Shutterstock.com

“Two hours and seventeen minutes! What a waste of time.”

This was a message I received recently from a leader of an organization.

This one may be the most common: “I am at so many meetings I don’t have time to get my work done.”

Quint Studer.

When conducting sessions for organizations or conference presentations I will ask:

“How many people feel that they attend too many meetings?”

Most of the hands go up.

Then I ask: “Are there too many meetings, or are there too many bad meetings? … If there were better meetings, do you think there would be fewer meetings?”

Heads nod.

Leading or attending too many ineffective meetings is a symptom. The root cause? Meetings that are not well-run.

In my book, Creating a Culture of High Performance there is a list of skills every manager needs to be successful. That list includes the ability to facilitate meetings. I have found that most important things usually have standard operating procedures.

Is there a standard method for running meetings in your organization?

Are all leaders trained on meeting management?

Is there validation that the leaders run good meetings?

When I ask these questions, most organizations answer, “no.”

The light bulbs go off with recognition that standard meeting protocols and leadership training are important to provide clarity and to reduce meeting time.

So what constitutes a good meeting? Here are four key components.

— Pre meeting communication. At every meeting, there are people who will be more effective if they know the meeting agenda beforehand. If you don’t see the agenda until you get to the meeting, know that many people will not be able to add to the discussion like they could have if they had known what was coming. Unless the meeting is an emergency, if the agenda is not distributed 24 hours in advance, the meeting is canceled. This keeps the meeting host accountable.

— Agenda and meeting facilitation. The clearer the agenda is, the better the meeting will be. For each agenda item, list the topic, time allotted for each topic, the person leading that topic (one person preferred), and the desired outcome for each topic. When the meeting ends, rate the meeting and follow up with a bullet point communication.

Here’s further explanation of desired outcomes and rating of the meeting. I recommend identifying items in three ways: For Information (FI); For Discussion (FD); For Action (FA).

For information means that topic is not open for much discussion; it is just to download information. For Discussion means the topic is open for input, without the expectation that an action step will follow. For Action means when the discussion is over, an action will be decided upon.

Sequence the topics so that the most important things go first. A timekeeper is essential to help the meeting stay on course. This does not mean an item won’t go quicker or slower. It means that the focus stays on task the entire meeting. As you can see, receiving the agenda early is vital so attendees may come prepared.

— Rating the meeting and follow up: Before the meeting ends, each person rates the meeting verbally on a 1-to-10 scale. Ten means the meeting was great and valuable for moving the organization forward. A one means it was a giant waste of time. This helps create feedback and builds ownership for everyone. It means the person who used to leave the meeting and then tell others how bad it was, now is invited to improve the meeting. This also helps bring items to the forefront.

Several weeks ago I was at a meeting that I felt was very good. The ratings were all nine or 10 going around the room, then two attendees rated it differently. One gave it a seven and the other an eight. I asked what could have been done to rate the meeting higher. The “eight” said it needed a clearer timeline; they really needed to know when to start on a project. The “seven” shared they still needed more clarity on next steps. The group decided then to go a bit longer to cover those items. If this had not taken place, the project would have lost time. It also demonstrated to the group it is a safe place to bring up items.

— Meeting Follow up: The goal here is to go back to the meeting agenda, and for each topic list the outcome, any next steps, which person will lead the action and the timeline.

Having a standardized operating procedure for meetings shows great respect of all attendees, creates much better meeting outcomes and, in the end, saves time.

Those are important outcomes for every organization.