Everyone in the museum world has too much to do! Spending time in meetings that do not work is frustrating and abuses your time. Since meetings constitute a major technique for working together, we can't eliminate them but we can fix them. This simple evaluation will help. Use it at your next meeting.

Two Agendas:

All meetings have two agendas. The first, familiar agenda is the content that includes the issues, decisions, and information that stem from the purpose of the meeting. The second is the process agenda that includes all the ways meetings are structured, how people interact and create the meeting climate. Poor process creates ineffective, time wasting, frustrating meetings.

The Problem With Meetings:

Normally, everyone complains about meetings before or after they occur. People rarely speak up in the meeting to identify poor process and improve it. The problem with meetings is that too few participants speak up to improve them. Here's how to do it:

If You Are in Charge of the Meeting:

1. Read the twenty-one evaluative statements to confirm that they cover the process issues your meetings face. Rewrite the evaluation if you must, but don't fail to evaluate regularly.

2. Tell those who attend meetings you chair that you want to improve meetings and that you intend to end each meeting by evaluating it.

3. Pass the evaluation out at the beginning of the meeting, discuss it briefly.

4. Assign someone in the meeting to remind you to take time before the meeting is over to complete the evaluation. Have this person collect the evaluations, summarize the rating on a fresh evaluation and share the evaluation before the next meeting.

5. Discuss the evaluation at the beginning of the next meeting, particularly if it will help you understand the data better.

6. Identify two or three to improve. Post the items in the meeting room as ground rules or goals so they will remind everyone.

7. Reevaluate every three to five meetings to assess progress and identify new areas to improve.

If you are not in charge of the meeting:

Influence the chair to use an evaluation OR copy the evaluation and leave it in meeting room.

More ideas:

If the meeting is more than two hours long, try using the evaluation at the half way point to improve the meeting before it ends. Have meeting participants individually choose the one thing that could improve the meeting. Accumulate these ideas publicly, decide which areas to work toward improving. Encourage the others to evaluate their meetings. Try it at a board or committee meeting.