CHAPTER 9

Are There Too Many People in Your Meeting?

When you set up a meeting, the people you invite are just as important as what you need to get done.

It may be easy to default to inviting a crowd of people to a meeting—that way, you don’t really have to identify the most critical participants, you can avoid any ruffled feathers, you’ll have everyone involved on hand for a decision, and you won’t have to repeat your communications separately afterward. Or maybe your tendency is to keep things small, to invite just a handful of people whose opinions you value most.

But for a meeting to be most useful, you have to have the right people—and only the right people—in the room. With too many attendees, you might have trouble focusing everyone’s time and attention and not accomplish anything; with too few, you might not have the right decision makers or information providers in the room.

As you plan your attendee list, consider who will help you accomplish your meeting’s goal and who will be most affected by its outcome. You’ll likely want to include a combination of people who will offer a variety of perspectives. Take the time to methodically list each individual and place them into the following categories to make sure you include the right people:

• The key decision makers for the issues involved
• Those with information and knowledge about the topics under discussion
• People who have a commitment to or a stake in the issues
• Those who need to know about the information in order to do their jobs
• Anyone who will be required to implement decisions made

Consult with other stakeholders to make sure you’ve made the right list. Often another key stakeholder can remind you of a perspective you forgot to bring into the room.

Just because someone’s name is on your list, however, doesn’t mean they must be at the meeting. How many people should you actually invite? There are no hard-and-fast rules, but in principle, a small meeting is best for deciding or accomplishing something, a medium-sized meeting is ideal for brainstorming, and a large meeting makes the most sense for communicating and rallying. Some people use what’s known as the 8–18-1800 rule as a rough guideline:

• If you have to solve a problem or make a decision, invite no more than 8 people. If you have more participants, you may receive so much conflicting input that it’s difficult to deal with the problem or make the decision at hand.
• If you want to brainstorm, then you can go as high as 18 people.
• If the purpose of the meeting is to provide updates, invite however many people need to receive the information. However, if everyone attending the meeting will be providing updates, limit the number of participants to no more than 18.
• If the purpose of the meeting is for you to rally the troops, go for 1,800—or more!

If you decide not to invite individuals you listed as likely to be affected by the meeting’s outcome, have a plan to communicate the substance of the meeting to them afterward.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on March 18, 2015 and from Running Meetings (20-Minute Manager series; product#17003), Harvard Business Review Press, 2014.