ca 10 minutes on effective meetings

1. ca 10 minutes on effective meetings “Don’t waste my time, please” Marcus Hammarberg Yayasan Pelalayan Kesehatan Bala
2. Bored, Book by PublicDomainPicutres used under CC0 Public Domain
3. How to run an effective meeting by Nguyen Hung Vu used under CC2
4. First
5. 5
6. 6 Plan Do Check Act
7. Plan On Target by VizzualDotCom used under CC2
8. Plan bobsled team run olympics ice 643397 by Skeeze used under CC0 Public Domain
9. Plan Timer, clock, hour by Unsplash used under CC0 Public Domain
10. Plan Dear Mrs X, I really need your help in this meeting. We’re going to discuss and decide X and I want you to contribute with ideas and opinions on it. We’re starting at XX:XX and ending at YY:YY. Not a minute later. The meeting is in conference room XXX. When this meeting is over I hope that we have achieved: Goal 1 Goal 2 I hope that you can take time out of your schedule and help us with this. discuss and decide X Goal 1 Goal 2 XX:XX and ending at YY:YY. conference room XXX you to contribute with ideas and opinions on it
12. Do 1904 Olympic sprint by Ranveig used under CC0 Public Domain
13. Do Flag Checkered by David Morris used under CC2 SA
14. Do On Target by VizzualDotCom used under CC2
15. Do watermelon melon juicy fruit food by Stux used under CC0 Public Domain
16. Do stopwatch racing timer timing by OpenClipartVectors used under CC0 Public Domain
17. 17 Goals - Decide X - Solution to Y - Discuss Z Agenda point 1 Agenda point 2Agenda point 3 Agenda point 4Agenda point 5
18. 18 Goals - Decide X - Solution to Y - Discuss Z Agenda point 1 Agenda point 2Agenda point 3 Agenda point 4Agenda point 5 This meeting is 1 h and ends 14:00
19. 19 Goals - Decide X - Solution to Y - Discuss Z Agenda point 1 Agenda point 2 Agenda point 3 Agenda point 4 Agenda point 5 This meeting is 1 h and ends 14:00
23. Check
24. 24 X X X X X
26. Act
27. 27 Goals Timebox Actions
28. 28 ca 10 minutes on effective meetings

Editor's Notes

I have a confession to make: I do not like meetings.

Or rather - I do not like most meetings I’ve been in.

To me, most meetings are boring, too long and when they are over nothing much have been decided or accomplished.

While we are on the subject of confessions: I’ve organised a few of those meetings. So I’m guilty too.
The thing that is a bit strange is that there’s just a couple of small things that I need to do to make meetings much more engaging, fun and effective.

In this presentation I want to share some of the things that I’ve found useful.
This will be a lot of small advices in a short while.

But don’t worry. I will sum up the most important once in the end - and those are easy to remember.

Also you can always re-watch this presentation if you want
My name is Marcus Hammarberg and I work for the Salvation Armys Health Foundation in Indonesia. We have 6 hospitals and 17 clinics spread out through Indonesia.

During the last couple years of we have been talking a lot about mission, vision and strategic plans.

The reason for a presentation on Effective meetings is twofold: most organisations do a lot of meetings… sadly we often do them badly.
This presentation is divided into 4 sections: Plan, Do, Check and Act.

I have a couple of tips under each.

Nothing of this is hard, or require much of us. We often just forget it.
It can, in fact be quite laid back and informal and still be very good meetings.

Let’s start with Plan - what happens before the meeting
Much can be done to ensure a good meeting already in the planning of one.

One of the most fundamental things about a meeting is often strangely neglected: WHY do we have this meeting?

What is the goal? What do we want to achieve? are questions that is paramount in order to make sure that even can have an effective meeting. Reach the goal of the meeting
Closely related to this is the people in the meeting.

A very reasonable, but seldom answered, question is: Why do you need me in this meeting? What is my role in the meeting?

If everyone in the meeting know why they are there, we are much more likely to get a good productive meeting, than if I’m just dragged into the meeting room all of a sudden, not knowing Why I’m there.
With a goal and people in the room that knows why they are there we have come a long way. But there’s one more thing that I think is important.

A time box. That is; a start and a stop time.
That we will follow.

Of course we need to know the location too. Otherwise we might loose time in the meeting where people are looking for the room.
All of these ideas can be expressed, declared in a good invitation to the meeting.

Here’s a suggestion for a template. It doesn’t have be done in printing but these points should be conveyed in some way.

See that we declare a goal.
Notice the time box and location that is clearly stated.
Finally notice that we tell the people why they are needed.

This is an invitation. A request for you to be here. Not an order. I find it very important to clarify that sometimes, since it creates a different mindset
That was some ideas on what can be done before the meeting even starts.

