Let's go right to the bottom line. What percentage of your work life is spent in meetings? Twenty percent? Forty percent? Maybe even fifty percent or more. How good are most of those meetings? Meetings are a necessary and inevitable part of work, yet research shows that most meetings are viewed as a horrendous waste of time. In their recent book, We Have Got to Start Meeting Like This Robert Mosvick and Bob Nelson put it this way:

Ineffective meeting management is fast becoming a national disgrace. Poorly planned and poorly run meetings are the worst kept secret of America's vaunted business skills. In competitive challenges at home and abroad they are our Achille's heel.

Their research indicates a staggering fifty percent of the time spent in American business meetings every year is wasted effort, costing millions, if not billions of real dollars.

Based on these results, it might seem as if good meetings require some magical, mystical expertise possessed by only an anointed few among us. Nothing could be further from the truth. Running a good meeting is just like baking bread. If you have the right ingredients, the proper equipment and follow a good recipe, it is pretty easy to produce a tasty product. This paper outlines Qm2's recipe for great meetings. The ideas are particularly well?suited for performance review, planning, and problem solving meetings.

Use the guidance like a cookbook: start with number one and follow through to number twelve. If you leave out a step, or decide to do something different, do it purposefully and not because you forgot a step, or didn't have time.

Before the Meeting

1. Think through the purpose of the meeting and specific objectives to be achieved.

What is the purpose of the meeting? Most meetings actually have multiple purposes. For example, we may meet to communicate information about a new product and to develop an implementation plan. We may hold a monthly management meeting to review the performance of the business and solve problems that have arisen during a rollout. Common purposes for meetings include:

• To communicate information
• To review and improve performance
• To plan a project or program
• To brainstorm or explore ideas
• To solve problems
• To make decisions
• To train or teach
• To socialize

Specify your objectives. What results are you trying to achieve? The more difficult or complex the purpose, the more the meeting will benefit from taking time to think through and clarify the desired end results. A well?defined objective is results oriented, specific, positive and achievable within the allotted time. A well?defined objective for a meeting might be, to discuss and decide how to reduce breakage of products in the warehouse to less than 1% by the end of the quarter, rather than just to work on breakage in the warehouse. Larger goals which require long time frames benefit by setting smaller objectives.

2. Design the agenda and stipulate constraints

Now that you know what you want to accomplish, how are you going to do that? What agenda will permit you to achieve your goals in the most efficient manner? What should you do first, second, etc.? Is a meeting necessary, or is there a better way to get what you want?

You will save a lot of time and effort if you identify constraints to the meeting. Meetings without constraints often get off on tangents and aimlessly follow streams of consciousness of the dominant personalities in the room. These constraints are usually intended as soft guidelines rather than hard rules, but they do provide further focus and direction. Typical constraints deal with such things as:

• What the task is not.
• Deadlines that must be met
• Ground rules that will help the meeting go well.

3. Make Sure the Right People Attend

After you define the purpose, objectives and agenda, select the participants. Only people needed by virtue of one or more of the following reasons should attend:

• Anyone with authority to make the expected decisions (the Decider).

• Anyone with unique expertise, especially representing the view of the customer (the Experts).

• Anyone who will implement the decisions or actions produced in the meeting (the Doers).

• Anyone with a unique contribution that may help mold or challenge new ideas, changes, or decisions. These people will help test the meetings results.

• Anyone you need to educate, to develop into a better manager or worker.

The common criteria for all participants is need. Never include people just to be nice. Inviting someone not needed, creates boredom and frustration. Orchestrate the members to match the task.

When someone is too busy to attend: Allow them not to participate as long as:

• their contribution is not essential

• they agree to enthusiastically support decisions the people in the meeting make without them.

• they send a well?briefed replacement, fully authorized to act on their behalf.

Meeting Size: Any size group is okay for making announcements or for other forms of one?way communication. For productive two?way dialogue, decision making, or problem solving five to seven people is ideal. Up to twelve is manageable, if the participants have a solid track record of working together. More than twelve can work, but requires skilled facilitation.

4. Provide Logistical Support

Meeting Duration: Meeting for less than one and one-half hours is fine for information exchange. Longer meetings are required for deep discussion or problem solving. Energy runs out after about four hours.

Frequency: Assignments lasting for several months require multiple meetings. Create a weekly meeting schedule for the highest effectiveness. A four hour meeting every two weeks is okay, but short meetings that occur every two or three weeks lose momentum. Schedule at least two or three meetings in advance to avoid scheduling conflicts.

