Help Your People Escape Meeting Hell
I spend half my days in meeting about how to get more work done (instead of working)
Meetings. Meetings. Meetings.
The end of another week. I didn’t get the design finished like I had wanted to this week. It just seems like there is so much to do, and so little time!
This has been happening a lot lately. What is going on here? Why am I not getting things done?
I decide to review what I did this week….drawing a blank….wait, I did a little programming on one project Tuesday…and I got a few hours into the design I was supposed to finish. What else? Time to review the email and calendar to jog my memory.
So, I’m a developer, right? Why then, did I spend 60% of my week in meetings?
Sound familiar?
Hopefully the 60% was an exaggeration. This little story illustrates the pain many project team members feel. As a project manager, it is your job to direct work activities. One of your responsibilities should be to ensure your team spends exactly as much time as necessary in meetings….no more, no less. They’ve got work to do!
So, project managers. How can we help? Here are some thoughts:
- Only schedule a meeting when you have a focused agenda
- Only invite exactly who needs to be there
- 15 to 30 minutes is optimal. Don’t schedule hour-long meetings unless you have a darn good reason
- When others invite you to a meeting require an agenda
- Don’t go to others’ meetings unless there is an agenda or regular structure
- When in a meeting stick to the point and focus on the goals only…do not try to solve problems in a status meeting, and don’t let the conversation get off topic (whether it’s your meeting or not!)
- Use a war room approach, and avoid bad multi-tasking
Developers everywhere are in terrible pain
- Requirements Management Please!
- Help Your People Escape Meeting Hell
- Project Change Management
Oct 2nd, 2008 at 9:36 pm
Agendas are huge. I have written out formal agendas for meetings but lately I have started throwing out a one sentence or bullet summary “Meeting Objective(s)” in my meeting invites because I have found that most people choose not to open an attached Word document.
The process really helps me focus on what needs to be accomplished during that time. So when the meeting rolls around, I just make sure that we hit all of the objectives, document risks, actions, issues, and decisions, and move forward.
Reply
Oct 3rd, 2008 at 7:55 am
Yep, a meeting without an agenda is like a project without a plan. I agree that a bulleted list is most effective, embedded within the email or calendar notice. Avoid attachments unless they are existing artifacts that will be discussed in the meeting. A project status review would contain the report to be reviewed, etc.
I really enjoy the war room approach cited in the post for status updates with the team, because the agenda consists of 3 questions, answered by each team member. (you don’t even have to ask the questions after a few days, you just do a round-robin.)
1. What did you work on yesterday (last week)?
2. What will you work on today (this week)?
3. What obstacles or risks do you see? (and how can the PM help shield you from them?)
Josh
Reply
Jul 22nd, 2009 at 3:48 am
Josh, how about having an end of meeting review – 3 minutes max? The review should look at how effective the meeting was i.e. what outcomes will/have arisen….
Treat it like a project.
Ron Rosenhead
http://www.ronrosenhead.co.uk
Reply
Josh Nankivel Reply:
July 22nd, 2009 at 5:05 am
Ron, that sounds like an absolutely brilliant idea.
Come to think of it, that happens in some of my meetings, but definitely not all of them. I’ll have to try and make that a formal part of my agendas…
Reply
Nov 16th, 2009 at 3:38 am
That’s how it should work in ideal world. The problem is in many organizations it’s hard to enforce people to prepare and send agenda before the meeting and developers rarely have position strong enough to change it.
On the other hand while there are many places where you have to accept whatever is the old custom in the company, you should be able to change a lot when it comes to team meetings. Team meetings are basically under control of a team so not following above rules, especially the one about having darn good reason, is just making your and your colleagues’ life more miserable.
Reply
Glen B. Alleman Reply:
November 16th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Pawel,
This is a pure “lack of leadership” issues. Missing leadership is a common source of project difficulties and possible failures.
Until the organization can face up to this missing leadership, it is unlikely improvement will be made on other topics as well.
Reply