Using the Parking Lot

Whether you call it the parking lot, the issues bin, or the issues list, accumulating contributed items that aren't quite on topic during a given meeting can help keep the meeting focused and moving forward. Here are some tips to help you get more from the practice, or to motivate you to start.

Make it visible

Enter the items on a flip chart or other medium that's visible to all. Visibility helps deter duplication, and it might spur additional creativity.

Enlist a valet

A meeting of more than about seven people needs a parking lot valet — someone to record the items, and to verify that the contributors agree with the wording. For smaller meetings, the scribe or recorder can play the valet role.

Encourage self-parking

Encourage meeting attendees to self-park. That is, if a contributor knows in advance that a contribution will be parked, why not add it to the parking lot after the meeting? Although there is some value in announcing the contribution during the meeting, the time lost doing so is also valuable.

Review at meeting's end

A very brief end-of-meeting review of the parking lot should assign to each item someone from leadership to "own" it and follow it to resolution.

Follow up

Every item from the parking lot should make a later appearance as a part of a future agenda item, or on the next edition of the parking lot resolution list, or on the cumulative parking-lot-awaiting-resolution list. Nothing should disappear into the void. Each item's owner is responsible for tracking it.

Track the contributors

Track the contributors of parked items. Investigate why some people repeatedly offer items that end in the parking lot. Do they not understand the agenda? Are they uniquely brilliant? Are their concerns being ignored? Why are they not self-parking?

Maintain a parking lot history

Every item from the parking lot
should make a later appearance
as a part of a future agenda item
or a parking lot resolution list

Compile all parking lots, and examine them for patterns. Are some kinds of items repeatedly parked? If so, perhaps these are issues that need attention, or perhaps some people are preventing them from getting attention.

Track the context

Track the contexts in which parking lot items appear. A high incidence of parked items might indicate that the group hasn't been proactive in that topic area — the issues involved are "running ahead" of the group.

Any tool can be abused, including the parking lot. The Chair, for instance, can use it to stifle discussion of any topic not explicitly on the agenda. Tracking parked items can limit this risk, but you might have to deal with parking lot abuse as a performance issue. Since that can be a complex question, and it isn't on today's agenda, I've added it to the parking lot.  Top    Next Issue

Do you spendyour days scurrying from meeting to meeting? Do you ever wonder if all these meetings are really necessary? (They aren't) Or whether there isn't some better way to get this work done? (There is) Read 101 Tips for Effective Meetings to learn how to make meetings much more productive and less stressful — and a lot more rare. Order Now!

The term parking lot is an Americanism. Even though the British call them car parks, my colleague Graham Oakes reports that the term "parking lot" works in the context of meetings in the United Kingdom. My colleague Nynke Fokma reports from other European languages: Bent (Danish) says, "Boette" (Marmalade jar); Emmanuel (French) says, "Parking"; Nynke (Dutch) says, "Even opzij?" (Aside for now?); and Marco (Italian) says, "Possiamo parlarne dopo?" (Can we talk about this later?).

More reports: Mary Ann (Tagalog (Phillipines)) says, "Tsaká na" (Later). Christine (Sydney, Australia, where she works with environmental organizations) says, "Let's park that in the bike rack for later."

If you send me your term from your own language, I'll post it.

Your comments are welcome

About Point Lookout

Thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful, and that you'll consider recommending it to a friend.

Point Lookout is a free weekly email newsletter. Browse the archive of past issues. Subscribe for free.

Support Point Lookout by joining the Friends of Point Lookout, as an individual or as an organization.

Do you face a complex interpersonal situation? Send it in, anonymously if you like, and I'll give you my two cents.

Related articles

More articles on Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness:

Become a Tugboat Captain

If your job responsibilities sometimes require that you tell powerful people that they must do something differently, you could find yourself in danger from time to time. You can learn a lot from tugboat captains.

