Your Meetings Suck. Here's How To Run Them Properly.

I don’t know about you, but I find that too many meetings are a waste of time. They’re too large, don’t have the right people in them, no one will make a decision, no one can agree on anything, you name it, there are a litany of reasons for why meetings can be awful.

But meetings don’t have to be awful. What if I told you, you could make every meeting effective by following a few simple rules?

Here’s a summary of how to make your meetings not suck.

Why is this even a meeting?

You’ve probably asked yourself this question several times. But this should be the first question you ask yourself before calling a meeting. Can this be handled asynchronously? Can it be dealt with over an email, a phone call, or text/slack? Instead of a meeting, would it be easier or faster to make separate phone calls to each person? If it can, even if it might take a bit longer, don’t call a meeting.

Stop inviting everyone and their mother

This should be obvious, but only invite the people who are absolutely necessary. No more. If you want some people to be “aware” of the meeting, make them optional and add in the notes of the meeting why they’re optional.

There will always be some cases for why you need to invite everyone and make a huge meeting, but those should be incredibly rare. Remember, the more people invited, the less productive it will be and the more costly the meeting (both in lost productivity and real dollars spent on the salaries of all those people).

Define the purpose of the meeting

You probably already know this in your head, but writing it down as part of the invite will make it clearer for you and set expectations for everyone invited. This is where you explain what kind of meeting this is, whether it’s informative, constructive/creative/imaginative (the “what” and the “how”), or decisive.

This is also where you declare the outcomes desired out of the meeting. What do you want to accomplish? This should be stated here, as it goes to the purpose of holding the meeting in the first place.

Set the agenda

Make a bullet point list of the topics to be discussed in the meeting and what (known) decisions need to be made. It’s also helpful to note who will be making the decisions so people know what to expect. Is it a single decision-maker? A committee of the whole group? Or select individuals in the group? Even if it’s implied, it should be defined for clarity.

This is also a good time to distribute any materials that you want the group to consume in advance of the meeting. Amazon is known for requiring six-page white papers for their meetings. I haven’t used this method per se, but the concept is sound. If you want to bring everyone up to the same level of knowledge, make sure all the participants have what they need to read in advance, and give them ample time to read it.

Lastly, organize topics on the agenda to maximize attention and engagement. If you have dull items to discuss, do it early. It’s best to save the more exciting or engaging conversations for the middle or end, so people don’t lose their energy. Just make sure you have enough time to discuss those engage in those exciting topics at the end.

Which brings us to…

Time

Estimate the amount of time you need for the meeting accurately, but add a little padding. Don’t limit yourself to the 30 or 60 minute defaults of calendar apps. If you only need 10 minutes, book 15. If you only need 30, book 40. Don’t be excessive with the padding, just keep enough for unknowns. Just remember that Parkinson’s law is true everywhere.

In your estimation, take into account the size of the group too, as the large the group the longer the discussion will often be. Sometimes it seems like there’s an exponential relationship between group size and length of discussions if you’re not careful.

Lastly, if you don’t think a meeting can cover everything in 60 minutes, then break it up into two shorter meetings. Our attention is hard enough to hold today as it is, so keep your expectations low.

Frequency

Is this a one-time meeting, or does it require recurring discussions? Some types of meetings demand recurrence in perpetuity (daily stand-ups, 1:1s, meetings for regulatory compliance) and some for defined periods of time (project meetings).

In determining whether a meeting is necessary, you should also decide if it should be recurring and at what frequency. The more often you’re meeting, the shorter the meeting should be. And don’t default to a longer meeting time because you might need the time once in a while. Keep them short and book more time in those edge cases.

Modality

You might consider this earlier on, but think about the most appropriate way to hold this meeting. Is your company remote? Then an online meeting will obviously be your first choice with in-person being an exceptional event. If your company works in an office, then in-person will be the default.

But what if you work in a hybrid with some people remote and others in an office on varying days?  Or people are mixed between offices and remote but also distributed nationally or globally?  These decisions need to be made on a case-by-case basis to optimize participation and attention, without causing undue burden on participants. This is especially important to balance in hybrid environments, as it can be easy to favor in-office participants in split meetings.

Actually running the meeting

It’s meeting time! Now what?

Hold to some simple basics. You put a lot of work and effort into planning this meeting to this point, so now follow these steps to execute it successfully:

1. Obtain quorum quickly, or reschedule the meeting – you should obviously try to know if you won’t have quorum in advance, but sometimes it can happen. Act quickly to reschedule so you aren’t wasting anyone’s time.
2. Summarize the agenda and begin the discussion – always remind people why they’re there and what the plan of topics is
3. Don’t dwell on trivial items – bikeshedding is a thing. Recognize it and quash it.
4. If a discussion item appears to require more time than originally expected, or a significant unknown is uncovered, table the item for a separate meeting so it doesn’t threaten the remainder of the schedule (assuming it doesn’t drive the rest of the agenda)
5. Balance and manage the discussion to ensure the flow of conversation and ideas so it stays reasonably on track, but is still allowed to wander – Control those who dominate, encourage the silent, protect the weak, don’t allow ideas to be reflexively squashed, and encourage discussion from the most junior members first

Ending the meeting

I learned from a previous boss of mine to always end meetings on a positive, especially if there was conflict. Give thanks to the individuals for their contributions, by name, and the value the conversation brought. Make sure to summarize the accomplishments achieved in the meeting, especially if any big open items weren’t resolved, as well as the decisions made. Lastly, if there are any next steps, follow-ups, or assignments, they should be mentioned before adjourning.

After the meeting

When the meeting is over, and assuming it was formal enough to require it, write up a summary. The summary should include:
• The time, date, who chaired the meeting, and who attended
• The agenda items (and non-agenda items) discussed and any decisions made
• All the assignments for decisions
• Any open items requiring future discussion or decision
• Any follow-ups that are required, by whom, and when
• Next steps and what to expect

Finally, reflect back on the meeting and ask yourself if it was effective. Did you achieve your goals? Did you get out of it what you wanted and expected? Ask yourself, how could I have done better? What should I have done differently to improve the meeting? If any mistakes were made, what will I do next time to ensure that doesn’t happen again? You may also want to ask some of the participants what their impression of the meeting was. How would they have improved it? What did they think could have been done better? Both self-criticism and analysis, as well as third party feedback, is important to improve every system.

Conclusion

Running an effective meeting isn’t difficult, but it does require planning and preparation and active management. Simply following these principles won’t make your meetings perfect immediately. Like anything, holding effective meetings is a skill that must be practiced. But if you follow the principles outlined consistently, taking time to incorporate feedback and improvements along the way, you’ll quickly find your meetings improving greatly.

If you want any in-depth reading about some of these principles, I came across this old Harvard Business Review article from 1976 on how to run a board meeting. It’s still almost entirely relevant today.