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Preparing for a Meeting: Your Preflight Checklist

Meetings: where minutes are kept and hours are lost.

—ANONYMOUS

What precedes an effective meeting with Holographic Thinking is preparation. Preparation begins with the preflight checklist:

Preflight Checklist

1.  Question the meeting’s existence.

2.  Count the cost.

3.  Decide on the right format.

4.  Consider who really needs to be there.

5.  Create the agenda.

1. QUESTION THE MEETING’S EXISTENCE

What’s the real purpose of the meeting, and is it best served by meeting? Never presuppose that you should be meeting in the first place. Before holding a meeting, always question its necessity. Evaluate if the meeting should exist by asking the following questions:

•   What is the purpose of this meeting?

•   Is a meeting the right format to accomplish the purpose?

•   Can the purpose be accomplished in a better way?

Some meetings are held simply because they always have been. I was reviewing the current meetings at one company and found that nothing substantial was being accomplished at a long-standing weekly meeting. They were reporting information to each other that was actually better done in writing. When I suggested the meeting be eliminated, their response was, “Oh, but that is the only time we all have to get together.” What they really wanted was an opportunity to feel like a team and foster connections among people.

Perhaps at one time, the sharing of information at the meeting was a valid purpose, but with the advent of other technologies, the purpose had diminished. However, as people got busier and had less time to interact, the secondary purpose of feeling like a team developed. Once everyone agreed that the real purpose for this meeting was to get everyone together, they eliminated the false purpose of passing on information and organized the meeting in a way that supported its real purpose.

The meeting would start informally with refreshments while people stood around chatting. Once they sat down, they went around the room in circular order, and everyone had two minutes to share whatever was going on with them. It could be about what they were working on, asking for help with something, or how their kitchen remodel was overwhelming their life. The mission of feeling like a team was accomplished even better than before.

The Only Legitimate Reason to Hold a Meeting

Although there are many motives for having a meeting, there is only one legitimate reason: meetings are for interaction. In successful meetings, information may be presented. However, it is interacted upon via discussion, brainstorming, questioning, and so on. Interaction of some sort is a necessary component of every great meeting. When it is time for people to interact on a particular subject, it is time for a meeting.

The Reason Not to Meet

Meetings are not the best vehicle for merely presenting information. Human beings need time to understand, digest, and absorb information.

The Cambridge Psychological Society found that the average person, 24 hours after a business meeting, remembers only 9 percent of what was said, and of the 9 percent remembered, half of it is inaccurate. Part of the reason for this poor recollection is that people have a limited amount of attention. It has been found that human beings can consciously be aware of seven (plus or minus two) things at any one time. Check it out right now. What are you aware of? You could be aware of this book, the feelings in your body, the thoughts that you are thinking, the temperature in the room, and any sounds around you. But if you suddenly hear a CRASH, your attention will go to that sound, and something you were consciously aware of a moment ago will drop out.

At meetings, people are not 100 percent consciously focused on the information being presented at every single moment. Certain pieces of information may stimulate them into thought. Those thoughts may or may not be relevant to the information being presented. One meeting participant might be considering the morale implications of what was just said, which actually may be important to the discussion. At the same time another participant, through the magic of free association, just remembered something that needs to be picked up on the way home. Either way, while their conscious attention is distracted, they are missing more incoming information.

People’s attention also can be affected by external distractions, such as noticing two people at the meeting who are having a private conversation. Or their attention can be affected by physical sensations, such as the vibration of their smartphone or the discomfort of their chair. Or they might suddenly notice the time, compare it to the agenda, and realize their schedule is toast. That realization alone will certainly set off a whole internal cascade of distracting thoughts.

But the problem with giving information at meetings isn’t only people’s limited attention. Another factor to consider is that everyone has personal filters through which the information passes and may be transformed into something different from what the presenter intended. Interpretation of words also may vary. You may have noticed that certain words mean different things to different people. That also will affect the interpretation of information. People may be listening to information from different points of view, such as what’s wrong with an idea, how it will affect the listener, its implications for their budget, and so on. When people are filtering, they are distracted and don’t absorb all the information being presented. In turn, partial understanding further alters the meaning made out of the communication.