Equipment: Proper equipment can greatly enhance the communication and retention level of the group. Items to be considered include:

• Flip charts with masking tape, pads and multi?colored markers.

• Other audio visual equipment as the agenda or group size dictate.

• Handouts as appropriate.

• Name tents whenever you have new members or frequent visitors.

• Paper and pens for all.

• Do Not Disturb signs outside of the doors, with a pocket for messages.

Site and Environment: The right meeting room and the right environment also matters, especially when the topic is complex, requiring concentration and creativity. Off?site sessions often produce better results than those at the normal workplace, since it is easier to control interruptions. Participants think more clearly and broadly when they have the opportunity to focus. On or off?site, the minimum site requirements include:

• No distracting noises.
• Minimal interruptions.
• Good lighting, natural if possible.
• Quiet heating/air conditioning, with in-room controls.
• Round or square table just big enough to seat everyone.
• Comfortable chairs.
• Windows that open

5. Maximize Preparation by Everyone

Two of the biggest contributors to low meeting productivity are

• briefing unprepared members during the meeting
• spending time going over the data financial statements or written reports that could have been reviewed before the meeting.

These take time and, worse, expend energy. Spend fifteen boring minutes getting people up to speed and watch how quickly even motivated people go to sleep. Lack of energy in a meeting signals that the "right" things are not happening in your meetings.

The purpose, agenda, desired results and prior preparation should be communicated in writing several days in advance of the meeting. In a high productivity meeting, everyone comes fully briefed and ready to make a recommendation, solve a problem, or do whatever thinking tasks required.

During the Meeting

6. Abide by a Few Rules

When meeting topics may provoke conflicting views, it helps to establish ground rules, or rules of engagement before the battles begin. With a little discipline, most problems can be solved. Suggested ground rules follow. Choose the those that fit your situation. Add others the group stipulates.

• Start and end on time.

• Take breaks together.

• Minimize interruptions and distraction.

• Except for real emergencies, receive and send messages only during the breaks.

• Turn off cell phones, beepers.

• If you cannot attend, send a well?briefed replacement, empowered to act on your behalf.

• Stay on track; minimize tangents.

• Focus on solving the problem rather than searching for a scapegoat.

• Permit open and honest communications.

• Be 10% more honest

• Talk one at a time

• Don't interrupt or dominate.

• If it gets hot, pass the right to speak to the next person on your right who has their hand raised.

• Emphasize the benefits of each person contributing. Protect and acknowledge those who take risks in this regard.

7. Work as an Efficient Team

Share Meeting Jobs: Everyone in the meeting has a critical role to play. If you don't, you probably don't belong in the meeting. Every meeting has critical jobs:

The decider has the formal right to authorize a change. He is the person in the hierarchy who has the authority to make a decision, a change, without checking with anyone for permission. Having authority to maintain the status quo is not real authority.

Different tasks have different deciders. When work crosses departmental lines, the decider is the person to whom all the departments report. Involving deciders increases team effectiveness and efficiency. Getting deciders to attend meetings is fraught with challenges. Often more tasks need doing than time allows. In most organizations this means:

• tasks don't get done
• tasks get done slowly

To increase speed, the decider must delegate. When delegating, the decider gives someone on the team the right to decide, without checking back. If the team has to check back, delegation did not occur. Until delegation occurs, the organization limits how fast it can solve problems and make improvements.

Decider's responsibility before a meeting:

• clarify agenda with facilitator and administrator

Decider's responsibility during the meeting:

• participate actively in the content of the meeting
• decide when appropriate

Decider's responsibility after the meeting:

• Monitor implementation

The overly involved decider:

Every meeting has two agendas: process and content. As the content becomes complex or sensitive, it becomes increasingly difficult for one person to lead both content and process. One or the other will be neglected, usually unconsciously.

Any team member noticing a loss of focus on content or process, can call a five minute time out. The team can then select a facilitator to run the process for the rest of the meeting. One person's concern is sufficient to split the leadership into facilitator and decider roles.

The Administrator handles logistics and details. When done well, administration goes unnoticed. When done poorly, the team can fail much more easily. The administrator may be appointed or the team may select its own. The role may be rotated.

Administrator responsibilities before the meeting:

• Reserve a good meeting site.
• Provide needed equipment and supplies. For example, pads, pencils, calculators, rulers, flip chart, markers, and personal calendars for scheduling
• Ensure team members and visitors know:
  Location
  Date
  Start and end times
  Purpose of team
  Agenda
  Coordinate details with facilitator
  Maximize preparation by everyone
  Briefs new team members and visitors before the start of a meeting on the team's purpose and history. Doing this in the meeting is a big time waster.

