Us, PMs, live and breath communication. I do not know what the official stats are, but I remember during one course someone threw a number of 90% of our time is spent communicating.
(I will try to restrain my inner introvert from running somewhere to hide)
And although this seems pretty straight-forward and simple, I still see many meeting invites being sent while lacking some information or other.
This is the reason I decided to dedicate a post to meetings preparation.
Before Meeting
Here are a few thoughts to put into the meetings, before scheduling them:
1. Is this meeting needed?
Although this might seem clear from the beginning, we can easily get trapped into the meetings loop. However, there are plenty of situations in which we can clarify something without having a meeting about it.
We can use communication via e-mail or online tools (Jira, Asana, Slack, etc.). This kind of communication does sometimes seem impersonal, but can save time, especially when it is something that can be clarified in a matter of minutes.
And through an online tool such as Jira or Confluence, we can consider the decision also documented.
Also, in many cases, having meetings can create overhead rather than helping, especially if we lack sufficient information or it takes longer to gather everyone than to reach a conclusion.
2. Who is needed in this meeting?
Every meeting should have a set of participants. We should think who should participate, who could clarify open questions and who should be kept in the loop.
We can differentiate from the beginning among the invitees who is mandatory and who optional.
Also, if some people should only be kept in the loop, we can include those in the meeting notes communication.
3. What is the agenda?
An agenda should always be included in the invite.
It is not only needed for people to have a general idea as to why we are all meeting, but it can save time. Instead of having many people trying to investigate during the meeting, or rescheduling it (pretty difficult when many people are involved), invitees can come prepared to the meeting.
4. Where will the meeting take place?
Depending on where the invitees are, the meeting can take place face-to-face or via call.
Face-to-face meetings should either be at someone’s computer, if there is enough space, or maybe a meeting room or a space that needs prebooking.
Calls can be done using phones or online tools (Zoom, Go-to-Meeting, WebEx, Slack, Skype) with screensharing.
During Meeting
So, the meeting invite was sent. What could we do during the meeting? Here are a few suggestions:
1. Facilitate Communication
We should act as facilitators at all times, be it as presenters, or simply by initiating the conversation and let others take the lead.
Also, we should always keep an open conversation, make everyone feel included and comfortable to say something.
2. Interrupt unrelated discussions
While keeping the conversation open, we should also keep it on track.
If something is unrelated, we should interrupt and advise to take that discussion separately, explaining that we still have some conclusions to draw from our current conversation.
3. Someone, priorly agreed-upon, should take notes
Be it ourselves, or someone else among participants, but someone should take some notes. Theoretically, each should take their own notes, but that is in an ideal world and we live in the real one.
4. Take action points
While in discussions, we should draw some action points to follow through after the meeting.
Each action point should also have an owner assigned. It might sound too structured, but having a group of people assigned to an action point will only make everyone confident someone else will follow-up on that until we realise that:
1. Best case scenarios: someone actually did follow-up – rare, but can happen
2. Close-to-reality scenario: no one follow-ups on that until we realise it is too late
5. Summarise conclusions
Before finalising the meeting, we should get everyone on the same page. We can do that by summarising what we discussed and conclusions, action points we took.
It is easy, straight-forward and can get fast clarification in case something was misunderstood.
After Meeting
All was nice and good, meeting is done, what else should we do now?
There are a couple of things:
1. Send meeting notes
We took meeting notes, we assigned action points, we summarised conclusions, but our memorise are fickle.
We should include something written within 2-3 days since the meeting happened, while the memories are still fresh and again, someone can correct misunderstandings.
Also, it offer great support that a conversation did happen and conclusions have been drawn.
2. Set up follow-up meetings when needed
A follow-up meeting might be needed, so the sooner it can be scheduled, the better. That way, people have a milestone to look for to prepare the needed information.
The above-mentioned steps are the steps I usually take for most of my meetings.
I do have ad-hoc ones as well, especially if something is urgent, but those are quite informal and I still send meeting notes to those, for future reference and to make sure we are all on the same page.
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