Yet another factor that gets in the way of receiving and remembering accurate information is that a human being’s capacity for short-term memory decreases with age. So no matter how much people try to focus, their ability to remember 24 hours later is affected.

To summarize, the problems with giving information at meetings are these:

•   People have a limited amount of attention.

•   There are internal and external distractions.

•   People have personal filters.

•   People have a limited ability to remember.

So let me be crystal clear: having a meeting simply to disseminate information is not a good use of a meeting. Information should be provided as documentation on paper or electronically. When information is documented, everyone has the exact same information. It will be the same tomorrow and a week from now. If you missed something the first time, you can reread it.

If you find yourself attending a meeting for the purpose of giving information with no interaction, you should do everyone a favor and question the existence of that meeting.

What About the Importance of Interacting on Information?

Remember that meetings are for interaction! Therefore, interacting on information is a good use of meeting time. People also may need to ask questions about information to further their understanding. Discussions related to the information may be important. Analyzing options presented in the information may be required.

All of these are good uses of meeting time. However, in this case, it would be best for everyone to have the information ahead of time. Allow the appropriate amount of time to read it and digest it and then come to the meeting ready to ask questions and interact on the information. This ensures higher-quality interaction at the meeting because people have had time to think about and organize their thoughts or questions.

An Exception to the Rule

There may be times when you decide not to put information in writing because you want everyone to hear exactly the same thing, at the same time, in the same way. For example, one company needed to break some bad news to employees. The senior managers did not want anyone in the organization to find out from anyone else through the rumor mill or blow it out of proportion. This was a good use of a meeting because it controlled the timing and delivery of the information.

In general, major news regarding an organization’s business is better given at what is sometimes called an “all-hands-meeting” or a “town hall.” In this situation, it is usually the most senior person in the organization who is presenting the report. Q&A may be possible, but more often, people afterward break into smaller groups to interact on the information with their direct managers.

I’ve worked with organizations that usually allowed direct managers to break the bad news to their team members. The problem with that system is you have about 60 direct managers reinterpreting and translating the information they received from senior management. It is very unlikely that 60 direct managers will communicate exactly the same thing in the same way. Some may not have fully understood what senior management was asking them to communicate, but they didn’t ask for clarification. Others thought they understood but really didn’t. And we can’t underestimate the style of their communication.

Appearance and tone are much more significant than the words said. The communicators’ tone of voice and whether they appear matter of fact, empathetic, unsympathetic, or some other way will make or break the communication. In general, it is best for bad news to come from the top and then have the direct managers interact with their team members about it. That way, the team members will feel that they are in it together with their managers. They will have an easier time discussing what the news means to them and how to deal with it.

Another exception for using a meeting to present information is if you need to see and hear people’s initial reactions to the information. You may not have the same level of quality questions you would if people had a chance to think about it, but experiencing their initial reactions qualifies as interaction and so is a good use of meeting time. However, in this case, it would be wise to have whatever information is presented also distributed in document form at the meeting so that people can refer to it later.

2. COUNT THE COST

No meeting is free. I met some folks at a British company that installed computers in each of the meeting rooms. When you arrived, you keyed in your code. The computer knew what you were paid per minute, and as the meeting ran, a taxi meter appeared on the screen showing the total cost. That awareness cut their meeting times in half.

But there is more than the direct cost of what people are paid to consider. There is the cost of people’s time. How about all the tasks people are not doing while they’re at the meeting? This calculation is called the time/benefit ratio. Is the amount of time spent on this meeting worth the benefit that results from the meeting? This calculation is important in three ways: the decision to hold a meeting, deciding who really needs to be at the meeting, and deciding what topics are put on the agenda.

