Turn meetings into results.

You know what it's like when someone calls a meeting - the feeling you get when you think about all the wasted time and the other productive things you could be doing instead.

Meetings fail because people treat them like social activities. They invite everyone, set out treats, and hope something good happens. Then the participants spend endless hours engaged in arguments, chitchat, and monologues that produce nothing except a decision to call another meeting. As the participants leave the room, they often remark, "Now it's time to get back to work."

If this describes meetings in your organization, your business is suffering. Bad meetings waste money, resources, and opportunities. I have done surveys that show companies waste an average of 20 percent of their payroll on bad meetings. Bad meetings also frustrate essential activities such as finding solutions, making decisions, and reaching agreements. And finally, bad meetings keep people from the work they were hired to perform.

Meetings should run like a business. Here are three keys to improving meetings:

Planning

Every business activity begins with planning. Follow these steps to make sure your meetings produce the results you want.

* Start by writing clear, complete, specific goals for the meeting. Then test if a meeting is the best way to achieve these goals. Many meetings can be replaced by other less expensive activities. For example, e-mail, voice mail, faxes, and memos often convey information more efficiently than meetings. Sometimes a phone call or personal visit will resolve a conflict more effectively than a meeting.

Thus, view any suggestion to call a meeting as a challenge to save money and time by finding other ways to deal with the issue.

* Estimate the value of the results you want to obtain. If a result has no value, ask yourself why you want to spend time working on it. Then design an agenda that produces a positive return on your investment of time and resources. For example, if you are working on an issue worth $1,000, you may want to spend less than $500 resolving it. Obviously, spending more than the issue is worth is bad business.

* Prepare an agenda that contains a specific list of activities. These should guide the participants toward the results you want. Use structured activities (described below) as much as possible because these make a meeting more efficient. Avoid unstructured activities, such as general discussions, because these seldom lead to results.

An agenda should state the activity and the time budget for that activity. For example:

9:00 Collect ideas (idea harvest)

9:10 Discuss ideas (balanced dialogue)

9:20 Vote on best idea (dot voting)

Then send the agenda to the participants before the meeting so they can prepare for it. Realize that unprepared participants will spend their time in the meeting preparing for it.

If appropriate, include instructions in the agenda on how to prepare for the meeting. For example, you may tell them to read a report, prepare a draft of their budget, or bring five solutions for an issue.

Structured activities

Structured activities are work systems that help groups make methodical progress toward results. They also increase participation and keep people focused on the issue.

When teams use structured activities, they produce better results in less time. Without them, a meeting is guaranteed to take longer and produce less.

Before using a new activity in your meeting, be sure to explain how it works and cite the benefits of using it.

Here are three easy structured activities:

* Idea harvest - Use this activity to gather ideas. Start the process by writing a question on a chart pad ("How can we improve customer service?"). Then everyone offers ideas while the facilitator writes them on a chart pad. The facilitator should encourage the team to contribute by complimenting their ideas ("That's great!" "Wow!" "Keep going!") and catalyze thinking by asking questions ("What would please our customers?" "How would you want to be treated?" or "What if you phoned with a complaint?").

Realize you will sort out the best ideas later. During an idea harvest you want to encourage divergent thinking. You want to collect a large quantity of ideas. And you certainly want to avoid any criticism or judgment. That's because negative comments ("That's a dumb idea!" "So, how would you do that?" or "We already tried that!") inhibit open, creative thinking.

* Balanced dialogue. Use this activity to control and manage discussion on an issue. In this activity, everyone speaks for an equal length of time. Begin the process by announcing the time limit or asking the group to choose a time. Ideally, the time should be short (two minutes or less). After everyone has had a turn, you can repeat the cycle or move to the next part of your agenda.

The benefits of this process are: 1) it prevents a minority from dominating the discussion, 2) it gives everyone a chance to speak their views, 3) it limits the total time spent on a discussion.

For this process to work, you will need a stopwatch and firm enforcement. When someone's time ends, that's it. That person must stop speaking, even if he or she is in the middle of a sentence. The first time you use this activity, expect someone to challenge the rules. If you hold firm, however, you will find that the other participants strongly support you. It gives everyone a fair chance to participate and makes meetings go faster.

* Dot voting. Use this activity to select the best ideas from a list of possibilities. This activity often follows an idea harvest. Ask the participants to select those ideas that meet some criteria based on your goal for the issue. Possible criteria include the least expensive, highest impact, or most novel.

You will force people to make choices by asking them to choose one-third of the possible ideas. Insist that they use all of their votes and not more than all of their votes. You can ask them to identify their choices by placing check marks, paper dots, or initials next to them on the chart pad. You can also ask them to vote on ballots or call out their choices.

After everyone finishes, tally the votes for each idea. The ideas with the most choices are the most popular. This produces a prioritized list of the ideas that best meet your criteria.

Leadership

As a leader, you are responsible for creating a positive culture while making progress to complete tasks. This requires you to keep a balance between maintaining the process of the meeting and caring for the participants' needs.

Model the behavior you expect from participants. The participants will contribute more when you accept new ideas, treat everyone with respect, and reward divergent thinking. On the other hand, autocratic behavior scares people into silence.

Avoid introducing side issues and telling jokes. These waste time by distracting focus from the issue. Before speaking, test your comments for their value as contributions to progress toward results. When you think of unrelated ideas, jot them down. If appropriate, you can mention them later or save them for other tasks.

When unproductive behavior occurs, focus on changing the behavior instead of attacking the person causing it. Avoid direct commands ("Hey you, stop that."), trick questions ("Are you trying to ruin the meeting?"), and sarcasm ("Here's another brilliant question from the company wizard.").

Instead, speak to the group. If a side conversation starts, say, "I'm having difficulty hearing Pat. Could we have one speaker at a time?" If the group drifts to a new issue say, "We started working on the budget and now we seem to be talking about performance reviews. Is this what we want to be working on?"

When you apply these techniques you will gain dramatic improvements in your meetings. Make these alterations and turn your meetings into results.

The Author

Steve Kaye, Ph.D., is an author, trainer, consultant, and award-winning speaker. He shows people how to create success in their professional and personal lives. Kaye holds a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and has 20 years of experience working for major corporations. His book Meetings in an Hour or Less shows easy structured activities that keep people in control of their meetings. He is also author of 117 Tips for Effective Meetings and other results-oriented learning tools.