imapMyTeam Blog

Pencil and Paper Meetings

Peter Drucker once said “one either meets or one works. One cannot do both at the same time.”

As is true with all of you Tuesday Tip readers, I’m in a lot of meetings. I was thinking about the time commitment to prepare and run a meeting and I have recently seen some scary statistics about what people are doing (or not doing) in meetings.

My number one suggestion for making meetings more efficient would be to ban electronic devices of any kind. If you are as old as me you remember when people came to meetings just with a pad and pencil – that didn’t necessarily mean everyone was intently focused on the meeting, but they did not have external distractions of looking at a smartphone every 30 seconds.

The shear focus of everyone discussing/interacting and deciding what to do without the urge (or is it addiction) to read/send texts/emails etc. will speed up meetings in and of itself.

Another suggestion is one I learned a long time ago – do not reward tardiness by reviewing what has happened for those that are late. It is inconsiderate to those that make it on time. People that are on time are creating contractual trust with the group or team by doing what they said they would; be on time. In line with this suggestion it is also good to end on time. You have a better chance of it when you ban the electronic devices and stop wasting time by reviewing things for the tardy.

If you participate in any regularly scheduled standing meeting make sure the purpose has not drifted from being laser focused on point to something other than the prime purpose or objective. Also make sure that the right people are in the room so you haven’t fallen prey to participant creep.

To be you’re most effective in a meeting, you should periodically review your Manage The Meeting report in imapMyTeam®.

People will never complain about a well run meeting and when you make that your goal you will also go a long way to having enthusiastic participants.