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Read This Before Our Next Meeting

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Read This Before Our Next Meeting

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Highlights & Notes

A tragedy of the commons—everyone feels a benefit from calling a meeting, but few of us benefit from attending.

We need meetings to ensure that intelligent decisions are made and to confirm that our teams are interacting effectively on complex projects.

We’re now addicted to meetings that insulate us from the work we ought to be doing.

When’s the last time any one of us made a game-changing decision that made our hearts race? I can’t recall. Can you?

Instead of a meeting structure that demands that we make and defend strong decisions, the broken meeting system we’ve adopted enables us to pass off responsibility too easily.

What are we so afraid of? If we make the wrong decision, so be it. Will we die? Probably not. We’ll recover, stronger, but to make no decision is to guarantee our eventual demise.

Regularly interrupting the day to bring our best minds together to focus on the urgent makes it impossible for these people to spend their focused energy on what’s actually important.

The most talented among us know that they best serve the organization by making things. We add value only by producing work that contributes directly toward our goals and by initiating amazing work that wasn’t even asked of us. Instead, we’re pulled into meetings.

Convenience meetings: Meetings called because it’s difficult to capture everything we want to say effectively in writing, quickly. These meetings rarely add any more value than a memo would have. In fact, they’re worse because in addition to wasting time, they rely on nonverbal communication that’s hard to refer to later on. Formality meetings: Meetings called by managers who think it’s their job to hold them. It doesn’t matter whether these meetings are designed to give off the appearance of control and productivity, or whether they’re a way for managers to subtly exert their status; in either case, these meetings are wasteful. Even if having convening members get together to share advice or status reports results in some incremental benefit, it pales in comparison to the cost of the interruption. Social meetings: Meetings for the purpose of connection. We sometimes call social meetings without even realizing it. I’m guilty of this myself. Unfortunately, social meetings quickly turn circular and expand to fit the time. You might want to slow down and chat, but perhaps not everyone in the room has the same goals (or time) that you do.

Like all human beings, we’re terrified of making decisions. In the face of pressing, difficult decisions, we stall. Meetings are a socially acceptable and readily available way of doing so.

The Modern Meeting is a special instrument, a sacred tool that exists for only one reason: to support decisions.

we must structure the Modern Meeting so that bold decisions happen often and quickly, and those decisions are converted into movement that leads our organization forward—fearlessly. The Modern Meeting optimizes for the decision.

Modern Meetings can’t exist without a decision to support. Not a question to discuss—a decision.

Sure, some decisions will fail. But movement even occasionally in the wrong direction is far better than standing still. The benefits that quick decisions bring are boundless. Sometimes it just takes the conviction, the competence, and the guts to make them.

Conflicting opinions spur debate that can open the door to intelligent decisions. The Modern Meeting welcomes conflict. After a preliminary decision is made, if there are differing opinions or serious objections, the Modern Meeting gets them all out on the table to be considered.

Conflict is useless unless you, the decision maker, come to the table with an open mind. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be confident in your decision, nor should you easily compromise, but you should be moveable. Otherwise, don’t call a meeting. Make the decision, send a memo, and be done with it.

Other times, the scenarios are tricky, the steps are vague. It’s worth having a Modern Meeting to engage in collaborative problem solving. Getting smart people in a room to figure out how to support a plan or launch a product makes sense.

Deadlines are procrastination’s worst enemy.

Strong deadlines force parties to resolve the hard decisions necessary for progress.

More time leads to more doubt. More doubt leads to more anxiety. More anxiety makes the decision fall apart.

When we try to reach an agreement in our meetings, the number of actual agreements that need to take place rises exponentially as more people are added to the group.

A useful agenda requires thought and hard choices—it’s not just a few bullet points.

If someone comes unprepared, cancel the meeting or hold it without him. In exchange for your preparation, we promise you an intense, very short meeting where something actually gets done.

All we need to know is the decision and the resulting action plan.

A scribe should record and restate the action items to the group to gain agreement that they haven’t been misinterpreted. If we’re not clear, it impedes the very coordination that the meeting was called to create. After the meeting, the leader should make sure participants are doing what they agreed to do, when they agreed to do it. Hold them accountable. If you don’t, who will? Let’s put pressure on the action owners to complete their tasks and pull the meeting full circle. The Modern Meeting is compulsively concerned with justifying its existence. Completed action plans show the meeting participants that the time they spent in the conference room wasn’t in vain. The meeting worked.

Culture change occurs when a transformational idea spreads to enough people that a massive paradigm shift occurs.

How should I deal with diversions as they arise in our meeting? Ruthlessly. As leader, don’t let diversions distract the group from the core purpose of the meeting. We don’t have any time for grandstanding, blame, or verbal wandering. It’s your job to politely shut down those who veer off course.

Can you show me a sample agenda? You can find one at: ModernMeetingStandard.com

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