101 Tips for Effective Meetings

Meeting Madness Skip to the Details:
How To Orderafflicts almost every organization. And as we make more use of dispersed teams and outsourcing, we become increasingly dependent on meetings, because of the more limited opportunities for casual communication. If we ever find our way out of this meeting mess, we can be sure that making meetings more effective, less numerous and shorter will be features of the solution. This tip book shows you how.

In my own experience, and in the course of working with clients in my consulting and coaching practices, I've learned a lot about what works and what doesn't when we try to make meetings more effective. Some of what I've learned is just good practice and has appeared in the literature over the years. But much is very new, developed in response to the rapid structural and technological change that has swept through today's office.

This tip book is both like and unlike many other collections of ideas for effective meetings. Like others, it's packed with ideas and suggestions that will reduce the time you spend in meetings, and make the time you do spend in meetings much more productive and less stressful.

Unlike others, this tip book also provides suggestions for organizational leaders — ideas for adjusting the organizational culture to support meeting effectiveness, while at the same time reducing the need for meetings.

Some sample tips

Here's a sample:

Have a Not-Agenda

Include with the agenda a not-agenda: a list of topics that are off limits for this meeting. Indicate when these items might be expected to be on a future agenda.

Stay away from your subordinates' meetings

Rarely is visiting a subordinate's meeting a good idea. The risk of disrupting the meeting is high, but your visit can even disrupt relationships between the meeting participants.

Manage the burden of meetings

Measure the average percentage of time that people in your organization spend in meetings. Use cleverness, creativity and brainpower to try to drive it lower.

Have too many conference rooms

If you have too few conference rooms, people feel compelled to book them far in advance, which creates a false need for regular meetings, which in turn increases the demand for conference rooms. If you ever notice that all the conference rooms are booked, create more.

Limit presentations to 15 minutes

Since no meeting should go more than 90 minutes, presentations that run longer than 15 minutes significantly cut into the time available for discussion. If you want people to hear a longer presentation, schedule a presentation, not a meeting.

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