Ensuring Effectiveness of a Meeting – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #972

Ensuring Effectiveness of a Meeting – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #972

Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post 972 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing your contributions here.

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Tom Peters, the famed author of ‘In Search of Excellence’ and many other books and a renowned management consultant says, “The only thing on earth that never lies to you is your calendar. That’s why I am fanatic on the topic of time management. But when you use that term, people think, here is an adult with a brain, and he is teaching time management, find something more important please. But something more important does not exist”. Endless, diffuse meetings, according to Peters take up far too much of executives’ precious working time. 

In my own situation, I had asked my personal assistant to keep a watch on how much time I spent in meetings in a week. And if it exceeded 50% of total working hours, she was supposed to inform me immediately. The fact is that effective meetings and good time management coexist in a virtuous cycle.

Three Questions to Ask

Effective meetings lead to good decision making, while inefficient meetings create distraction and confusion. Ensuring an effective meeting starts with three questions.

1. “This meeting should have been an email” or some phrase to similar effect can be seen printed on coffee mugs and in memes. So, the first question is, “Should there be a meeting for this reason?”. This is particularly applicable to recurring meetings, which start with some purpose and then become a routine. ‘We shall meet every Monday at 12.00 noon’ becomes a call to gather even when there is no reason. Such meetings quickly deteriorate into either social meetup or a gathering of disillusioned, bored participants.

2. What is this meeting for? Is the second question. Has a proper purpose been defined? Also beware, that a meeting title and its purpose may not match. A scrum meeting may last much longer than 10-15 minutes and without anyone getting more informed than at the beginning of the meeting. Agendas may also be misleading because very often participants become unfocused and bring other topics in discussion which are outside the scope of the meeting.

3. Who should be there and why? In our corporates, some seniors, through effective manipulation, become part of every meeting just because it feels important. It is like government committees where some bureaucrats are found on all committees. Bureaucracy is an interesting area because no bureaucrat has any specific expertise, and they are revolved everywhere. For example, a federal secretary may be posted in health today and in petroleum tomorrow. They appear to move seamlessly because they neither know anything nor contribute anything. For purposeful corporates however, it is extremely important to define the participants, their purpose, and their role.

Types of Meetings

Meeting types are based on the purpose for which these are held. These may be distributed into three categories broadly.

Decision Making Meetings

The decisions can be routine operational decisions, or complex ones like taking up an new project, opening a new business line and so on. While routine decisions take less time to decide and several items may be put on the agenda, the decision to start a new business line is time taking and no more than one such item may be placed on the agenda for one meeting. In fact, no other item should even be there. The participants should have the capability to understand and authority to decide. Important decisions should preferably be taken in physical presence.

Problem Solving and Coordination Meetings

This is a large chunk of meetings, starting from identification and discussion on various solutions to the problems faced by the corporate, introduction of new products, and daily check-ins. These are good sessions to train and empower employees so that they can take up much of the routine tasks. Problem-solving meetings can also be delegated with the instructions to bring the final 2-3 options to decision making meetings.

Information-sharing Meetings

In-person meeting may be important if the information is of sensitive nature. Other than that, information-sharing meetings may not be perceived of having much value. McKinsey quotes that Netflix has limited the duration of meetings to a maximum of 30 minutes and requires aht meetings involving one-way information sharing be canceled in favor of other mechanisms like a memo, podcast, or vlog. Early data from Netflix showed that the company had reduced meetings by more than 65 percent and that more than 85 percent employees favored the approach.

Best Practices for Meetings

• Define the purpose of meeting in clear terms. The agenda items must relate to the meeting purpose and not just thrown in to look like a meeting.

• Choose participants who have a direct stake in the meeting purpose. Just because someone is a director does not mean he should be included in every meeting.

• Consider that leadership time is a finite source, and it must be used judiciously. Dragging senior managers into every meeting to please them or to add weight to the meetings is not desirable.

• Consider three questions mentioned above before announcing the meeting.

• Circulate meeting related documents/ information well in advance so that the participants have enough time to go through these. 

• Discourage the practice of coming for meetings unprepared.

• Provide adequate administrative support so that the meeting starts on time and runs smoothly.

• Other than off-site retreats, do not plan day-long meetings.

• For local corporates particularly, ban serving of tea and snacks during meetings. It is a huge distraction and waste of time (and money also).

• Follow the agenda and do not let powerful people sway the meeting away.

• Respect time. Meetings must start on time and close on time. 

Sum Up

Meetings are an integral and useful part of corporate working. Following the best practices and concepts, meetings can be made to be highly useful.

Concluded.

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For most blogs, I research from several sources which are open to public. Their links are mentioned under references. There is no intention to infringe upon anyone’s copyrights. If, however, it happens unintentionally, I offer my sincere regrets.

Reference:

https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-is-an-effective-meeting