Read an Excerpt
Meetings that Get Results
By BRIAN TRACY AMACOM
Copyright © 2016 Brian Tracy
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8144-3706-3
CHAPTER 1
Types of Meetings
THOMAS J. WATSON, the founder of IBM, said that the starting point in making meetings more effective is to think carefully about the meeting in advance.
Determine what kind of meeting is being held and then structure the meeting in such a way that you maximize the time of the participants. Too many meetings are held spontaneously and ad hoc, with no real thought, particular preparation, purpose, or clear goal in mind.
There are five different types of meetings. Some of them overlap, but each meeting type has its own requirements.
Information Sharing
The first is an information-sharing meeting. This is when you bring people together to review progress and to share information in a roundtable way. The participants' role is to bring others up-to-date on their activities. A typical staff meeting is a good example.
This is a process-oriented meeting. It is not aimed at a specific target or goal but is part of an ongoing process and is a very important means of communication. Most executives polled estimate that information-sharing meetings are the second most important form of communication in an organization. (The most important form is the one-on-one meeting.)
Problem Solving
The second type of meeting is for problem solving. These meetings are goal- and mission-oriented. The purpose of the meeting is to find a solution to a specific problem. These meetings take place frequently, usually ad hoc, and are put together quickly. Problem-solving meetings vary in length depending on the size and complexity of the problem to be solved.
Operational
The third type of meeting is an operational meeting when you bring together people from different departments. The purpose of this kind of meeting is to acquaint representatives of different departments of a company with "the big picture."
Committee
The fourth type of meeting is the committee meeting. This is a regularly scheduled meeting with a standard format and agenda, and with the same group of people who come together to monitor and review progress, plan ongoing activities, and give and receive feedback.
A good example of the committee meeting is the quality circle or quality team meeting. This is where a committee of employees gets together on a regular basis to review past efforts, talk about what they can do to improve quality, and develop recommendations for management.
Teaching and Training
The fifth type of meeting is the teaching and training or seminar meeting. The purpose here is to instruct the participants in some new subject. An example would be when new equipment or technology is being introduced, or when you are initiating a new program.
Many meetings have elements of all five types. But to make a meeting effective, it must be clear to everyone which basic type of meeting is being held.
CHAPTER 2
Define the Purpose of the Meeting
THE STARTING point of meeting effectiveness is clarity of purpose. What is the reason for the meeting in the first place? Think it through in advance and ask why the meeting is being held at all. Guard against the tendency of slipping into the habit of holding meetings just for the sake of them.
Questions to Ask
There are some questions that you can ask to clarify the purpose of the meeting.
First, is the meeting necessary? Is there some other way that you can accomplish the objective? Is there another way to hold this meeting or to solve this problem? If your purpose is information sharing, can you pass information on by phone, e-mail, or through a website?
Remember, if it is not necessary to meet, it is necessary not to meet — because the meeting ends up being a major time waster. Whenever time is wasted, morale and performance suffer.
What would be the worst possible outcome if no meeting were held at all? If you find that nothing much would happen, or that business could be taken care of in other ways, then you should discipline yourself to not hold the meeting.
Second, who must attend the meeting? Who is absolutely essential to this meeting and, of course, who is not essential and should not be there? It is a big mistake to invite people who do not need to be at the meeting because they won't be able to contribute or take away any value.
Crystallize the Reason
Third, what is the purpose of the meeting? The measure of clarity of purpose is that you can define on paper the purpose of the meeting in twenty-five words or less. If you are unable to do this, it could very well be that you don't really know what the purpose is yourself.
Ask yourself the question, "If this meeting worked out perfectly, what would be the result? What would happen? What would people do afterward?"
When you are crystal clear about the goals and objectives for the meeting, when you can define the purpose of the meeting and why you are holding it, it becomes much easier for you to plan the meeting, the agenda, and the particulars that you want to cover.
Trying to Solve the Wrong Problem
In some cases, even when you have defined the goals and objectives for the meeting, you discover later that the meeting did not yield effective results. One reason is that you may have misidentified a problem that you wanted to resolve.
