
If there's anything people hate even more than meetings, it might be articles about why people hate meetings. Still reading, even after that sentence? Well, you'll be relieved to know that hating meetings is usually justified, at least to a degree. One way to get control of the problem is to make clear how often we do things that make our meetings dysfunctional.
A Pain Scale for Meetings can help. If we can rate the degree of frustration we experience on a meeting-by-meeting basis, we can recognize trends and gradually make corrections. Below is a list of "pain points" commonly found in meetings — things we do, or don't do, or do badly, that make our meetings painful.
Here's a way to use the list. For each meeting, score 1-5 points for each incident on the list that occurs during your meeting, assigning more points for more severe or more frequent incidents. For regular meetings — weekly or daily — track the score over time and try to drive it zero, meeting by meeting, in any way Most meetings could be shorter,
less frequent, and more
productive than they areyou can. If you aren't in a position to affect the frequency, duration, or intensity of some of these incidents, tracking them might still be useful. You might have the necessary influence in another meeting you lead, now or someday.
So here's a list of pain points.
- The agenda was unrealistically long. They can't be serious.
- Because attendees had no opportunity to contribute to the agenda, important items were omitted, and we spent time on trivia instead.
- Attendees had no chance to prepare because the agenda wasn't distributed in advance.
- Attendees had no chance to prepare because there was no agenda.
- The agenda was available only in hardcopy, and only at the meeting. Seriously?
- The agenda had so many diverse topics that the invitation list was bloated. Most of us had to sit through a third of the meeting that we knew nothing about and cared about even less.
- The meeting chair didn't invite the right people.
- The right people were invited but they had to leave before we got to the part of the agenda we needed them for.
- The right people were invited but they couldn't attend due to conflicts with another meeting.
- The right people were invited but didn't attend for some unknown reason.
- Too many people attended. There was very little time to offer our opinions or to add information to the conversation.
- Some people kept harping on the same old issues even though they knew we couldn't do anything about those issues until next month.
- The meeting descended into a blamefest.
- We took too many trips down too many of the same old rabbit holes.
- We couldn't start on time because the meeting before us ran overtime.
- Yet again we covered the same already-covered ground.
- We couldn't resolve an important open issue because we didn't have the information we needed. Again.
- Some people were attending in the room, and some were dialed in by telephone, but the people dialed in couldn't hear clearly enough what the people in the room were saying, so we had to keep repeating things.
- The people who dialed in couldn't see the slides or the flip charts, and someone had to recite descriptions to them.
- We met in person when a phone meeting would have done just as well. Might even have been better.
- One of the people dialed in had a dog that felt compelled to participate. Probably the dog was objecting to the descriptions of the slides.
- Another dialed-in attendee had a crying baby who also seemed not to like the descriptions of the slides.
- Another dialed-in attendee was on a mobile phone connection that kept dropping, so when she reconnected we had to keep describing what happened while the connection was broken.
- The ventilation system was so noisy that even the people who were attending in the room couldn't hear everyone.
- It was a lunch meeting, but I arrived two minutes late and there wasn't enough food.
- It was a lunch meeting, and even though I ordered vegetarian, someone must have taken a vegetarian lunch who didn't order one, because there wasn't one for me.
- The meeting chair, acting as facilitator, didn't (and probably still doesn't) know how to facilitate. People just started talking without being recognized and the chair did nothing about it.
- Some people took too much time to say unimportant things, while other people got no time to say important things.
- Colin just likes hearing himself talk. Nobody else does.
- Some people didn't pay attention at the meeting, and later claimed that they weren't told about changes in the plan.
- Too many people were "stepping out" to take calls or whatever it was they did.
- The handouts didn't arrive until halfway through the meeting, so even though we juggled the agenda to delay the item that needed the handouts, we still lost time and suffered through confusion.
- The room was so cold I had to go back to my office for my coat.
- It was a standup meeting, probably intended to keep it short, but the meeting was still too long, and worse, we were standing the whole time. Except the people who were dialed in. They probably sat. Tomorrow I'll dial in.
- The meeting chair's boss dropped in unexpectedly, causing everyone to become guarded, except Alfred, one of the chair's rivals for promotion, who started bringing up embarrassing but irrelevant issues.
- The two people at the far end of the table kept whispering to each other about who knows what.
- Colin arrived ten minutes late, as usual, and asked for a recap, wasting everyone's time.
This list ought to get you started. If there are additional items you need for your painful meetings, feel free to add them. Top
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Related articles
More articles on Effective Meetings:
Untangling Tangled Threads
- In energetic discussions, topics and subtopics get intertwined. The tangles can be frustrating. Here's
a collection of techniques for minimizing tangles in complex discussions.
On Facilitation Suggestions from Meeting Participants
- Team leaders often facilitate their own meetings, and although there are problems associated with that
dual role, it's so familiar that it works well enough, most of the time. Less widely understood are
the problems that arise when other meeting participants make facilitation suggestions.
Rationalizing Creativity at Work: II
- Creative thinking at work can be nurtured or encouraged, but not forced or compelled. Leaders who try
to compel creativity because of very real financial and schedule pressures rarely get the results they
seek. Here are examples of tactics people use in mostly-futile attempts to compel creativity.
Contributions, Open and Closed
- We can classify contributions to discussions according to the likelihood that they stimulate new thought.
The more open they are, the more they stimulate new thought. How can we encourage open contributions?
Workplace Politics and Social Exclusion: II
- In workplace politics, social exclusion can be based on the professional role of the target, the organizational
role of the target, or personal attributes of the target. Each kind has its own effects. Each requires
specific responses.
See also Effective Meetings and Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming February 3: Cost Concerns: Scale
- When we consider the costs of problem solutions too early in the problem-solving process, the results of comparing alternatives might be unreliable. Deferring cost concerns until we fully understand the problem can yield more options and better decisions. Available here and by RSS on February 3.
And on February 10: Remote Hires: Communications
- When knowledge-oriented organizations hire remote workers, success is limited by the communications facilities they provide. Remote hires need phones, computers, email, text, video, calendars, and more. Communications infrastructure drives productivity. Available here and by RSS on February 10.
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