The Perfect Meeting

from Able Leader, June 2007

by Steve Kaye

Many of you responded to my request for advice on The Perfect Meeting.

Thank you. I appreciate your help.

Based on your advice, here's what to do.

1) Cancel it.

Recognize that meetings are an expensive business activity. Thus, you need a large return on your investment in order to justify holding one. Otherwise, you are wasting your company's resources.

Before reserving a conference room, check if you can you resolve the issue by any other means, e.g., by making a phone call, writing a memo, or talking to the person next door.

Action: Hold meetings only when they are the most effective way to obtain a result.

2) Prepare.

No one would hire a dozen carpenters and then ask them, "Well, what do you want to build?"

No one would send a project team to sit in a dark room doing nothing.

No would would pay employees to spend a day watching a rambling conversation.

But people call meetings without a goal, a plan, or a strategy. And a meeting without direction is a failure before it starts.

Some people will say, "But I don't have time to prepare an agenda."

If you are too busy to prepare an agenda, then you are too busy to deal with the problems that will result from a bad meeting.

Action: Write out the goal for your meeting. Prepare an agenda. Send the agenda at least a day before the meeting. And contact key participants to review their expectations.

3) Use time.

We earn trust by treating others with respect. We do this in many ways, including the ways in which we use their time.

You see, time is life. And when we waste someone's time, we waste that person's life.

In the case of meetings, this means using a process that makes effective, efficient use of everyone's time. It means starting on time and ending on time. It means arriving on time.

Action: Spend other people's time as if it were your own. Prepare a time budget and show it in the agenda. Bring a clock.

4) Involve everyone.

People want to work. They want to help you earn a profit. They want to be busy.

On the other hand, people have little interest in serving as an audience for lectures, harangues, and monologues. They find such meetings dull, boring, and painful.

By definition, a meeting is a team process. Thus, the success of the meeting reflects the extent to which everyone contributed to obtaining the result.

Your job is to put everyone to work.

Similarly, invite only whose who can contribute. And leave out anyone who would attend as a spectator.

Action: Plan activities for your meetings that involve everyone.

5. Be a leader.

People expect a lot of their leaders.

They want them to make good decisions (e.g., whether a meeting is necessary).

They want them to create a vision, set goals, and make plans (that is, prepare an agenda).

They want them to set an example of commendable conduct by treating others with respect, by following ethical procedures, and by acting with courage.

And when a leader does these things, they respect the person.

Recognize that each meeting is a test of your leadership. Within perhaps 50 minutes, you demonstrate all aspects of yourself--your values, your principles, your leadership ability.

A meeting is also an opportunity to obtain results that take your business into a profitable, successful future.

Action: Apply your best leadership skills in every meeting. Use a facilitator when you want to participate. And, as with anything that matters, keep learning because there is always more to know.

Much success,

Steve Kaye
714-528-1300