In a highly productive meeting, everyone arrives fully briefed and ready to work. The administrator helps the team by thorough communication so everyone arrives prepared.

• Post Do Not Disturb sign on all doors
• Post ground roles
• Arranges room as needed
• Posts charts entitled:
• Purpose and Agenda
• Decisions & Assignments: What, When, Who
• Future Agenda Items.

Administrator responsibilities at the meeting

• Record decisions on charts as they surface. Ensure each decision or assignment includes What, By When and Who.
• Remind facilitator of agenda details
• Monitor attendance to insure a practical level of authority, power, and influence at the room
• Immediately contact missing members expected
• Monitor and support the facilitator to manage agenda and issues raised during warm up and evaluation.
• Monitor time
• Set times for each agenda item at the start of meeting
• Re?negotiate times and agenda as needed during the meeting
• Calls start and end of breaks. Gets team back into meeting room on time
• Calls time 10?15 minutes before the close of the meeting to cool down. Insist that this is done.
• Reminds the team to review its membership, who should receive minutes, be briefed on the team's direction so that no one is unpleasantly surprised by the team's work.
• Supervises the minute keeping. Use the appropriate minutes form
• Rotates the actual minute keeping
• Trains each minute taker on the form minute will take.

Administrator responsibilities after the meeting:

• Distributes the minutes within 48 hours
• Briefs absent members or delegates this task

A successful administrator:

• Is detailed, organized, and proactive
• Follows through

Everyone in the room has a critical resource role in a meeting. Being a resource entails thinking, learning, listening, and sharing opinions, expertise, knowledge, and ideas. There are three kinds of resources:

1. Those that have something to say
2. Those that have to say something
3. Those who hesitate to say something

When the decider needs to concentrate on the content, to actively think, listen and learn, a facilitator can take the role of managing the process of the meeting. The facilitator takes the responsibility for running the meeting so the Decider and the participants can focus directly on the problem they're going to solve.

The facilitator designs and manages the team's process. A good facilitator mobilizes the team's resources and gives focus to the team's efforts. The facilitator does not dominate the session, but proactively helps the team decide what to do and how to do it. The facilitator understands process improvement and problem solving concepts and tools, and guides the team in their selection and use.

Facilitator responsibilities before the meeting:

• Plan the agenda by reviewing assignments, minutes, and notes.
• Coordinate logistics with the administrator.
• Review problem solving or process improvement technology as needed.
• Call on the team coach as needed.
• Encourage team members to get to meetings on time, ready to work.

Facilitator responsibilities during the meeting:

• Start on time
• Conduct a warm up
• Review ground roles
• Clarify steps completed
• Clarify next steps
• Take public notes, as necessary
• Build a learning climate
• Manage the pace without dominating
• Keep the team focused on the subject
• Crystallize and clarify issues
• Test for agreements or clarify disagreements
• Towards the end of the meeting the facilitator leads a cool down and evaluation.
• End on time or extend time by mutual agreement.

A successful facilitator is:

• Able to read people
• Willing to be assertive
• Respected
• Thinks on her feet
• Uses humor
• Stays open?minded and flexible
• Has high self esteem
• Does not have a large stake in the team's outcome

The overly involved facilitator:

Sometimes a facilitator becomes overly involved in the content--the facilitator gains a stake in the outcome. When this happens, the facilitator loses neutrality. If any member of the team notices this happening, call a time out and select a new facilitator for the rest of the meeting.

8. Take Public Minutes

Whenever two or more people work on a task it's possible that they will see an identical situation quite differently.

These different view points are due to different cultural backgrounds, experiences, values, interests, management style, job in the organization, and business or personal objectives. Sharing information openly is the primary way to deal with the differences. Multiple open channels for information sharing, tend to provide a more accurate picture. Taking public minutes on a flip chart adds powerfully to verbal communication for at least three reasons:

• Public record keeping. Since the group can see, add, subtract, or modify a written charts, a higher degree of agreement is likely. Public notes provide an immediacy unavailable any other way.

• Focus and direction. Recording key points discussed by the group in public monitors progress. Together with the posted purpose, objectives and agenda, these public signs help keep the meeting focused on the task and the team headed in a common direction.

