The Path To Improving In-Person and Virtual Meetings
Article by Herb Rubenstein
Introduction
On the last page of Dan Kahneman’s great book Thinking Fast and Slow, which summarizes a lifetime of his great work, he makes an unusual plea. He says he hopes his work contributes to humanity, and, at least, helps makes meetings more efficient and effective. Since I teach meeting strategy and effectiveness at the Global Energy Management Program of the University of Colorado Denver, I have decided to write this article about how to improve meetings and dedicated my work in this regard to Dan Kahneman.
There are many sources of good information to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of meetings. (See: Patrick Sangahan’s work at: https://www.academicimpressions.com/news/10-tips-improve-your-meetings and Marissa Levin’s work at: https://www.inc.com/marissa-levin/3-foolproof-methods-for-making-every-meeting-successful.html)
At a conference in Washington, DC regarding energy efficient buildings, I heard a high level of employee from the Gerald Hines corporation discuss how Gerald Hines insures that meetings with him are effective. The beauty of the Gerald Hines approach is that it is what Mr. Hines does consistently after the meeting, that insures the success of his meetings with his employees.
Mistakes of The Typical Meeting Today
There are five grave mistakes made in many meetings today. They are:
1. No agenda
2. No set goals for the meeting
3. Too much time in the meeting spent on people giving reports that could and should have been given in writing before the meeting so conscientious people could read and absorb the report before the meeting.
4. No thoughtful assessment of the minimum amount of time necessary for the meeting thus leading to meetings that last too long.
5. Too little follow up regarding the meeting. Specifically, not creating an agreed upon set of “action items” and allocating responsibility for each action item, date to be completed, budget allocated for the item in terms of time and/or money, and developing the approach to successfully achieving a successful execution of each action item.
What Is Your Meeting Strategy?
If you sit in meetings often, you have a meeting strategy whether you are aware of it or not. There are two questions that will help you realize what your “meeting strategy” is and will reveal ways you can improve your “meeting strategy.”
1. How long is you typical meeting? (I call this your default time length for meetings).
Typically, the default length of time for meetings is one hour. Such was the case in our law firm in the 1980’s and early 1990’s until I stated that our new “default length of time” for a meeting would be 30 minutes. We told all of our clients about this change and told them we would, of course, meet with them for as long as necessary to do our work with them, but instead of setting aside one hour for every meeting, unless we agreed the need was for a longer meeting, we would set aside only thirty minutes for every meeting.
The results of setting thirty minutes as the default length of meetings were astonishing. First, clients instantly became better at showing up on time. Second, we much more quickly jumped into the agenda for the meeting. Third, we got much more accomplished in our meetings in a shorter period of time. Fourth, our clients were thrilled at the time and legal fees saved by our shortening the length of the time of our meetings. Fifth, our law firm got a lot of new business from clients looking for lawyers who were both efficient and effective in their meeting strategy.
2. How much value is created or how effective is a typical meeting in each ten minute period during the meeting? To help figure this out, please perform the following exercise. You can do this this exercise alone in three minutes or or with a group of your colleagues in every organization where you work or volunteer in less than 10 minutes, including sharing each person’s graph and the resulting discussion.
Create a graph with the Y axis (the vertical one on the left side of the graph) showing the numbers 0 at the bottom (the axis) and 10 at the top. This will represent quality of the meeting at certain time intervals of the meeting. On the X axis (the horizontal one) put time in 10 minute segments from 0 (at the origin of the graph) to 10, your first mark on the X axis, from 10 to 20 minutes, where you will make the mark below at the 20 minute location, etc.. So, if your default value is one hour, put in 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 as your time increments.
Then, think about your average or typical meeting. Think about how the level of “value being created,” or quality (effectiveness) of the meeting seems to vary over the allotted time slots (10 minute increments) of your typical meeting. While there are trends of value created over time in a meeting, at this point, don’t think about the trends. Just put a dot in the graph that represents the average “value created” or “effectiveness” of the meeting, for every 10 minute increment at the next point above the X axis representing the end point of that 10 minute increment. Then connect the dots. Think of the value created during each 10 minute increment as “independent” of the previous 10 minute segment value so you are literally thinking, What is the amount of value typically created during the first 10 minutes of most meetings I attend, the second 10 minute period, the third 10 minute period, etc.? That is the question you are asking yourself.
