5 Ways to have an Efficient Meeting
Working in software engineering, communication is pivotal to the success of the solution. Like it or not you need to spark discussion before any code is written. As a manager I’m often involved in meetings that aren’t just about the technical side (even though they’re much more fun) but I’m often in high level discussions for planning, strategy, one-to-one’s, presentations, mentoring, coaching and the classic catch up’s where coffee ☕️ is highly recommended. Ok there are 6 ways, caffeine definitely makes a meeting more efficient.
Before I jump into them however, I’d like to lay out some of the problems I often find in meetings and end up walking away questioning “what was the point of that?”
What makes a meeting inefficient?
We humans are social creatures, it doesn’t take a pandemic to tell us that we thrive on social interaction with others. Deep down a lot of us just love a meeting, especially with a team or colleagues who you get on with.
Sometimes however, as much as the anticipation of joining a meeting is exciting, we often finish them thinking to ourselves if that was actually productive or just a complete waste of time. Especially when we’re busy, we believe a meeting is a good idea at a point in time but often doesn’t meeting the expectation you planned in your head all along.
Problem Scenario #1 — The Waffler
The classic case of someone who loves a waffle and going into possibly irrelevant stories about how their nan could solve this problem 50 years ago with their hands tied behind their back. Sit down and have a waffle 🧇.
But before we hate on the Waffler let’s look deeper to why this happens. Often the Waffler is a common trait that you’ll find in people who feel comfortable with the topic at hand. Often more senior or management roles are found to waffle, imparting their wisdom to others and explaining in a fashion they feel others can relate to. However it’s important to look to the environment the Waffler is placed in. Why is Waffler continuing to bore people and make them disengage, are others actually benefitting from these stories about their nan? Or are they thinking about how insane 4 nan breads really are (Jeremy)? Is the Waffler allowed to carry on due to how the meeting is being run?
Problem Scenario #2 — The Non-Contributor
We all have the one who doesn’t speak, I’m pretty sure I’ve filled those shoes so many times over in my career, where I just have nothing to contribute. We all do it, could be because the answer is so simple that someone else is taking lead on it, could be because I’m clueless on the topic and I’ll go with the majority. The Non-Contributor isn’t bad per-say, spectating a meeting is actually useful context to have even though it could of been an email.
But sometimes we find that the people who we expect to contribute just don’t. What’s up with that?
When we throw in impromptu meetings sometimes they don’t necessarily benefit everyone. Even recurring meetings that are scheduled for a good hour could just be a 5 minute conversation of “Yeah we know, let’s just get on with it”. Even in the remote world we live in currently, it’s easy to live by what a calendar tells us. It’s actually really hard to predict that an hour will satisfy the result we want.
Problem Scenario #3 — The Meta-Meeting Attendee
Occasionally you walk into a meeting and there’s someone who questions what’s the point of us all meeting. Sometimes going into a philosophical rant of how meetings are improperly used in this millennial 21st world we live in. Fortunately if you pass them a hot drink or something stronger 🍻 they’ll probably calm down and realise it’s just a Tuesday. However, there is justified problem behaviour when you’ve gone someone walking into your meeting and saying to you “What am I doing here?”.
It can be received quite negatively when a host receives direct feedback in a public environment that everything they had in mind for this meeting was just rubbish. Most of us emotional lot would just tell them to leave if they didn’t like it but it’s important to read what the attendee is saying. Is there something that the host is less aware of that the rest of his/her team might already know? Maybe the host required further understanding of the topic at hand and others believed that it has already been discussed and agreed. What we do know however, that Tuesday truly isn’t a good day for us philosophical bunch.
The 5 Ways to have an Efficient meeting
I’m sure there are probably more problematic characteristics that I’ve missed, however the 5 ways below will improve the likelihood of a successful meeting.
1. The Agenda
Make one. There we go, no need to read the rest.
But in all seriousness it’s important. When we don’t make agendas or define clear outcomes or purpose for a meeting, we just ramble or have those dreaded video call silences where no one knows what is going on (they make me shiver).
There’s more to just making one though. Make it very clear of what you actually want from it. Meetings often serve purpose to many people but try and identify what you deem to be useful from it. If someone asks you to make one, really think about where you expect the conversation to go and finish.
Try not to go too crazy however, the topics you write down to discuss and the outcome you’re expecting, 95% of the time won’t fit in your estimate for a conversation. If you run over or feel there’s more discussion to be had, stop the conversation and book time later on.
2. Get Everyone to Contribute
Even your nan (if she’s invited and appreciates your company colleague happiness survey results for Q2).
Prompt others and ask what they think.
The Waffler’s will rise up quite soon if no one else gets their say or has an opinion to give. We often jump to conclusions that people don’t want say anything or just don’t care. But it’s easy to forget that you’re not letting them speak, or what about the senior manager that has their camera on, gazing into every one’s eyes when they make a comment? It’s important to recognise that there are a lot of reasons people don’t feel comfortable contributing.
Try the “allow 3 others to speak before you do” trick
Sounds wordy, but simple in execution. Once you’ve stopped talking, just wait for 3 other people in the meeting to speak. If you’re a classic case Waffler, you’ll probably get a lot of weird looks expecting you to speak, just smile back and wait.
Conversations in meeting can be visualised as a network, it’s commonplace for the same individuals to talk to each other and not engage with every one else.
