Current situation

How often do you find that by 11am you’re running late and that by 3pm, you’ve either been forced to dump a meeting to reset your day or are 100 emails behind because you’ve gone straight from one appointment to another all day long? Either way, you’re leaving someone (or many people) in the lurch and it is a stressful and unsatisfying existence.

Lessons of life
There’s another group of people who are scheduled in back-to-back sessions all day long, every day of the week. I speak of course of students. All the way through school we’re taught in 45 or 50-minute blocks, a schedule that lets us get to our next class on time. The buildings even have bells to remind the person running the meeting or class to end on time.

Why is it, then, that when we graduate, they take away our bells, replace them with an irritating “doink” sound signalling “15 minutes until your next meeting” and assume we can now teleport to the location?

What could cause such madness? In two words: Microsoft Outlook! By default, Outlook sets up meetings that are 30, 60, 90 or 120 minutes long. There’s no room for “travel time” ,a few minutes to compose yourself and answer a couple of emails, or even a moment in the “little business persons’ room.” All other calendar possibilities followed the same idea!

Wonder who came up with a system like that? Programmers who hate us?

Waste Research shows that up to 43% (Timebridge Survey) of the meeting time can be saved. That calls indeed for LEAN initiatives. Following the Wall Street Journal we are spending an average of 18 hours in meetings. If 43 % is really waste… we can indeed become much more efficient.

We are also waiting hours a week. As our outlook invitation starts at 11AM exact, we already accept a delay of up to 15 minutes. We know our colleagues often come out of a previous meeting.

Meetings follow themselves up every hour and take an hour without transition time. The meeting stopped at exact 11AM and it is expected to miraculously teleport to the next meeting. (Beam me up Scotty)

 Some other annoyances…

• Too many meetings
• No agenda’s, meetings are not structured and are not well lead
• Meetings go over time and only part of the agenda gets discussed
• People with a preference for loud open discussions have an advantage over people that are thinkers. Information gets lost.
• It’s not easy to take decisions in these meetings
• Too much preparation time needed and some people are not prepared at all

Proposal for a new meeting structure 

Not all meetings should be created equally. We can make our meetings better by choosing the right format. For instance, 67% of people reported in a Clarizen/Harris Interactive survey that they're spending up to four hours a week getting ready for their next status update meeting. Instead of long and formal meetings to stay up to date on projects, institute more short, frequent, and informal "standup" meetings.

As long as Scotty cannot teleport us instaneously to the next meeting, we have to foresee transition times between meetings.

Informal Standup Meetings

Sitting kills you. Really! We are not made for it. Furthermore, research showed that if we do our meetings while standing up, we keep them shorter!

Duration of Standup meetings

• Daily stand up meeting : 15 minutes
• Weekly Stand-up meeting: 30 minutes

Start

To Be Discussed within the team!

Agenda

No agenda needed as the agenda is mostly the same

• What happened last day/week?
• What will we do next day/week?
• Who has problems? Can we help you out?

Preparation

Very limited preparation needed. Sometimes no extra preparation is needed as we assume you know what you are doing.
 
Formal meetings

Duration and start of formal meetings

A one-hour meeting should not take longer than 45 minutes. This gives the attendees the time to take a quick break between two meetings.

This break can be used to check a couple of emails, grab a coffee or do a sanitary stop without impacting the start of the next meeting.

• Book the meeting to start at 10:00.
• Start the meeting at 10:05
• Adjourn at 10:50

Two hour meetings should be very rare. If needed, the same principle counts.

• Book the meeting to start at 10:00.
• Start the meeting at 10:05
• Adjourn at 11:50 (earlier is better)

Agenda

When you do not include a short agenda in your meeting request you cannot expect that people will prepare.
 
Every topic or speaker receives an certain time. When this time is over, the next point has to be started.

Preparation

Proper preparation is needed. Ask the participants what you want them to prepare.

Time Keeping

A timekeeper should be assigned to keep track of the time.

General meeting tips

Don't Meet
Avoid a meeting if the same information could be covered in a memo, e-mail or brief report.

Cut duration
A good idea is to divide the current length of your meeting by 2! An hour meeting becomes a 30 minutes meeting.

Cull the attendee list
If attendees do not have actions or direct oversight they don’t need to attend the meeting. The bigger the meeting the more likely the time-suck. Send meeting notes to those who need to know about the meeting but don’t need to be there.

Set Objectives for the Meeting.
Before planning the agenda, determine the objective of the meeting. The more concrete your objectives, the more focused your agenda will be.

Provide an Agenda Beforehand.
Your agenda needs to include a one-sentence description of the meeting objectives, a list of the topics to be covered and a list stating who will address each topic for how long. Follow the agenda closely during the meeting.

Assign Meeting Preparation.
Give all participants something to prepare for the meeting, and that meeting will take on a new significance to each group member.

Assign Action Items.
Don't finish any discussion in the meeting without deciding how to act on it.

Stay tuned in
Phones off, laptops closed (except for the note-taker).

Manage the clock
Call out, reign-in or punish the meeting jokesters, complainers and timewasters. Make sure you’re not allowing the first agenda item to consume the entire meeting.

Give ownership
Assign owners to all bullets or action items. Make sure to summarize the actions at the end of the meeting.

Examine Your Meeting Process.
Last but not least. Don't leave the meeting without assessing what took place and making a plan to improve the next meeting. This is not always possible, but do it as often as possible.