Rules for Productive meetings

There are numerous resources, both in print and on the net, that express ways of making meetings less onerous and more productive. Here are mine.

• Work out how many man-hours (meeting length times the number of attendees) will be consumed during the meeting. If that number exceeds the potential benefits of the meeting itself, the meeting isn't worth it.
• How do most people treat the reminders that Outlook pops up? Most click 'Snooze' until the time the meeting starts, then leave their desks. The intention is to give yourself enough time to get to the meeting on time. Make sure you and your attendees use the tool for what it was intended and be there on time. Always start the meeting promptly, and don't pander to those who arrive late by going back over what has already been stated.
• When inviting someone who has a really busy calendar with back-to-back meetings, try starting your meeting at ten minutes past the hour, giving him/her time to transition between meetings.
• AOB. This can generate sufficient unplanned conversation to push the meeting over it's scheduled finish time. Don't bother with this on the agenda, it has little purpose. If people bring up items not on the agenda, put them in a 'parking lot' instead. Record these items and discuss them 'offline' or add them to the agenda for the next meeting.
• You can persuade people to come to a lunchtime meeting by providing lunch. If your meeting is important enough, arrange for sandwiches and fruit to be brought in to the meeting room at an appropriate point.
  

Feel free to add your own 'rules' in the comments.

Meetings - last one in

Further to my last post on punctuality at meetings, I thought I'd let you know about something I am trialling in this team.

The weekly team meetings we have are not project-related, but programme. They are attended by the Programme Manager (my direct boss), three other PMs who report to him, plus a couple of senior techies.

Every meeting starts late! Every week, someone is either talking on the phone or MIA when the meeting is due to start. Last week, I suggested that the last person to arrive buy some nibbles (biscuits, donuts, cake, whatever) for the following week's meeting. The boss loved the idea (despite the fact that he's no less guilty than anyone else) and offered to buy the first round.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Yesterday, with one of our PMs off ill, we were supposed to have a shorter meeting, with a longer resourcing discussion today. Again we started late (and NH will be getting in the nibbles next week), but the meeting still lasted 90 minutes! The majority of the time was taken up by arguing over what to do about a perceived slide in software quality control. That will be the subject of a later post, but my point is that the boss, who is supposed to be chairing and therefore controlling the meeting, was getting embroiled in heated discussions that actually were best handled in a separate workshop in a more structured manner.

I think I should give him some feedack, so I will be brushing up on how best to do that here and suggesting that he listen to this.

Fashionably late

One of my pet peeves is punctuality. I am almost never late for meetings, and consider it downright rude to keep people waiting. I had cause to consider this twice yesterday.

The first was a meeting scheduled for 1:30, at which I sat down - along with one other attendee - at 1:29 and waited for the rest to arrive. We waited four minutes, which is not bad considering. I have waited longer before. At a company I used to work for, a senior techie, who was always very busy, was such a stickler for punctuality that if the chairman had not arrived within 5 minutes of the scheduled start, he would get up and leave the meeting. Gotta love it.

The second occasion I had to consider the subject of punctuality yesterday was later in the afternoon. A social event had been arranged at a local bar for 5:30. Being an early bird, and not exactly overloaded with work at the moment, I left the office at 5:20 and get there at 5:30 almost exactly.

There were three people in the bar, none of whom I recognised. After a short wait, I realised that most people had either gone home earlier, or would be arriving later. As I couldn't be bothered to drink alone waiting for someone to talk to, I left.

There are undoubtedly times when fashionably late is the ideal time to arrive.