Have you ever found yourself in a meeting thinking to yourself, “when is this going to end?” or even “why am I here?” If so, you’re definitely not alone. Meetings can waste a ton of time and are often not helpful in getting your actual work done. So in this episode, we dive into the 3 big problems with most meetings and share 6 things you can do to turn an unproductive meeting into a productive one. We also give 3 questions you can use to start having more productive meetings today, even if you’re not the meeting facilitator.
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Cheat Sheet
- The problems with most meetings [2:25]
- Things that cause most meetings to fail [6:11]
- The AE solution to making sure people take meetings seriously [8:35]
- How to make meetings shorter AND more effective [15:47]
- Why most meetings wander off-topic [22:03]
- How to make sure that people actually follow-up on action-items from the meeting [30:20]
- What to do if you realize a meeting is a waste of time for everyone [34:48]
- How to establish trust within your team and why it’s so important for effective meetings [38:35]
- Why bringing hard data will make meetings productive and help get buy-in from your team [42:58]
- Action-items you can implement today to make your next meeting successful [47:42]
Links
- The Science and Fiction of Meetings (article)
- Time Wasting at Work (infographic)
- Our 3 Biggest Challenges of Implementing Scrum & How We Overcame Them (TPS191)
- The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable
- Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most
- Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t
- TPS87: How to Run Effective Meetings w/ John Poelstra
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Carlos – we have an agenda for every meeting. Each meeting has its own topic related to the area of the business its in (so Customer Success talks about customer service related stuff and Operations talks about day to day Ops stuff that need to be discussed).
I read somewhere about using Asana to run meetings and maybe you can do this with other task managers.
The project is your meeting, the tasks in the project are agenda items with any clarifying description, then the comments on each task are the minutes made during the meeting, which attendees can view and agree as an accurate record.
Can’t remember how action points are noted in the advice I saw – but could create sub-tasks and assign them.
If an agenda item is permanently resolved (all action point sub-tasks completed) then it can be marked as complete.
If it’s a recurring meeting, you could re-use the same project and add more ‘tasks’.
You can download an Asana project to CSV – this includes descriptions but not comments. So you could easily produce a printable agenda in a table if needed. Don’t think there’s an option to get the comments/minutes exported though.
I haven’t used this in practice so it may fall down, but it sounds like a fantastic way to make sure your meetings are properly planned and that actions are joined up and recorded for full accountability.
(Note above is based on the free version of Asana.)
Amazing episode! I love the meeting day idea.
I heard that you have these meetings:
-costumer success meeting
-Operations
-Team Meeting
-backlog on grooming
-Strategy Call
Do you have an agenda for all these meetings? What are the difference or what topics are discussed in each one