Of course, not all meetings are a waste of time. If done right, a meeting can solve problems or convey information without an endless Slack thread. The key is preparation, and asking yourself the right questions. Before you get your team together for another pointless meeting, ask the following questions to ensure that it’ll be the most productive use of everyone’s time.
11 comments:
This article was only mildly helpful. I feel like a lot of the points this article brought up should be things a manager is automatically thinking about. Most of these questions are things to improve a meeting, but should instead be considered a baseline if you’re even having a meeting. I know in our classes here they teach a lot of these techniques as something inherent to the process. And our footprint is sort of set up to force us to think about these things. The one piece of advice in this article I do find helpful is the one about making the meeting interesting. I will argue that if meetings are overly boring to someone, they probably didn’t need to be at that meeting. But for more general boredom something a little weird might do just the trick. I like the idea of starting meetings at weird times, but I’m not sure that will work out here at CMU.
I found this article on how to conduct meetings to be very clarifying on how to think about meetings in general. Some of the question you should ask are things that in the theatre world we already do, so it was great to hear the reasons why we already to the things we do. On the other hand there were a few helpful tips that i had not considered before. One that stood out to me was making each meeting rememberable. The example they used was to make the meeting time at 8:48am, just so it was different and was easier to remember. I definitely think they are some of these questions i would want to ask if i was hosting a company meeting. Overall this article is not very relatable to my situation but possibly in the future it will come in handy.
The first two questions seem pretty obvious. You shouldn’t have a meeting that you don’t need to have, and you should go into any meeting you’re planning on running with a goal. If there is no goal, what is the point of the meeting? And if there is no point, the answer to “should you have this meeting?” is probably “no.” I was a bit surprised by the “How can I make this meeting memorable” question because that makes me imagine something spectacular, but after reading the explanation, I think it is a good point, though I’d say “interesting” or “engaging” rather than “memorable”. It reminds me of morning meetings we had where I worked this summer. Our production manager always concluded the meeting with a pun, and I think people’s curiosity about the pun of the day and reaction to it made the meetings more lively. I definitely agree with questions 4 and 5, having everyone be prepared makes the meeting more efficient, and having people who don’t need to be at a meeting there is a waste of everyone’s time. Not only is it a clear waste of the time of the people who don’t have to be at the meeting, having those people there could also slow down the meeting as a whole if they have questions or comments that aren’t necessary to the overall point. I like the idea of the two pizza rule, because very large meetings are almost inevitably too many people to accomplish anything, though that does depend on the meeting format (ex: a town hall type meeting is different since many of the participants are primarily audience). I could comment on each question in the article, but overall I found them all valuable, and I think the collectively are a good way of making sure a meeting accomplishes what you need it to accomplish, allows for people to do the necessary work moving forward, and streamlines the process as a whole while using everyone’s time efficiently.
Yes, yes, yes. I agree with almost all of this (#3 seems less useful.) As a production manager who spends a pretty significant amount of my time scheduling and facilitating meetings, I’ve learned that 1) preparation is deeply important (make sure you and everyone else involved is ready and has a heads up about agenda items,) 2) respect people’s time and don’t ask anyone to be there that doesn’t need to be and 3) if you don’t need it, don’t have it!
It’s all about using your and other people’s time well. And that doesn’t just extend to whether you should hold the meeting, but also to how you run it. The best meetings are well-managed ones. Meeting chairs should know when to give topics the time they need, but also understand when a topic has been played out (or needs further outside discussion) and help the room move along. After experiencing CMU’s production meeting model, sitting through inefficient, rambling meetings elsewhere is such a chore.
Hahaha, ok, my bad. When I first clicked on this article I thought that these 9 questions were to be presented aloud at the beginning of the meeting. However, I don't think the professionals I'm meeting with would like it if I started the meeting with "Do I really need to hold this meeting?" Yeah, I don't think that would instill a lot of confidence in my peers if I'm questioning the legitimacy of my own meeting...On a more serious note, I do agree with many of these article's points. I haven't suffered many pointless meeting, but that will probably change as soon as I enter the professional world. Theatre requires so much communication between departments, and often times information can be lost in huge email chains...But oftentimes as well, a five minute meeting that only addresses two department's questions are pointless. Either way, I do agree with this article and will probably keep these questions in mind at my next meeting.
I have found it to be my experience that most times when people are scheduling meetings, they don’t often think about all the little things that Are needed to get it done efficiently. There are many times that I just wish people would understand the implications of the use of other people’s time rather than the dull meetings that could only be an email. I think this is an excellent list of items that should always be considered when planning a meeting. Some of these things are much more impactful such as what do people need to know ahead of the meeting and what is the end goal of the conference. Having an agenda also helps significantly to shape the meeting and guide discussions throughout the meeting. Agendas are often forgotten or left off until the end. This can cause the meeting to get away in many miscommunications to happen. Also if someone does not include in the meeting this again can create many more issues.
I feel like I have been to every kind of meeting on the useful-useless spectrum and I’m only 21 years old and have only worked in real life companies for three years. I have been in meetings where I have not needed to speak a single word, no one brought up any issues that remotely concerned me, and these issues would have been just as weighted if I had read the notes in an email as opposed to being in the room. I like these questions and think that everyone needs to start laying out their game plan instead of jumping to the conclusion of “oh, let’s just have a meeting about this, that way everything will come to light and we’ll all be fine”. No. I don’t like that mentality because you’re not thinking through the topic yourself and therefore calling any and everyone that could be affected by the issue, whether it actually affects them or not.
After having been at CMU fair a year, this summer I was appalled at the wast of time and in-efficiency that many of our meetings were at the theatre I was working at. I've had my share of bad meetings throughout my life but at CMU have learned many of these principles and thought that they were just second nature. However this is not the case at all. You'd think that as an industry that thrives off of many many meetings and t am collaboration that we'd have maybe figured out how to do this a little better. The points hat I thought were then,oust important were to look at what athe attendees need to know before coming into a meeting so that they can have done their part and be prepared and how can we turn the meeting agenda into action items. The second is especially important as it is what makes the meeting Clearly not be a waste of time. Instead of just throwing ideas around we are creating plans and ways to move these discussions forward. This also allows for people to leave feeling like it was a worthwhile meeting for them to attend.
This is a really important article for people to read when they are just beginning to enter the professional world where meetings are no longer disorganized, high school, club meetings, but actual conversations that are necessary and time-sensitive to any project being launched. Disorganized meetings are one of the biggest kinds of procrastination I’ve found because they all end in mistakes and a lack of clarity, that must later be rectified with another hour long meeting. It is a sign of a good organization to be involved with when the leadership enters the space with an agenda to be addressed and a schedule for the time ahead. On a primary level, it is simply about respecting the time of the people you are working with. Calling people to unnecessary gatherings is a waste of their time and eliminates efficiency. Ensuring that everyone who must be there walks into the space prepared with any materials or information they must have ready for the group and the individuals collaborating is key.
In this day and age where we are constantly stimulated and consumed by electronic communication in the workplace, time has become an extremely valuable resource. Ensuring our efficiency and professionalism in a meeting can save you and your colleagues countless amounts of time and aggravation. This article does a very nice job of forcing you to compartmentalize your meetings with a specific goal and agenda to ensure that meetings do not become vague and ultimately a useless waste of time. Such actions will improve workplace efficiency, but also increase the probability that the message and action items outlined in the meeting will actually be properly conveyed and completed. Shaving 15 minutes off of a meeting, and making the meeting more impactful are also likely to improve corporate culture and make for happier employees and co-workers.
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