This exercise, which I do every semester with my students, mid-career executives in the energy sector at our graduate school of business, yields surprisingly similar results among most of the students. For the first 10 minute segment, the value created in the meeting is usually rated in the 4-6 range. During the second 10 minute segment, recorded at the 20 minute mark, it generally goes up to 6-8. For the third 10 minute segment, noted at the 30 minute mark, my students generally give the value created during the meeting the highest score, in the 6-10 range. At the 40 minute mark, my students usually give the quality of the value created during the 30-40 minute segment a lower score -in the 4-6 range. For the 40 – 50 minute segment, noted at the 50 minute mark on the X axis, my students give an even lower rating, in the 3-4 range.
For the last 10 minute segment, from 50 to 60 minutes or for a 30 minute meeting, the 20 – 30 minute segment, something amazing happens. For some of my mid-career, average age thirty-seven, energy executives receiving their Master of Science in Energy Management, there is a spike in value for that segment of the meeting to 7, 8 or even 10. For other students, the majority of them, the value of the final segment of the meeting either stays low in the 3-4 range or continues its downward spiral to near 0. Some of my students even put the value for the last segment of a meeting in the negative range, with the line connecting the dots going below the X axis.
The last 10 minute segment, with its split in how people perceive value being created during a meeting is highly instructive. Many of my students have “checked out” of their one hour company meetings by minute 40 or 45 or certainly minute 50 and find that little or no value is created after that time period has elapsed. Other students, even those who show a declining amount of value being created in the meetings from the 30 minute mark on, show a very high level of value usually being created in the last 10 minutes of a meeting. They say that this is the time for a summary of action items, that someone usually says something very valuable toward the end of a meeting, and they come back to “high alert” for the last few minutes of every meeting to be sure not to miss this high value section of the meeting.
At first blush, this chart merely shows you the value of meetings where you attend. I argue, that this chart actually shows you your basic meeting strategy since this chart is not only a historical analysis of your meetings over time, it represents a self-fulfilling prophecy.
After we do this “meeting strategy” exercise in my class, often our mid-career executives taking the course called “Strategic Management,” cut the time of their meetings from sixty minutes to thirty minutes, (or 45 minutes) saving a lot of time and money for their companies. I also tell them during the discussion of the graphs that each student creates and shares with the class, that many companies, including the bank Capital One, sets its default meeting time length to thirty minutes.
I always ask my students who cut the length of the meetings they arrange in their companies, government agencies, or nonprofit organizations on a regular basis, if the overall effectiveness of the meetings is either improved or in the new shorter meetings? If the answer is “yes,” and they continue the shorter meetings, I strongly suggest that they calculate the savings to the organization where they work of shortening the meetings. I then recommend that they write up the savings in a memo, and use this memo to request, at their salary review, either salary increase or bonus equal to ten to fifteen percent of the savings to the organization from the shortened meetings (in addition to the increase or bonus they were going to ask for anyway.
In addition, I ask them to write a more general memo to their organizations explaining how shortening the meetings worked and suggesting to the rest of the organization as a “best practice” that “default meeting times” be cut wherever appropriate in the company.
The Gerald Hines Follow Up Approach For Effective Meetings
Mr. Hines is a “walk around” manager who often meets with his employees as he walks around the Hines’ corporate offices. I heard at a conference from Clayton Ulrich, an official of the Hines company, that often when Mr. Hines sees an employee as he walks around the offices, he stops and asks the employee these four brilliant questions. They are:
1. What did you get out of our last meeting?
2. How have you applied it?
3. What results has it brought to the company? (and I would add “to our client or customer”)
4. What are your next steps in this regard?
These four questions represent a great way to hold people accountable for what transpires in a meeting. I recommend that every manager adopt the Gerald Hines walking around approach using these questions to such a great extent that every employee is prepared at every moment to answer these questions when you approach them as their manager. When people can expect to be questioned about a prior meeting, they will view the meeting as important and follow up the meeting successfully.
Getting Everyone To Participate In A Meeting
How many times do you have one or two people dominate a meeting? How many times are there one or two people who just do not say a word even during a small meeting of four or five people?
Both situations are awful and hurt the potential value of a meeting significantly. Once I was in a meeting scheduled for one hour, with five other people, and we had an agenda handed out in advance, and we had our written goals set for the meeting (as discussed in the next and final section of this article) shared with all of the participants in advance.
After 45 minutes everyone had talked except one person. I turned to that person and asked if he had any questions or comments. He turned to a page in his notebook and read off six perfect questions the meeting should have been addressing from the beginning of the meeting. We discussed each question and extended the meeting for another hour.
