Discussions were productive and good decisions have resulted. Now to maintain the credibility of the meeting, all the agreed actions must take place and the decisions implemented.
Your influence on these results is now focused on producing a clear review of the meeting in the form of meeting notes, circulated to participants within 72 hours of the meeting concluding, in order to maintain the group’s enthusiasm and commitments to their individual actions. If the role of note taker was delegated to another participant, ask them to write up the notes and send them to you in electronic format. Collate together other relevant material used in the meeting, presentations, spreadsheets, etc., and amalgamate them into one easy-to-view file. It is quite normal now for such documents to be sent electronically.
Print out your Brilliant Meeting notes and distribute them to senior managers with a stakeholding in the decision, along with your direct line manager.
Your direct role in the ‘meeting cycle’ is almost over for now, as the responsibility shifts from you to the participants who have committed to completing actions, implementing a decision, or signed up to a new way of working.
Before you start working on your own actions from the meeting and developing the agenda for the next meeting, there are still a couple of very important post-meeting issues to complete.
Evaluate meeting feedback
If you took the opportunity to gain feedback from your participants, evaluate this as soon after the meeting as possible. Decide on whether this feedback is to be shared with the group at the start of the next meeting but, most importantly, implement the good suggestions and change the format or style of your meeting, as appropriate for the group.
Remember to complete the meeting evaluation yourself, and be honest!
Managing follow-up actions
There is a very thin line between interfering and supporting participants in the completion of actions that they have either undertaken or been assigned. So long as they have the authority and necessary resources to complete their actions, they should now be left to get on with it.
However, there are strategies that we can use to encourage and assist in the completion of those tasks.
- In the body of the email with the meeting notes, remind participants that actions are listed and need to be completed to the timescales detailed – then re-affirm the date of the next meeting to really focus the mind.
- A week before the next meeting, re-issue the meeting notes again, together with the agenda for the next meeting.
- When issuing the agenda for the next meeting, line list a review of the last meeting’s actions, inserting the name of the individual responsible.
- If participants are in the same office as you, suggest a quick catch up over coffee.
Wider communication
Outside of those directly involved in the meeting itself, who else needs to know what decisions have been reached, what actions are being taken, or where the project now stands in the overall timeframe?
In addition to senior management and executive sponsors, findings and progress updates may also need to be communicated to a regulatory body or a government agency. This communication outside of the meeting is a key element in the overall success of the group. It is a great feeling for participants when other people know that they are doing a good job and making real progress.
Either as part of your own remit or working with the participants, you need to determine what exactly is going to be communicated, to whom it is going to be communicated, and when and how to send out the communication.
The ‘how’ is perhaps the most important, as it can have a major impact on how the news is interpreted. A simple announcement delivered by email to all employees will be void of any emotion, instead, effectively delivering only cold hard facts and figures.