Long Meeting:
This will be a continual question for me. I won’t start with a promise that this post answers the questions and provides a simple easy solution to keep meetings crisp.
We are talking about people and ensuring that all the opinions are heard to arrive at a sensible decision. It makes no sense to keep meetings short only for the sake of it. It spurs a debate about effective meetings vs efficient ones. In this instance efficiency is being measured only as input time to arrive at a decision.
Yes, we can arrive at that decision quick – but does this mean that we are doing a grave injustice to the actual purpose of a meeting?
Common Traps of a HUGE Meeting!
I will allude to the common point that all meetings are for a reason. They demand a collective participation. Some of the common traps I have encountered in these meetings are:
- Preparation: A meeting is a collective. Each participant is equally at blame for a long meeting. At the same time, each participant is responsible for an effective one too. If some of the participants are not prepared, it is immediately a warning signal of either an ineffective meeting or a long one.
- Agenda: Sometimes, these meetings fall into the trap of a HUGE agenda. Scope creep is one of the most common reasons for slipping timelines of a project. The same clearly applies to meetings as well.
- Niceties: I have seen some meetings take a long time in niceties. Personally I like them, it gives a human touch to the meetings. But there have been times where these take a prime slot on the meeting. If we spend a lot of time there, do we have enough left for the meeting itself?
- Deviations: Deviations are necessary, but they are also a huge contributor for long meetings. They can derail the agenda and also have the capacity to create a lack of interest.
- Distractions: This does happen in a few online meetings, particularly when each one of us has access to emails. I have been guilty of sending a few emails during some meetings where my contributions were limited. Having said that, I do acknowledge that this contributes to a long meeting.
I am sure we can coin a few more causes for these long meetings. I would love to know your top reasons for this.
Avoiding the Long Meeting!
Active Interruption: Well, we can all talk about the tips and traps of these long meetings. I am sure we can all play an active role in keeping these meetings to an agenda. An active interruption is not only a desirable but a huge necessity. It is awkward to start these, but helps everyone in the meeting room be very concious of the agenda.
Time Reminders: It will be good to get someone take the role of a time keeper. The time keeper can highlight quarter, half and 75% of time spent on a meeting. It might sound a bit daft but knowing 50% time elapsed on a meeting is quite vital and keeps the participants on their toes.
Common Culprits: This might sound a bit harsh. But, if there are people who are constantly derailing meetings from the agenda, they will need a quiet word. This is never an indicator that we can be rude to them. But an equally important point that everyone has a responsibility to bear in order to keep meetings crisp.
Surely there are far better options and I would love to hear your top tips on avoiding long meetings. Of course, it is to do with something better than avoiding the meetings altogether :D. But yes, please do share your thoughts.
That’s a great topic you have touched upon Vinay! I should say it brought forth a few mistakes i’ve been doing while conducting meetings with my team.
As the person responsible for business development and growth at my company, i usually look at how our products, services, and internal processes can be tweaked to provide a better service and deliver value. This role pushes me to do a lots brainstorming along with my team members during our meetings. One great point is “Keeping the Agenda small”. I’m def guilty about keeping the agenda too big (typically what all we should achieve in the next one year), which i realise often leads to team members loosing the track of areas we need to focus upon. I think I should work on things one at a time, keep deadlines, and meet more frequently, while keeping the scope of agenda and the length of the meeting small.
On a different note, since most of the times i end up being the moderator of most (all :/) of the meetings, i often get into situations where i need to interrupt members from going off the track. It usually gets awkward when someone senior to you does it. I think keeping a time slot and a timekeeper, would definitely save me from such situations :P.
PS- it’s good to hear your thoughts every week on different topics :).
Thank you Jayasurya, great to hear from you. The topic sort of came from the last few months of lockdown and naturally it has become very important to keep meetings short.
However I do see that it is not always easy, sometimes the deviations are really important. One of the things I that has worked – particularly with senior members causing deviations is to appoint the moderator for a meeting. If they are announced at the start of a meeting, that sometimes works well.
However it is hard one for sure and you’re right there’s no quick answer. Agenda and prep I think are really the most important aspects. If those are managed, we can get a very good success rate on the trap of long meetings.
Glad you found the topic resonating with the current scenarios, I will try and keep it up. As always great to keep hearing feedback 😊