The more people you bring into the meeting, the more likely you’ll find people that don’t speak. They may not have a strong relationship with others like you do. Above is an example of how a bigger team size can have an impact on how teams collaborate and interact with each other. Bigger team sizes can often give more mixed results.
Finally it’s important to recognise that a lot of us feel respected when asked for our opinions. Sometimes we don’t have any to contribute and that’s fine also, but remember to know when you’ve had your spotlight moment and pass it onto the next.
3. Try to Facilitate not “Opinion-ate” (why isn’t this a word Google?)
This can be subject to the style of meeting you’re running, for an example a presentation may have bias to a solution, but you’ll be respected more when you’ve reviewed the alternatives and made sure you’ve seen both sides of the story.
Leadership is a love-hate relationship, we need someone to help direct and lead us in our busy lives but also hate when our leaders sit on their ass and do nothing, then question what’s the purpose of management? Let’s just sack them all (begin philosophical rant).
When someone organises a meeting and lays down their opinion of the world, others often judge their short-sightedness of the problem. Do your homework and remember that there will always been new and alternative ways to solve a problem. Not how you solved that problem 20 years at University, 10 lagers down, with a floppy disk and some string.
With the likes of Google (my word better be valid when I’ve finished writing this), Wikipedia and a variety of other sources (or sources of sources, bit meta) a lot of assume that a lot of the world’s problems today were previously solved. To an extent it’s true, but also entirely wrong. Agile is a term widely beyond just software teams these days but one part people often miss is that Agile Way of Workings aren’t necessarily a list of commandants but guidelines onto how to start your journey of being more efficient as a team.
In English, don’t sit there and think that you have to follow what a book told you, it may work the first few times but then change it! And change it again! Or even change the change (met-… I’ll stop now). Innovation can be used in all forms, even as simple as changing up a meeting. Why does one particular meeting have to be the way it is? Make it engaging and interesting.
Be a Facilitator.
4. Accountability — Action Takers
So as your meeting is coming to a close, what’s gonna happen next? No seriously, you started this meeting, you’re accountable for what happens next.
Often when a meeting comes to a close, you get opinions from the more vocal folk at the end. It’s positive and describe it as good conversation, which is 99% of the time, genuine (yes that is an optimistic figure). But the part every one misses at the end is remembering that conversation for next week or how to move forward. If no one writes down or verbally agrees any action of the conversation, you can almost call that meeting pointless. In the remote world we have an option to record the entire meeting and share it on a page or team chat. Take a look back at it 4 weeks later, and you realise the sadness of it having 2 lonely views, one was probably you just checking you didn’t swear or show your nan in the camera and the other was probably the administrator of the company, also checking for your nan in the background and ensuring she signs an NDA that the conversation never happened.
Regardless, recording or documenting a conversation isn’t an action, it’s just a conversation that was in the same state as when you attended it. Why would you need to look at it again if you were there?
Make every one accountable and take actions.
Taking actions are tangible and measurable to bring a conversation forward and serve purpose. Bob has to run the next session, Alice will review the proposal or your nan will bake you a cake (after she signs that NDA). Even if your boss should do something, put his/her name on it and pray it doesn’t come up in your performance review.
When you organise the meeting, especially one that has clear actions to take, it’s easy just to assign all of them to the host and delegate at a later time. But why is that? Accountability is almost the number one rule for success in teams. If you have the senior or manager doing all of them, that’s not a team, it’s just poor delegation.
Some people feel they don’t need to take on actions or don’t believe it suits their job role. Unfortunately the sad truth is where it limits their growth and development. A fair spread of action takers is what makes us feel more on an even playing field, it balances workloads and makes us more collaborative.
Take that next meeting action and make sure it’s a clear one!
5. Outcomes
Finally once the meeting is finished and you walk away from the room. You’ll have some time to reflect on how that meeting went. How did it go? Did you get what you wanted? Did the host get what they wanted? Would you do anything differently?
Fortunately retrospectives are common in software teams and it surprises me how many teams inside and outside of software don’t do them! Reflecting on the outcomes of meetings are important, regardless if you do them in your own head or in a room with the team. It’s highly recommended you reflect on them with the team rather than yourself, because you’ll get a collective view of feedback opposed to just yourself thinking that if they didn’t see you wearing no trousers on camera 📸.
There’s nothing more empowering than collectively agreeing that something sucks or needs improving. Sharing our pain and workload is what makes teams succeed, being honest and respecting everyone’s views in the process.
If a book tells you that you’ll succeed having a weekly meeting at 8:15am on a Monday because a billionaire did it, would you do it? You’d question to the reasoning for it and find ways to improve it. You might be sucked into that meeting every week and not necessarily the organiser. Again, question the outcome if you don’t think it serves purpose.
Have a good look at your calendar and really question the Outcome of each meeting.
Let’s Summarise
- The Agenda
- Get Everyone to Contribute
- Try to Facilitate
- Accountability
- Outcomes
So when you walk into your next meeting, try to identify any improvements it could benefit from. How you structure and run a meeting is usually the make-or-break of coming to a solution. If you hone your meeting skills in preparation for them, you’ll save more time longer-term, requiring less mindless rambling for more important activities like really questioning your life to why your nan was caught on camera while you weren’t wearing any trousers.
Thanks for reading!
