Efficient vs. Effective Meetings

What??! Another post about meetings! Yes, after writing that post I realized that if you have never organized or run a meeting before, running a Google-style efficient meeting might not be so high on your "Next Action" list. So I've decided to put together a little cheat sheet on organizing and running an EFFECTIVE meeting.

First off, you might ask what is the difference between "Effective" and "Efficient". To put it as best as I know, being efficient means getting the job done in a short amount of time. However, being effective means getting the job done RIGHT. For example, you can stay up late the night before writing and organizing your big presentation and this would be efficient, because you spent 8 consecutive hours to finish it, while others might have spent 20 hours or more spread out over a period of a few months. However, whose presentation do you think will be more EFFECTIVE in convincing the audience?

The first step to organizing a meeting is to figure out why do you need to have a meeting? Do you really need a meeting, or can the problems be solved via a few quick emails/phone calls? How much time do you think the meeting will need to take? Using these you can start to outline your meeting agenda.

Next you actually need to think about your meeting venue. How many people will need to attend the meeting? Are there any special audio/visual/computer needs? Is everyone physically located near each other or will some meeting attendees need to travel or teleconference to participate?

Now, scheduling a meeting is often pretty tricky, especially with people having tons of other commitments and full calendars. The key to overcoming this is early planning. If at all possible get meetings scheduled at least two weeks in advance. Even better is that you can use free online tools such as TimeToMeet which you can use to poll your attendees for the best times for holding the meeting. Also be sure to send out the meeting agenda in advance for people to review as well as a meeting reminder.

OK, you've made it to the meeting (hopefully a 10 or 15 minutes early for any set-up and last minute preparations). Now what do you do? As people file in, be sure to greet them (by name if you know them - learn and reembmer their name if you don't). Do an Ice Breaker! Run your meeting according to your agenda, encouraging all attendees to participate (if they don't participate what's the purpose in them coming and not just receiving the minutes).
When your meeting is about to come to an end, always be sure summarize the key points of the meeting, list any action items that need to be addressed before the next meeting, and let people know when the minutes will be sent out (you did have a note taker right?).

Afterwards be sure to leave time for some open discussion / questions. For non-work types of meetings (such as at community / student organization general meeting), it might be worthwhile to devote an extra 15 - 30 minutes for general networking / chit-chat and other minor business that attendees might not feel comfortable with bringing up during the formal meeting.

Hopefully these hints will give you an idea about how to run an effective meeting. Comments, including stories about particularly successfully run meetings you've attended or organized, as always are always welcome and appreciated! Until next time.

-Jason

Run Meetings like Google

Isn't it something from Murphey's Law that at meetings people keep minutes but lose hours? Though they seem to be a neccessary evil; people hate meetings, but we all know we need them to get things done in teams. Actually, I recently read in an article that within some organiztions, meeting organizers are putting the total time cost on the doors of their meetings. This means, if they are having a one hour meeting that involves ten people, the meeting actually costs 10 person/hours. Multiplied by an average wage, this can add up pretty quickly.

As a Young leader, you need to learn how to use meetings effectively. In a school environment this could be even more important than in a working one, at school everything is voluntary and if people feel their time is wasted.... they won't show up (unless you offer free pizza - and even that doesn't work all the time).

So how can you run an effective meeting? Recently Businessweek wrote an article about How to Run a Meeting Like Google. Most of the points are pretty standard, so I'll outline them here:

• Set a firm agenda: This is a no brainer. What is the purpose of the meeting, What are the main points for discussion? Who is invited to attend the meeting? When/Where is the meeting to be held? How long will the discussion of each point last? And always leave time for extra questions!
• Assign a note taker: This is another critical piece. If you are presenting during the meeting, you need someone else to take notes. It's also great to have notes for those who have missed the meeting to get back up to speed.
• Carve out micro-meetings: Sometimes you only need 5 or 10 minutes to get something accomplished, it's also analogous to putting a solid item into the agenda for a larger meeting, which could be more efficient.
  
• Hold office hours: Hey if it works for college professors... Well sometimes it's just too difficult to schedule a meeting, but you set up a time every week (or everyday) that people can just drop by and discuss their concerns, it might lighten the load from your other standing meetings.
• Discourage politics, use data: Politics is a bad thing. Negative emotions make for a negative work experience and less productivity. Make sure ideas are chosen on their objective merits instead of subjective feelings, which can be construed to favoritism.
  
• Stick to the clock: Google sometimes uses a giant 4 foot tall projection of the clock on the wall in order to keep meetings going. Instill this discipline in yourself... and your meeting attendees will thank you.
  

So go out and get googled. (Oh wait does that sound wrong?) Anyway, wext time I will discuss some of the more "human" aspects of meetings.

Until then,
-Jason

Ice Breakers

Most people shiver at the sound of the word “Ice Breaker”. Maybe this is because we all have been to a meeting where an unenthused organizer has forced us to perform an embarrassing task along with a random bunch of strangers. However things don’t have to be this way. Ice breakers by their very nature should be fun activities that get a group of strangers or people who have never worked together before to begin to feel a little more comfortable with each other.

How can we avoid the “cold shoulder” when doing an ice breaker? Well this is all up to the meeting organizer. Anyone can follow the instructions of an ice breaker, but it takes a leader to pull it off successfully. So what’s the trick? ENTHUSIASM If the meeting organizer is not truly excited about the ice breaker (I’m not talking about playing phony here), how do we expect the participants to get excited about it?

So in short, pick an ice breaker that you feel will be fun, and matches the dynamic of the audience. You would definitely want to have a different icebreaker for senior citizen librarians than for the Monty Python Society at the local college. Also keep in mind that ice breakers should be pretty short, under 5-10 minutes depending on the size of the group.

To help you out I’ll list a few ice breaker ideas as well as my opinions on them.

1. Two Truths and a Lie – The old standby. Everyone writes their name and two truths and one lie about themselves on an index card. The organizer collects the cards and reads them off asking the group to guess which “fact” is the lie. It works for pretty much any group, and because of this, has been done to death. Use it only if you really really want to.
2. Snowball Fight – A flurry of fun. Break the group into two teams. Each person takes a piece of paper and writes down their favorite music band, movie, book, and etc… on it. Then crumple up the pieces of paper and have an indoor snowball fight!! After a few minutes, everyone picks up a “snowball” uncrumples it and tries to find the owner. This one is a lot of fun, but some people might not appreciate getting whacked in the face with a crumpled up piece of paper.
3. Birthday Line – More difficult than you think. This one is simple, the group is to form a line in order by birthday… with only one catch… no talking! The Birthday Line ice breaker is fun, especially when you see all the wacky body language people use to try to convey when their birthday is.
4. The Name Game – “A person’s name, to them, is the sweetest and most important sound in the world.” This works easiest in a circle. Have the first person state his/her name. Then the second person states the first person’s name and then their own, the third states the first’s then the second’s, and then their own, and etc… By the end everyone will pretty much have learned everyone else’s name. This ice breaker is great for new teams, the only thing is that it takes a little bit longer to do.
5. Story Relay – Yeah so maybe this is a modified drinking game… But that’s why it’s so fun! Bring the team into a circle choose a theme (maybe something relevant to your group/meeting) for your “story”. Then start the story with only one sentence, the next person to the right then continues the story with another sentence. This should continue until the story is finished or the story doesn’t make sense anymore (each person should go at least once). This ice breaker is mainly just for fun. Maybe better for groups that already know each other.

-Jason