3. DECIDE ON THE RIGHT FORMAT

Start by considering if a face-to-face meeting is best or if the purpose of the meeting can be accomplished via a virtual meeting. Sometimes the geographic distances between people make it cost ineffective for them to meet face-to-face. Other times the topics that need to be discussed are so complex or hot or lengthy that a face-to-face meeting is the way to go. You also may have the secondary objective of wanting people to bond as a team. If this is the case, then make it a live meeting.

We will talk about virtual meetings in great detail in Chapter 12. For now, let me say that in a virtual meeting you should always ensure that participants can see a shared screen. In general, avoid audio-only conference calls or people calling into a virtual meeting but not seeing a shared screen on their computers.

You also may want to consider a meeting in which webcams are turned on. This immediately accomplishes two things:

1.  It will give people a feeling of connection.

2.  It will create accountability to stay focused and eliminate multitasking.

Some meetings will be a mix of face-to-face and virtual, as when groups of people are in rooms together in different geographic locations—for example, Hong Kong, London, and New York.

4. CONSIDER WHO REALLY NEEDS TO BE THERE

The attendee list is critical. Each agenda item must relate to everyone who is there. What happens if you have 10 people at a meeting but one of the agenda items concerns only 6 of them? You have 4 bored people who will naturally look for a diversion, such as having a side conversation, checking their phones, or engaging in other distracting behaviors. Having people attend who are not involved in an agenda item dilutes the energy of the meeting. It is better to have only the people who are really involved in each agenda item.

Make sure you have all the right people. If a decision must be made but all the necessary people can’t be there, then reschedule the meeting for when everyone can attend.

Get More Done with Less

You want the least number of people that can completely fulfill the purpose of the meeting. The more attendees at the meeting, the harder it will be for everyone to speak or to go back and forth in a discussion on a subject. There is also an increased likelihood of distraction and misunderstanding. This is illustrated by the communication pathways formula. A communication path is a one-way direction between one person and another. So two people have two communication paths between them, one coming to a person, the other going from that person. Every communication path at a meeting is an opportunity for distraction and misunderstanding.

The communication pathways formula is x(x −1) = number of communication pathways at the meeting, where x equals the number of people at the meeting.

If you have a five-person meeting, you have 20 communication pathways, 5(5 − 1) = 20. Adding one person to the meeting increases it to 30 communication pathways, 6(6 − 1) = 30. The difference between 20 pathways and 30 pathways is 10. Ten is 50 percent of the 20 pathways you had at the five-person meeting. Therefore, by adding just one person to the meeting you increased the opportunity for distraction and misunderstanding by 50 percent.

When in doubt, leave them out. If you are worried about offending people, offer them the choice to opt out and get notes later. Most will be more than happy to opt out.

Doers and Deciders, Resource People, and Need-to-Know People

I have found that often the reason for having too many people at a meeting is that there is no conscious awareness of the three types of people:

1.  Doers and deciders: These are the people who are taking action on a project and are actively making decisions related to it. Sometimes the doer and the decider are two different people, as when a doer reports to someone higher up in the organization who ultimately makes the decision. Or the doer might be given authority to be a decider within certain limitations but goes to the higher-up for decisions that exceed the delegated authority. Other times they are one person.

2.  Resource people: These are people who have the skills, experience, and perspectives that can support the project, but they are not actively doing or deciding things.

3.  Need-to-know people: They are not doing or deciding. Neither are they contributing resources, but they need to know what is going on.

I consulted with a board of directors on a project I was asked to lead. The task was to study their process for getting things done and help them make their committees functional. My goal was to form a model committee and learn what it would take to reach a level of functioning that would be productive. At the board meeting, they asked me what I needed. I told them I wanted a core of five people, and I named one of them. Before I could go any further, I was cut off by one board member. (They were not using my process. No one should ever be able to cut off a speaker unless the speaker is over his or her allotted time. See Chapter 8, “Balancing Participation with Air Traffic Control.”)