For example, in our sales consulting work, the purpose of many meetings is to resolve a familiar problem: Our sales are too low.
We will ask, "What else is the problem?"
The answer may be, "We are not attracting enough new customers."
If this is the correct answer, the solution would be to change or improve the advertising and promotional activities to increase customer acquisition.
We then ask, "What else is the problem?"
The next answer may be that "our competitors' sales are too high in comparison with ours."
If this is the true definition of the problem, the solution may be to change our product offerings, offer products or services that are new or different, aim our sales efforts at different customers, lower our prices, or offer something new and different that sets us apart from our competitors.
Our meetings are successful because we drill down to the real problems that need to be resolved, not the surface problems that are easy to see.
CHAPTER 3
Meetings as Company Investments
THERE ARE costs associated with each meeting, both direct and indirect. As a business, there must be an expected return on investment of those costs, and the return should be substantially greater than the amount that the company is paying to hold the meeting in the first place.
If someone came to you and asked for an authorization to spend several hundred dollars on a piece of machinery or a project, you would want to know exactly what value you would receive and how the company would benefit.
The Cost of Meetings
When you convene a meeting, you have to recognize that the cost of the people in that meeting can be enormous. A simple way to determine the cost is to multiply the hourly income of the participants by the number of hours of the meeting. If these people are earning $50,000 to $100,000 per year, that works out to $25 to $50 per hour for each participant. If you invite ten of these highly paid people to a meeting, it can cost the company up to $500, or more, for a single hour. Imagine paying that to each person out of your own pocket.
Continually ask yourself if the expense of this meeting is justified. What will be the return on investment if the meeting is successful and productive? Is it worth spending this money? If you are taking people away from other productive work, the meeting has to be more productive and valuable than the activities they would otherwise be accomplishing.
Ensure Maximum ROI
Identify the things that you can do before and during the meeting to make sure that the return on investment is at its maximum. Your job as the meeting planner and organizer is to increase the value of the meeting so that when people adjourn they say, "That was a really good meeting. This was a valuable use of time."
One of my favorite time management laws is called the Law of the Excluded Alternative. It simply says that choosing to do one thing means simultaneously choosing not to do all other things you could be doing at the same time.
Since you can only do one thing at a time, whenever you choose something to do, such as participating in a meeting, you are choosing not to do everything and anything else that may be of greater value. What you are seeking is the highest ROTI — return on time invested. Think about your time, and the time of every other person, as if you were paying people in cash at their hourly rate for the time that they spend in the meeting.
CHAPTER 4
Determine the Agenda
THE, THIS IS starting point of holding effective meetings. Always prepare a written agenda and provide a copy for each participant. One of the biggest mistakes in any meeting, formal or informal, no matter how short, is to start off without an agenda.
When I was younger, I would meet with my boss on a regular basis, usually daily. But I found that if we were not very careful, we could talk for as long as an hour and not have reached closure on anything. This state of affairs was dissatisfying to both of us.
Without any training or preparation, one day I wrote out a list of the things that I wanted to discuss with him and brought an extra photocopy of my handwritten list to the meeting. As soon as I showed my boss the list, he brightened up.
Increase Effectiveness
In no time at all, we were able to go down the list, discuss each point, and reach a decision on what was going to be done or not done. We quite quickly cut our meeting time from sixty to twenty minutes, and we got much more accomplished.
From then on, my boss was always open to meeting with me because he knew that our time together would be highly productive. As a result, I was given more and more responsibilities and eventually was moved onto the fast track in my company.
Write It Down
Always start with a written agenda, even if you just put it together a couple of minutes before the event.
The agenda should begin with a one-sentence description of the purpose or objective of the meeting. If you cannot boil it down to a single sentence, it probably means that the purpose of the meeting is too vague. It is going to be an ineffective meeting and a waste of time for most, if not all, of the participants.
But when you write out the agenda — starting with a purpose statement — it forces you to think through what you are doing and why you are doing it. It gives you greater clarity regarding how each of the items on the agenda can be best dealt with.
Organize the Agenda
Organize the topics in order of importance, by priority. Ask yourself, "If we were interrupted after we had only discussed one thing on this list, what one item would be the most important?"
