going down rabbit holes.
• Participants – The participants should be responsible for keeping an open mind. Thinking outside of their comfort zones, and asking questions.

Common Pitfalls:

• Wandering – I have been in a lot of meetings where the discussion wanders far from the objective. At that point in time you need to ask: “Is the point we are currently focusing on more important than the original objective”
• “Because… This is how we have always done it” – This is a terrible answer for almost anything. It is an especially bad response when brainstorming or planning. The attendees of the meeting should make a point to think about alternatives that might be better than the current approaches.

Key Suggestions:

• Mind Map – Using Mind Maps helps capture ideas and allows your team to be flexible on moving on without losing a point. Xmind and Mindjet are two great tools to use for this.
• Thinking Hats - Try using the six thinking hats approaches to frame questions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Thinking_Hats
• ASK Questions - Instead of shooting down suggestion you think are “bad”, ask questions such as:
• “What do you think are the key benefits to that approach”
• “What do you think are the possible drawbacks to doing it that way”

Type 4 - Operational Meetings

Example meeting types - Common types of meetings that fall into this category include: Financial review meeting, Shareholders meeting, Board Meeting, Committee meeting, and Annual Meeting

When to have them:

• Operational Meetings are more formal meeting types that are typically mandated by policy, regulations, or organization by-laws. Operational meetings typically exhibit attributes of both Status Meetings and Decision Making meetings.

Inputs & Outputs:

• Operational Meetings should have a standardized agenda that adheres to the expected outputs for the meeting.
• At the end of every meeting there should be formal meeting minutes that document the discussion, decisions, and key action items.

Key Roles:

• Organizer – The organizer should be focused on getting the schedule coordinated between all of the key stakeholders. In addition, the organizer should be responsible for getting all of the agenda discussion items from the participants prior to the meeting.
• Leader – The meeting leader is typically one of the heads of the organization or group. This person should be responsible for setting the ground rules and the expectations for the meeting. He or she should be driving the meeting directly from the predefined agenda.
• Note Taker/Secretary – There should be a formal note-taker who is responsible for capturing, proofreading, and then publishing formal meeting minutes.

Common Pitfalls:

• Not having key member available. Formal operational meeting typically require the participation of all key stakeholders, they planning for this meeting should occur well in advance of the meeting date to ensure that everyone is available.

Key Suggestions:

• Socialized information before hand – The information and decisions made in these meeting should be disseminated to everyone to ensure that people are not blindsided with new information during the meeting. If there is a vote on a key decision item, that decision owner should have discussed the decision item with all voting members prior to the meeting.
• Using alternate technology for official materials – printing out and binding meeting packets can get pretty costly when you have a larger boards or teams. I have talked with a few organizations where they are starting to use tablets (Ipad/Androids) instead of printed binders for their executives in meetings.

Type 5 - Review/Evaluation Meetings

Example meeting types - Common types of meetings that fall into this category include: Project Quality Review, Personnel performance evaluation

When to have them:

These meetings typically occur when a more senior resource or external resource is reviewing the performance of an individual, a project, or a team. If you are a manager you should have a formal performance review meeting with each or your team members individually every 6 months.

Inputs & Outputs:

• The reviewer should be prepared for the meeting by reviewing all data points, metrics, and formal/informal feedback for the review.
• Ideally, prior to the meeting, the reviewee should provide the reviewer with a list of their accomplishments and goals.
• At the end of every meeting there should be a formal documentation by the reviewer of the discussion points. Recommended points include:
• Areas of high or differentiated performance
• Areas requiring additional skill or personnel development
• Goals and the commitments that the reviewer and reviewee are going to make to achieve those goals.

Key Roles:

• Reviewer – The reviewer should be a manager or trusted guide to the reviewee.
• Reviewee – The reviewee must be open to listening and understanding feedback and how they can use it to improve or grow.

Common Pitfalls:

• Not having these meetings at all.
• Not preparing properly.
• Having these meetings just to have them. Review meetings without proper preparation are a waste of time; do not have these meetings if you are not prepared to discuss feedback.

Key Suggestions:

• Keep a history of things that people have done well and need to improve on. Have a flag type or tag that you use for your email to note these items, this will help you when compiling feedback at the end of the year.
• Be as constructive as possible. Non-constructive feedback is detrimental to the relationship between the reviewer and reviewee
• Listen and ask questions. As a reviewer, using the Socratic method of asking questions helps people to better formulate ideas in their heads. In addition, listen to responses helps you better gauge how the reviewee is feeling.

Type 6 - Sales/Business Development Meetings

Example meeting types - Common types of meetings that fall into this category include: Introduction meeting, Product overview, Product Demo, Pitch Session, Contract Discussion

When to have them:

Sales or business development meetings typically occur when you are selling something to someone or buying something from someone.

Inputs & Outputs:

• Inputs typically include product information and information on why the buyer is interested in the product.
• At the end of a sales/business development meeting there can be a number of outcomes, the most common are:
• The buyer has no interest in the product or server and the discussions should not continue.
• The buyer doesn’t need to the product right now, but may need the product at a future point in time.
• The buyer has some interest and needs additional information or needs the seller to do some additional work, prior to further sales discussions.
• The buyer and the seller agree on terms and how to move forward with an agreement.

Key Roles:

• Seller – The seller is the person who is offering the server or product that the buyer would be interested in purchasing. The seller should be responsible for facilitating the meeting and accommodating to the buyers schedule when possible. The seller should also be responsible for taking notes and following up as soon as possible with the outcome of the meeting.
• Buyer – The buyer should be prepared for the meeting by understanding what their needs are, in addition they should have an ideal target for that they would be will to pay for the services/product.

Common Pitfalls:

• Not Qualifying the Meeting. The seller should be responsible for ensuring that the buyer is (or would be) interested in the product. If there is no interest or purchase intent, then the meeting is not a sales meeting, it is just an informational meeting.

Key Suggestions:

• Sellers should understand the buyer’s needs. A seller should never show up to a meeting without having done research to understand the buyers business, goals, and reason for purchase interest.
• Whether you are a buyer or a seller, spend some time reading through the sales classics on negotiating and selling.

Summary

As you are planning and running your meetings, if you and all of your participants understand the type of meeting and its objective, it will help you avoid the common pitfalls for each of these types of meeting.

In summary, to avoid having the wrong meeting, I recommend you run through this quick checklist before sending out the invite:

1. Understand the objective of meeting (this will help you identify the meeting type)
2. Make sure you have the right inputs for the meeting (materials, agenda)
3. Verify that the attendees understand their role in the meeting.
4. Make sure that your meeting is focused on the right outputs: deliverables, knowledge, action items, and decisions.