After the meeting, I chastised myself for not calling on him sooner, but he never raised his hand or showed any interest in speaking. As the meeting chair it was my duty to bring out the ideas, thoughts, questions of every person attending the meeting in a timely manner (and in an efficient manner because meetings are not supposed to be “talkathons.”) I should have called on him at the 10 minute mark, and not the 45 minute mark.
The lesson learned is that every meeting chair must assume that each person is there to contribute to the success of the meeting and should be called upon early in the meeting to get them involved in the meeting. Often for introverts or shy people, or people new to the group attend the meeting, the longer a meeting goes on the harder it is for them to inject themselves into the verbal aspects of the meeting. As the leader of the meeting, your job is to bring out the best of every participant in the meeting.
In addition, it is essential to read people’s body language in a meeting. How to do this is beyond the scope of this article but doing this effectively will make you much more effective in meetings.
Establishing and Communicating Three Sets of Written Goals For Every Meeting
As I write this article, I am in the process of setting goals for a one-on-one meeting coming up in one week that will likely last two hours since it is a dinner meeting. Even when people set an agenda for a meeting, they often do not clearly write down in advance the actual goals for the meeting. This is a huge lost opportunity to make the meeting as effective as possible.
There are three different sets of goals that each person attending a meeting should write down before the meeting. It is my recommendation that the chair of the meeting or the person calling the meeting alert each person attending the meeting to write down these three sets of goals from their perspective before the meeting. It will be up to the group as to whether all attendees of the meeting share these written goals with the other attendees or the chair prior to the meeting, but I recommend that they share them with everyone who will be attending the meeting.
While this process may become unruly if the meeting size is large, at a minimum, the person or group setting the agenda for the meeting should share at least two set of goals with everyone in attendance. These goals are:
1. The goals for the group, company, or organization for this meeting
2. The goals for the Chair, which might be somewhat different, but aligned with the goals for the group. For example, a goal for the group or company meeting might be to create a plan to increase sales in six months, while the Chair might have a goal of promoting better relations between herself and the sales personnel. These are different, but aligned and consistent goals
The third set of goals each person in a meeting should set, and at least the Chair of the meeting should set, is “goals for others in the meeting.” This is an audacious task, setting goals for others in a meeting. However, this is exactly what world class trainers do in training sessions or teachers do in work class classrooms – they set goals for others. An example of this might be, using the example above, the goal of the group is to increase sales, the goal of the Chair of the meeting is promote better relations between the Chair and the sales personnel, and a third set of goals dealing with the individuals at the meeting might be to help the person struggling most with sales to gain at least one or two key insights that will help this person become a better sales person.
Conclusion
We waste not only a ton of company or organizational time in meetings, we also waste people’s precious time and lose out on opportunities that could be within our grasp only if we had more effective and more efficient meetings. I will admit that chit chat in meetings is important for relationship building and creating rapport. I will admit that some reports need to be given in a meeting.
However, I urge people and organizations to consider adopting a pre-meeting preparation process that states that all reports that one would normally give at a meeting, be presented in writing far enough in advance of the meeting to those attending the meeting so that people attending the meeting can read and digest the report in advance of the meeting, and respond to the report, in writing, also in advance of the meeting. When applied correctly, I call this “no report meeting.”
The concept of a “no report meeting”, sounds harsh. Some reports are often worked on right up to the last minute before the meeting either due to time pressures, procrastination, or new information is coming in continuously right up to the meeting, especially in quick paced environments. In those situations, and for some organizational cultures, the no report meeting might not be a possibility. But, consider setting the no report meeting as an “ideal to strive for” rather than a rule to comply with for every meeting.
As for chit chat, I have a suggestion. All those who want to talk at the beginning of a meeting about the weather, their children or grandchildren, their golf or tennis games, the food they have been cooking or eating lately, their local sports teams successes or failures, the newest social media outlet, or politics, or the state of the country, or do you know so and so….for those people, I recommend that you show up five to ten minutes early for the meeting and have those discussions prior to the beginning of the actual meeting. I know rapport is essential as it builds trust and great working relationships. If showing up early for meetings is not likely to happen in your organization, ok, put rapport building as the first agenda item and give it a five-minute slot.
Exxon, right after the Valdez tragedy, put safety as the number one agenda item on every meeting in the company, and I believe it remains the number one agenda item for every meeting at ExxonMobil today. So, if using meeting time to build trust and relationships through chit chat is an essential part of the culture of your organization, acknowledge it by making it the first agenda item in meetings.
I look forward to your comments, suggestions for improving meetings, and learning about any changes you make to managing and participating in meetings as a result of this article.