Make Meetings More Efficient

Make Meetings More Efficient

Most meetings are a complete waste of time. As Kevin Spacey’s character, Buddy Ackerman, said in Swimming with Sharks, “If they can't start a meeting without you, well, that's a meeting worth going to isn't it?” Ackerman was definitely on to something there.

But unlike the superstar producer, you probably can’t just skip the meetings you don’t feel like attending. However, you can try to make the meetings you do attend a lot shorter and more productive.

To create meetings that are quick and effective make sure you plan beforehand. How you operate during the meeting and who you invite to the meetings are important things to consider. You don’t need to be the most important person in the room to run the show. You can create some truly useful meetings just by adhering to the following guidelines.
Create an extra short time frame
The best way to keep your meeting short is to schedule a limited time for the event. Look at how well short time frames work for firefighters: Within minutes they need to make life or death decisions in order to save people’s lives. While business meetings are hardly as life-changing, the same principles should be applied. Surely you can figure out how to change the navigation on your web site in a half-hour time frame.

Instead of scheduling an hour-long meeting, try cutting it down to 30 minutes or less, especially when there needs to be a decided outcome. When people know there is limited time to argue and decide, they tend to come to a conclusion much more quickly, which is good for everyone.
Save the small talk
Your short meeting will be even shorter if you can skip the small talk in the beginning. Maybe your coworker’s child just won a basketball tournament or maybe someone just bought a new car. That’s great small talk that you can share on your way out of the meeting, not at the beginning.

The best way to set the tone is to begin the meeting as quickly as possible, even if people are still walking in the door. In the absence of a business discussion, people will revert back to what they know -- their personal lives.

If the guy in development wants everyone to know how incredible his golf game was last weekend, let him know he can send an e-mail after the meeting. At that moment, you need to focus on getting some key decisions made as quickly as possible.
Run the meeting, don’t attend it
If you sit back and let a meeting run itself, it’ll run in a million different directions all at once. Instead, try taking control of the meeting as quickly as possible. That doesn’t mean you need to turn into a “little Hitler,” you just need to make sure the pace continues toward a defined end point.

To start, state the goals of the meeting and make sure that they are continually reiterated, especially when you feel the conversation is moving off-topic. You don’t need to be the most important person in the room to casually remind people of the stated goals.
Request answers before the meeting
Most meetings are meant to arrive at some sort of resolution or consensus. It’s rarely the case that entirely new information is presented and off-the-cuff decisions are made over the span of one meeting. Generally, we know what answer we want before the meeting even starts.

Instead of going through the process of presenting the questions again and debating potential outcomes, why not just ask everyone what their answers are ahead of time? This will allow you to move from presenting information to deciding a course of action, which is what a meeting is for anyhow.
Speak in group-only discussions
Keeping everyone focused on the topic at hand is just as important as being armed with answers. It’s easy for two people to begin a discussion that is off-topic or doesn’t relate to everyone else in the room. The best thing you can do in this situation is to suggest they continue their discussion on their own time after the meeting.

Nothing is gained by watching two people spar on a topic that has nothing to do with everyone else. At best, it’s a waste of everyone’s time.
Invite only the necessary parties
Another way to keep the off-topic discussions at bay and the meeting time down to a minimum is to invite as few people as possible to the meeting. You’re not planning your fraternity keg party. It’s not about how many people you can invite to make the event better -- this is about efficiency.

The best meetings have the fewest number of parties directly related to making decisions. There’s a basic formula that you can use here: Every extra person that you invite makes the length of the meeting double and cuts the efficiency in half. Think about that the next time you add the summer intern to your invite list.
less is always more
Creating a meeting isn’t a goal, it’s a tactic to accomplish a goal. Anything you can do to reduce the number of meetings you have, or at least reduce the time spent in meetings, means you’ve also created that much more time to get other work done. So it seems, ultimately the best meeting you can have is no meeting at all.