That board member was the speaker of the house. He promptly named himself, the president, the president-elect, and the executive director to the committee. In addition, he wanted time to choose an additional 5 people personally. When all was said and done, my 5-person team became an 11-person team. Worse, I knew all the officers he named didn’t have time for it. To make matters worse, it took him over two months to choose the additional people, which translated into two months of inaction. Once we finally had everyone on the committee, it immediately became completely nonfunctional because, even using online scheduling software and scanning a three-month period, we could not find a single time when we could all meet.

The moral of this story is twofold:

1.  If you hire consultants, you probably should listen to them.

2.  Too many people is often worse than too few.

The reason the committee bloated to 11 was because no distinction was made among doers and deciders, resource people, and need-to-know people.

Most of those named—the president, president-elect, speaker, and executive director—were in the resource or need-to-know category. In fact, of the 11, the only doers were me and the person I got to choose. And I chose him because I knew he had both the skills needed to do the job and the time to do it.

I recommend that on any project you clearly identify who the doers, deciders, resource people, and need-to-know people are. The resource and need-to-know people should be kept in the loop on e-mails, and they should receive summaries of meetings. That way, if the resource people have something to add, they are up-to-date and can jump in with a contribution. For example, let’s say the doers are going to have a meeting about using social media for marketing. By keeping the resource people aware, the resource person who has expertise in that area can make sure she attends that marketing meeting or chime in via e-mail with important related information. Doers should also know the expertise of their resource people and suggest when their attendance is required.

5. CREATE THE AGENDA

Every meeting must have an agenda. In the Meeting Jet, it’s your Flight Plan. A meeting without an agenda is like blowing up a balloon, not tying the end, and then letting it go. It will be a wild ride, and who knows where it will end up. Ideally, the agenda is created and distributed ahead of time.

For spontaneous meetings (you and I meeting in the hall and deciding to take 15 minutes to discuss an issue), the creation of the agenda should be the first item on the agenda. What do we want to accomplish in this 15-minute hall meeting? Decide who will be responsible for creating the agenda, make sure everyone knows the criteria and process to get an item on the agenda, establish a cutoff time for submitting items for the agenda, and decide the ideal point before the meeting to distribute the agenda and any supplementary information people need to prepare themselves. We will go into great detail on this in the next chapter.

A successful meeting begins with careful preparation well before the actual meeting starts. It must have a clear purpose that is best served by the meeting format. A time/benefit analysis should be done in relation to the value of the meeting itself as well as in terms of who should attend. Always remember to consider that while people are spending their time at a meeting, they are not doing all the other tasks clamoring for their attention.

The Mary Method

For all meetings, we were required to be present only when we were pitching our projects or when our titles were being discussed. An agenda was sent out ahead of time, so everyone knew the order and chronology of the discussion. Our associate publisher, Mary, would e-mail us to let us know when it was time for us to come in. We left as soon as our part of the discussion was over. That way, we didn’t have to sit through the rest of the meeting that didn’t apply to us or our projects; we could spend that time focused on what we needed to work on. It was a very efficient way to manage the team’s time.

—Senior editor, Publishing company

SUMMARY

1.  Question the meeting’s existence.

•   What is the real purpose of this meeting?

•   Are we going to interact with each other?

2.  Count the cost.

•   Is the purpose worth the cost in terms of what people are paid, people’s time, and other priorities?

3.  Decide on the right format.

•   Face-to-face

•   Video conference

•   Telephone conference

•   Mixed face-to-face and remote

4.  Consider who really needs to be there.

•   What is the time/benefit ratio of each attendee?

•   Is each agenda item important to all participants?

•   Can we minimize the number of attendees (and communication pathways)?

•   Who are the doers, deciders, resource people, and need-to-know people?

5.  Create the agenda.

•   Who will create the agenda?

•   How do people get items on the agenda?

•   When will it be done and distributed?