Jeff Lail

One of the biggest complaints around an office is about meetings.  Meetings can either be too long, too short, or even totally unnecessary.

This is a killer for the office.  Most offices are based around some kind of output, whether that be dollars in sales or actual production.  An unnecessary or pointless meeting takes away time that could be spent producing product or making sales.  An unnecessary meeting can actually hurt your organization.

Volunteer organizations are particularly effected by pointless meetings.  When people give up their free time to come to something that is pointless, there is less likely to be retention of members.  When there is loss of membership, the organization ultimately suffers and has to invest more time and money in recruiting new volunteers…a process that is an absolute efficiency killer.

Regardless of all that, meetings are a central part of keeping things running around an office.  So, how do you streamline your meetings at your place of business, church or other group?

The first question to ask is if the meeting is necessary to begin with.  If you’re simply updating people on something that would largely pertain only to your job responsibilities, a meeting is absolutely unnecessary.  It may be useful to consider other ways to update in some form of update that people can read if they desire or simply ignored.

Consider the other people who will attend the meeting.  What is necessary information to each of them?  How relevant are they to the particular project?  Oftentimes, you will find that information delivery does not require pulling people away from their job responsibilities.  The time could be better served by allowing people to receive the information at their own pace and in their own time.  All email programs have designations for important and timely emails, so if the information is very important but not worth valuable time, then send an email instead and designate with the “hurry” signal.

Another question to ask is how much information is needed.  If a meeting is necessary, it is imperative that you not waste people’s time, yet you also manage to disseminate the information needed to those parties involved.

Before you engage in a meeting, try to understand the perspective of the others attending.  How can you help them to understand the information you’re giving them, yet also not give them unnecessary information?   An important thing would  be to identify what is critical to the overall department mission and a short explanation of why a particular decision was made.

Once you have decided the information that needs to be covered, send a brief agenda to the people attending the meeting.  This will allow the attendees to have questions prepared, as well as be in the right state of mind to discuss the topic.  Pre-emptive emails also help with active engagement, thus making the meeting more effective and to the point.

In another post, I’ll cover how to effectively run a streamlined meeting.