• Enhanced communications. Flip charts add a visual dimension to the spoken word. Diagrams and pictures also increase clarity and depth of understanding. When you chart a situation, it help produce a common perception by visually integrating several points of view.

Ten ideas for effective charting:

1. Write BIG, large enough to read from the back of the room.

2. Prepare the charts in advance for agenda, ground rules, key ideas in a presentation, decisions and assignments made, and issues to be discussed later. Pencil in notes to yourself on the chart for things you want to cover before the meeting begins.

3. To stimulate creativity, use diagrams, pictures and sketches.

4. Use color. Take notes in one color, ideas in another, and highlight or organize the information with a third color.

5. Post charts on walls for information that the team has agreed upon.

6. Turn pages over and hide data when there is not agreement. The old pages can be a block to further discussion and synthesis. Get new data and incorporate the old ideas worth keeping on a fresh page.

7. When in doubt, write it. If it is not important or useful it will become obvious to the whole team later. Deciding not to write it, usually alienates the contributor.

8. Keep separate sheets for unrelated items to be dealt with later. Be sure to write them up so that they are not forgotten and so that they do not become a distraction.

9. Be very careful of editing or reinterpreting what someone else says in a way that they do not agree with when you are writing it up on the charts. Listen when they speak and then check back with them to make sure you are recording accurately.

10. Don't give up the power of the pen. The meeting leader should do the writing. If other people need to make use of a chart to express an idea, encourage them to do so, but do not let them run the meeting.

11. Reserve Time to Summarize Meeting Results, Decisions, Assignments and Check Attitudes

Reserve ten to twenty minutes at the end of the meeting to summarize major actions, decisions and assignments made. Be sure that all parties know exactly what is to be done, who is to do it, by when, and how it is to be done. Review the agenda for the next session and end by giving everyone the opportunity to share how they are feeling (not thinking) about:

• assignments made
• decisions made
• The effectiveness of the meeting
• progress made against the stated objectives

After the Meeting

10. Rapidly Publish the Minutes

Minutes from each meeting should be published and distributed to all participants within forty eight hours of the meeting. Minutes can be brief, highlights of the major decisions. The format you use for minutes is not as important as using an accepted standard, universally applied.

People who did not have an opportunity to participate in the meeting will want to know what happened. In the absence of accurate and timely information, they will generate their own and distribute it via the rumor mill. Accurate and timely information to those not in the sessions can minimize the creation of rumors and the spread of misinformation.

11. Follow-up assignments

What we inspect, rather than expect, generally gets done. It is the responsibility of the leader (decider) to closely monitor assignments from the meetings and hold people accountable for results. This follow?up should trigger the need for further discussions, if results expected are not on target, not being implemented easily, or negative side effects have been detected.

12. Keep Fine Tuning

Meetings, like all other activities, work best with a continuous push for improvement by everyone. Team members usually recognize what's wrong with the meeting, yet people seldom raise the issue in the group unless deliberately encouraged to do so. This reluctance to take responsibility for improvement dooms many meetings to mediocrity. Take ten to twenty minutes at the end of the meetings periodically to get the participants involved in tuning up the meetings.

Qm²'s Advice on How to Launch a Task

Make sure that tasks assigned are well?launched: Whether involved in routine work or a massive problem solving activity, the task must be clear. This is true for the leader about to delegate a task or the recipient of that task. If we launch a project or attack a problem without clarity, the chances of a poor solution and poor implementation sharply increase. A well defined task enables you to delegate the work properly, allows the recipient to work on it efficiently, and know when their job is done.

Example of a Poorly Defined Task: Go to work on the marketing problem as soon as possible.

Example of a Well Defined Task: Use current market information to decide how to change our pricing and promotion for each product line so that we increase sales by the end of the year by ten percent. Do not get involved in additional market research or product line extensions. Pricing and promotion changes to be decided by July 31. This is a chance to make sense out of pricing and promotion, not to redesign our basic philosophy of marketing.

Countless millions of dollars and countless hours are wasted in every year by well meaning people chasing down half?baked assignments. In a busy work environment there is a strong temptation to quickly launch the team and then figure out what the task really is further on down the road. This leads to misdirection and wasting of the team's time. Below are eight steps to a well?launched task. Although they may appear too detailed, these steps may take five minutes or five hours.

If you do not have the time to properly launch the team, don't do it. Wait until you have time to do it right.