Retention

When the job market eases for job seekers, we often see increases in job shifting, as people who've been biding their time make the jump. Typically, they're the people we most want to keep. How can we reduce this source of turnover?

Some Limits of Root Cause Analysis

Root Cause Analysis uses powerful tools for finding the sources of process problems. The approach has been so successful that it has become a way of thinking about organizational patterns. Yet, resolving organizational problems this way sometimes works — and sometimes fails. Why?

Virtual Conflict

Conflict, both constructive and destructive, is part of teamwork. As virtual teams become more common, we're seeing more virtual conflict — conflict that crosses site boundaries. Dealing with destructive conflict is difficult enough face-to-face, but in virtual teams, it's especially tricky.

Why Don't They Believe Me?

When we want people to believe us, and they don't, it just might be a result of our own actions or demeanor. How does this happen?

See also Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness and Effective Meetings for more related articles.

Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout

Coming July 18: High Falutin' Goofy Talk: III

Workplace speech and writing sometimes strays into the land of pretentious but overused business phrases, which I like to call high falutin' goofy talk. We use these phrases with perhaps less thought than they deserve, because they can be trite or can evoke indecorous images. Here's Part III of a collection of phrases and images to avoid. Available here and by RSS on July 18.

And on July 25: Exploiting Functional Fixedness: II

A cognitive bias called functional fixedness causes difficulty in recognizing new uses for familiar things. It also makes for difficulty in recognizing devious uses of everyday behaviors. Here's Part II of a catalog of deviousness based on functional fixedness. Available here and by RSS on July 25.

Coaching services

I offer email and telephone coaching at both corporate and individual rates. Contact Rick for details at rbrenasmVVuqvwpimsDdMner@ChacTpOAqNhHcxquBORdoCanyon.com or (650) 787-6475, or toll-free in the continental US at (866) 378-5470.

Get the ebook!

Past issues of Point Lookout are available in six ebooks:

• Get 2001-2 in Geese Don't Land on Twigs (PDF, USD 11.95)
• Get 2003-4 in Why Dogs Wag (PDF, USD 11.95)
• Get 2005-6 in Loopy Things We Do (PDF, USD 11.95)
• Get 2007-8 in Things We Believe That Maybe Aren't So True (PDF, USD 11.95)
• Get 2009-10 in The Questions Not Asked (PDF, USD 11.95)
• Get all of the first twelve years (2001-2012) in The Collected Issues of Point Lookout (PDF, USD 28.99)

Are you a writer, editor or publisher on deadline? Are you looking for an article that will get people talking and get compliments flying your way? You can have 500 words in your inbox in one hour. License any article from this Web site. More info

Public seminars

The Race to the South Pole: The Power of Agile Development

On 14 December 1911, four men led by Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole. Thirty-five days later, Robert F. Scott and four others followed. Amundsen had won the race to the pole. Amundsen's party returned to base on 26 January 1912. Scott's party perished. As historical drama, why this happened is interesting enough. Lessons abound. Among the more important lessons are those that demonstrate the power of the agile approach to project management and product development. Read more about this program. Here's a date for this program:

• Ohio National Insurance, 1 Financial Way, Blue Ash, OH: July 17, Monthly Meeting, Cincinnati chapter of the International Institute of Business Analysis. Register now.
   

The Power Affect: How We Express Our Personal Power

Many people who possess real organizational power have a characteristic demeanor. It's the way they project their presence. I call this the power affect. Some people — call them power pretenders — adopt the power affect well before they attain significant organizational power. Unfortunately for their colleagues, and for their organizations, power pretenders can attain organizational power out of proportion to their merit or abilities. Understanding the power affect is therefore important for anyone who aims to attain power, or anyone who works with power pretenders. Read more about this program.

• A recording of a program presented 6:00 PM June 29 (Eastern Time), Monthly Webinar, Technobility Webinar Series. You can earn 1.0 Category 'A' PDU by viewing this program. View this program now.