Let’s see how we can follow that up in the actual meeting: Let’s go to the Do points
Start the meeting on time. I can’t stress this enough. This is vital and set the stage for your entire meeting.

I have often started the meeting with only one or two people in the room. When the others come just welcome them but continue the meeting where you are.
Sooner or later everyone will start to come on time to the meetings.

To me this is a question of respect for other people schedules.

This also means that the people in the room will make the decisions. If you had other, more important, things to attend to it’s no problem. That that means that you gave the authority to the others in this meeting to decide for you.
Also… end the meeting when you said you should end it.

Also out of respect for other peoples schedules.

The things that you didn’t have time to discuss will have to be postponed.

It’s much better, in my experience, more short focused meeting, that few long ones just to get through the agenda.

I’ll show you a technique later to make sure that you talk about the most important things with the time at hand
When the meeting start, remember to thank everyone for coming and then restate the goals of the meeting.

This sets the stage and makes sure that everyone remembers why they are here.

Also it creates an atmosphere of “we are here to get things done”.

I sometimes write the agenda of the meeting on a whiteboard or paper before the meeting. In this way I can check things off and give a sense of moving forward during the meeting
Doing any activity that requires concentrations for a long time is hard for most people.

Therefore I often create short iterations, or sections in the meeting. Sometimes this falls out natural with the agenda.

If not we create them with a time box. Pausing every 15 minutes for example.

Just take a short break. Just 10-20 seconds. Stand up maybe.
One way to ensure that this happens is to set a timer to ring, for example, every 10 minutes of the meeting.

When the timer rings you can say: “That was another 10 minutes. 50 to go. Are we where we want to be in the agenda? Will we reach the goal? What should we change?”

All too often we spend a very long time discussing things that is actually not important to reach the goal of the meeting.
Phew… that was a lot of advices. Let me sum it up for you in a very simple meeting format that I’ve used and found useful. Even in very formal settings.

Before the meeting: on the wall (whiteboard or paper) - write down the goals of the meeting
Before the meeting: Write the agenda on post its and put them on the wall
When the meeting starts - state the ending time of the meeting
Spend 5 minutes ordering the post-its in “importance” priority. Meaning that the most important is highest
Start discussing the most important thing
Set a clock to ring every 10 minutes. When it rings; stop and ask “Should we continue this?”
If Yes - then continue discussing for 10 minutes more
If No - state the actions and responsible person and then move to the next item.
Continue until the meeting is over.

This way of working is known as Lean Coffee.
Ok - now the meeting is over, what now.

The last two points in the circle above are smaller but more important.

First of all, let’s Check what happened, how the meeting felt - and then let’s Act to make the next meeting better.
If we never Check the status of our work it’s very hard to improve on it.

I’ve found that spending a short time just checking that what we do makes sense, and see if we can be improved; is a small investment that have great effect.

One technique that I use is a called ROTI (which incidentally means “Bread” in Indonesian).
But here it stands for “Return On Time Invested” - basically: was this meeting worth the time you spent in it?

Simply just draw a thermometer on the board, like this.

0 is the worst meeting you attended
4 is the best meeting you attended

Then ask the attendees of the meeting to make a little X where they think this meeting rates.

Collect the data and compare to other meetings. Over time you’ll get a sense of if your meetings are becoming better or worse.

Additionally you can leave room for improvement suggestions on post-it’s next to the diagram
Of course, just checking how the meetings are improving will not help us.

That will only give us data. We need to Act on that information in order to make the meetings better.
Improving meeting culture is one of those tasks that is very likely to fall between the chairs. It’s “everyones” responsibility… which sadly often means that it’s “no ones” responsibility.

In some companies I’ve consulted we have created a meeting coach that gathers data and suggests improvements. Or share improvements that other have come up with.

This can be as simple as sending out and email, or post a list of guidelines for how to do a good meeting
Summarising how to make a great effective meeting is pretty easy I think. It’s just three words:

Goals - make sure your meetings have a clearly stated goals
Share the goals with everyone before the meeting: “This meeting is about X and Y”
Revisit the goal during the meeting - “Let pause that discussion now and move on. Remember that X and Y are our goals”
Check against the goal after the meeting - “Did we reach X and Y?”

Time box - set a start and end time of the meeting.
Keep them.
Make small iterations. “10 minutes have passed, we’ve talked about 2 items and we have 64 items left on the agenda. What is the best thing to do now?”

Actions - a meeting that didn’t lead to any actions is most likely unproductive.
Make sure that you come up with some actions. For each also know what needs to be done and by who
My name is Marcus Hammarberg. This has been ca 10 minutes on effective meetings.

Thank you for listening.

Tuhan Memberkati Anda - God Bless you.

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