Step 1. State the situation or problems to be addressed.
Step 2. Describe the task.
Step 3. Specify the level of decision making authorized.
Step 4. Clarify expected results.
Step 5. Clarify what the task is not.
Step 6. Determine who should work on the task.
Step 7. Set guidelines on how to address the task.
Step 8. Specify the follow?up and success monitoring program.

Further advice from Qm²'s experience with magnificent meetings:

Start Slow and Make Sure Everyone is on Board: Meetings often get off track at the beginning by starting off too fast and not taking the time to make sure that everyone is playing from the same sheet of music. Start on time. Being late has direct costs in terms of time lost and a less productive atmosphere. If people are habitually late, discuss what to do about it. Warm?up and start slow. Relax. The Decider should open the meeting with a clear statement of the purpose and objectives of the meeting and a review of the agenda items. Take the time to carefully review the constraints and ground rules. Check with the participants to make sure everyone is on board and there are no surprises.

Rather than just telling everyone the purpose and objectives of the meeting, you may want to consider finalizing these items and the agenda with the help of the participants at the beginning of the meeting. Defining these items together builds commitment to doing it. As you progress through the meeting, do not blindly pursue the objectives or agenda if you learn things which cause you or the other participants to want to change them. Remember posting the objective(s) and the agenda helps focus everyone's energy.

Use a Common Decision Making Process: Whenever we sit down to make a decision there is a series of steps that we all go through. For example, think about how you go about making a routine decision such as deciding what to order for dinner or what car you are going to buy. We normally don't pay much attention to our own decision making process since we know it automatically. Our brains are actually structured to allow us to easily skip from step to step without getting confused.

This is not true, however, when we work as a team. Unproductive conflict during a meeting occurs when team members are on different steps of their decision making process. Five of us may agree on the problem and how to solve it, but if three others are still busy collecting data, we may argue and fail to agree upon a solution. Teams often fail because of distracting conflicts which have nothing to do with the content of the problem itself.

Focus on Problem Solving and Improvement Action Planning. Avoid status reviews: During the meeting, minimize time spent on explanations and justifications and focus primarily on problem?solving and making improvements. As a rule of thumb, spend seventy percent of the time solving problems and making improvements, twenty percent on warming up and cooling down, and ten percent of the meeting on analysis and data. This is possible, if the participants have done their homework and come to the meeting prepared.

An Qm² Example: How to prepare for a high performance monthly management meeting:

• Compile data and publish financial reports as soon as possible after the end of the month. Increase speed first and then improve accuracy not vice versa. In addition to financial reports, publish the status of other critical strategic, management, and operational data. As a minimum these reports should compare planned (budgeted) performance with actual on both a period and year?to?date basis.

• Distribute reports to each member of the management team with the following homework assignment:

• Identify meaningful, positive or negative deviations for each area under your management. A deviation represents a significant difference between what you planned/budgeted and actual performance. Look for the deviations big enough to impact the business, signifying a major trend, and requiring action.

If there is an easy explanation for the deviation which is not something controllable (for example, a period problem, such as a short week), it is not meaningful. A maximum of three (3) key deviations should be identified in each of your areas

• Be prepared to justify deviations.

• Prepare a concise action plan for each deviations that explains what you will do to further exploit the opportunity or remedy the situation to improve performance. Be sure to denote what, how, when and with whom you will work. Determine the results on performance you expect from your actions.

• If you are not satisfied with the extent of your own improvement capabilities, be prepared to ask the group for help.

• As you scan all the other reports, identify significant changes in any area of the organization and be prepared to explain your concerns and how you believe we might respond to these changes.

The president, CEO, or group leader independently reviews performance and identify her own top three key deviations.

At the meeting:

• Each manager starts with a brief review of the effectiveness of his previous improvement efforts. He then presents his view of the three key deviations in his area of responsibility and his rationale for why they are key. If the manager's top three are the same as the leader's top three, continue to the next manager in round?robin fashion.

• If there is not agreement between any manager and the leader, other people on the team, stop and have a discussion about what is truly important and why. Don't hurry this discussion as this is the time less?experienced people learn.

• When the key deviations have been presented (and written up on a board or flip charts), each manager can present his or her plan for making the improvements or taking the opportunity represented by key deviations. If someone has a poor plan, or there is disagreement, set this item aside for discussion later.

• When all the new action plans have been presented, ask the team to step away from parochial interests and select the top concerns of the month for the whole organization. Everyone temporarily takes on the perspective of the leader to determine what to work on first and how best to make the priority improvements.

• Every item discussed has specific action items including who will do what by when and the expected impact on performance.