Andy Grove said that “a meeting is the medium through which managerial work is performed, so make it count”
Types of meetings:
- Process oriented meetings: knowledge is shared and information exchanged. Examples are one one ones, status updates, staff meetings, operation reviews, metrics reviews, etc.
- Mission oriented meetings: they are focused on how to solve a specific problem, usually to produce a decision, define tasks towards an objective, make clear to ourselves what we should be doing
A meeting can be dissected in four main sections:
1. Do we really need a meeting? – medium
To start with many meetings should not even happen. How many times have you been in a ‘meeting’ that takes a long time and could have been done in less than 5 minutes by email, chat, slack, phone, etc. If we think it can be solved fast we should never call a meeting. We should first think about what has come up or will come up and then see if it makes sense to call a meeting. We can find that out by process of elimination if it’s quick or not to help us answer that question.
2. Pre-meeting – logistics
We will be defining the purpose and contributions expected for the meeting. Figure out who must be in the meeting – we could let others know and allow them optional assistance. Next we should understand what type of meeting are we gonna call, the participants that should attend the meeting, how long should last so you can cut it at the time and have the progress organized to go through everything, and realize which material you might need to send to the participants prior to the meeting.
3. Actual Meeting – results
We are about to start our meeting. First, we should state the purpose and contribution of the meeting that we defined above. Next run the meeting ensuring that we keep focused on the type of meetings we defined to get the contribution we expected. Finally, to close down we will summarize the meeting to make sure it satisfies the purpose and contribution we set at the beginning. If necessary, we’d list the next steps to follow from what we have learnt/discussed on the meeting
4. Post-meeting – memory
A summary of the meeting will be sent to all participants and the optional participants that may care about the outcome of the meeting and ensure the followup are completed.
I’ve created a template based on the four areas described above that you can use to ensure you run effective meetings. You can download, it’s a google sheet, your own version here .