How many dirty meetings have you attended? Meetings that shouldn’t have been meetings at all? Meetings need to have a certain cleanliness, a certain level of hygiene and etiquette to them in order to be useful.
Agenda
Meetings need to have a clear agenda. What is the purpose of this meeting? Who is responsible for each part? What is the anticipated outcome? Meetings that do not have clearly defined agendas should be declined. The agenda gives the meeting direction, and keeps the meeting focused. Meetings without agendas meander, do not achieve the that which the organizer intended to achieve, and are simply a waste of everybody’s time.
Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.
Seneca
Quite often, when sitting down to write out an agenda, you will find that the meeting doesn’t really need to happen. This could just be an email, or a quick discussion with that guy.
Prepare
Prepare for the meeting. If this means a slide-show, have that prepared and ready to go. Make sure you show up early enough to get everything set up. Even go to the room before-hand to make sure you have the right connections and dongles, and that you know how to get the TV/projector to connect to your laptop. Need to draw? Make sure you have the equipment for that, whether that is a white-board, paper, touch-screen, etc. If there are remote people joining your meeting, how will they see what you are presenting?
Choose your meeting space carefully. If you need a whiteboard to draw on, don’t choose a room that does not have a whiteboard, or plan to bring your own in. Utilize the room to its potential. If it has a projector, and you are showing something on your computer, plug into the projector; don’t rely on everybody bringing their computer. Choose a room big enough for everybody. If you have remote folks joining, make sure the room has good Wi-fi and good sound quality.
Start On Time
How many meetings have you been to where everybody is sitting around, looking at their phones or casually chatting, 2 minutes after the supposed start time, and the organizer says “Let’s just wait a few more minutes for everybody to join”? How disrespectful. If this is a really small meeting, say 2-4 people, this is probably necessary, and somebody probably should be walking around the building rounding up the stragglers. In a meeting larger than that, it is simply disrespectful to every body else’s time. If the meeting is recorded, tell the latecomers to catch the recording. If they need to be caught up, do this after the fact, so you are only taking time from a couple of people, rather than the entire room.
With a well defined agenda, any catch-up needed should be minimal. Late-comers will already have a general idea of what is going on.
Focus
How many people show up to meetings with their laptops? With their phones? Do they pay attention? Are they distracted? This is again disrespectful. If you are going to be in a meeting, be there. Don’t just plop your butt in a seat and then go off into la-la land, email land, or “I have to get this piece of code done by 3 today” land. If those things are more important than the meeting, stay at your desk and work on them. If the meeting is more important, leave those things at your desk and be at the meeting. Pen and paper are much more effective for taking notes than your computer anyway. If you want the notes to be digital, transcribe them later. You’ll find this is much more effective than taking your distraction-box into a meeting and trying to use it for taking notes.
End On Time
Scheduled time is up? End the meeting. Still have more to discuss? Schedule another meeting. Send a follow-up email. Finished the items on your agenda? End the meeting.
Schedule your meeting so that it ends with enough time for your attendees to get to their next meeting. Don’t schedule with the Microsoft default. “30 minute” meetings should only be 25 minutes. “1 hour” meetings should only be 50 minutes. This allows the attendees to get to their next meetings on time. This allows for a small recharge time. The organizer that is using this room next also needs time to set up for their own meeting.