By starting with the most important items, you are ensuring that they will be covered and the least important items will be set aside for another day if the meeting is forced to end before you get through the entire agenda.
When possible, distribute the agenda twenty-four to forty-eight hours in advance, either by hard copy or by email. This allows people to prepare and to think through the issues. They can come to the meeting ready to make a valuable contribution that, in turn, increases your return on investment of time. The more important the meeting, the more important the agenda and its advance distribution.
Who Should Attend?
Restrict attendance to the minimum number of essential people. When I was a young executive, I felt that it was only fair to invite everybody to the regular staff meetings so that all could participate and feel they were a part of the team. What I found after a while was that a lot of them didn't really want to come to the meeting, and that my exercise in democracy was an exercise in frustration.
From then on, I restricted attendance to only those people who were necessary to deal with the items on the agenda. Everyone else was free to participate or not participate.
Ask yourself: Who really needs to be at this meeting? Who can contribute and needs to participate in the decision making or problem solving? Who requires this information, and is there a better way to get it to them?
CHAPTER 5
How to Run a Meeting
YOUR ABILITY to lead a meeting is a critical part of your success in management. This skill is one of the marks of leadership that is most evident to people in your organization. As Peter Drucker wrote, "The key tools of the executive are the meeting, the presentation, and the report." You must be excellent at all three.
Clarity Is Essential
Perhaps the most important word in success is the word clarity. Fully 95 percent of your success will be determined by your being absolutely clear about what it is you want to accomplish and how you are going to accomplish it.
Perhaps 95 percent of your problems will come from a lack of clarity as well. This is why it is so important for you to begin with a clear, written outline of the purpose of the meeting, even if it is only one sentence. When everyone sits down, you can open a meeting by saying, "We are holding this meeting today for this reason and to accomplish these goals and objectives."
Plan the Opening
The first five to seven minutes of any meeting are the most important part of that meeting. The opening sets the foundation, establishes the parameters, organizes the terms of reference, and tells everyone in the room why they are there, for how long, and what they need to accomplish.
You may even consider writing out your introduction, word for word, and then reading it at the beginning of the meeting. This clarity will allow a person who doesn't know you or the situation to get up to speed right at the start.
Be specific and punctual with regard to the timing. Everyone should know exactly when the meeting starts and stops. This information should be printed at the top of your agenda, but you will want to restate it in your introduction.
Start on Time
Begin right on time. Do not penalize the people who were there on time by waiting for others who are late. Assume that the latecomer is not coming at all and begin the meeting immediately. This piece of advice was invaluable to me when I was coming up as a manager.
If someone comes in late and discovers that they have missed important information, refuse to start over or to review it for them. By catering to the latecomers, you are actually punishing the people who are punctual. When the latecomer looks a bit incompetent, he will eventually get the message and be more punctual next time.
Many companies have a policy where if a meeting is called for 10:00 am, they lock the doors from the inside at 10:01. You only have to do that once to get people to be on time in the future.
Make a Statement
If the purpose of a meeting is to solve a problem, you say: "We are here to discuss this problem and to come to a decision, conclusion, or resolution on moving forward. Here are the facts of the problem. Here is the information that we have, the alternatives that we have considered, and our market intelligence. Now, what do we do from here?"
Encourage open discussion. It is important that you invite input from each person, not only the people who have a lot to contribute and are eager to talk, but also from those who are more self-contained and less likely to speak up. Especially, you want input from those people who may be a bit reluctant to try to compete with more aggressive or assertive people. Quiet people often have a lot to contribute, if encouraged and given the chance.
The way I get people to open up in a discussion is to use the "round-robin method." As the group leader, you start off the meeting and go right around the table, inviting each person to speak, in turn. As the meeting leader, you speak and contribute last, not first. When it is your turn, you can comment on what the others have said, state your opinion, and if necessary, go around the room again.
This is very much like starting an engine. Once you have gone around the table once or twice, everyone will be speaking up and making a contribution.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Meetings that Get Results by BRIAN TRACY. Copyright © 2016 Brian Tracy. Excerpted by permission of AMACOM.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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