Meetings! A Simple Way to Turn Them Into A Productive Process

by Dave Garwood

Attended any meetings lately? "Are you kidding? That's all I get done," quipped one frustrated manager recently. "What a waste of time," she added. Not only are meetings often unproductive, but they can be a major source of extreme frustration.

Communication is necessary, and face-to-face, telephonic or video conference meetings are among the most time-honored of business activities. Certainly, meetings are a critical part of an effective Sales and Operations Planning process. The same goes for developing marketing strategy, new product development decisions, quality improvement, inventory accuracy efforts and many more. The problem is the productivity of most meetings may be the most unproductive activity in business!

What Goes Wrong?

Here are a few typical root causes of unproductive meetings. Any of them sound familiar?

• A lot of time is wasted as we get off track of the main topic
  
• The agenda (if we even had one) isn't followed
  
• Critical discussion points are pushed to the end of the meeting and we rush through them, if we get to them at all
  
• People show up late and miss key discussions
  
• People come and go during the meeting, causing disruptions
  
• Multiple conversations take place at the same time
  
• Hidden agendas abound
  
• Personal attacks spark irrational behavior
  

How can we eliminate these productivity obstacles? The answer is feedback! Most people are aware these activities are distracting and drain meeting effectiveness. As obvious as it they may seem, the same people are often unaware of the magnitude of the distractions and their "contribution" to the problem. The solution is a Process Check at the end of every meeting.

A Process Check is simply a quick, 5-10 minute exercise at the end of every meeting to feed back observations for use in improving future meetings. I first witnessed the Process Check tool at a Gates Rubber plant in South Carolina ten years ago and was impressed with the results. I have been using it ever since and get amazing results 100% of the time.

Process Check

The objective of a process check is to give everyone a chance to voice their view of how the meeting was conducted, not the decisions or conclusions reached. And this needs to be done without fear of repercussions! We are searching for the strengths and weaknesses of the meeting process and how to learn from this meeting to improve the quality of future meetings. This will make future meetings more effective, productive --and shorter! Who wouldn't vote for shorter meetings?

Here is how the Process Check is done and some rules for it:

1. Draw a chart (as shown below) on a flip chart or white board.

2. Go around the room and let each individual express one and only one positive or negative attribute of the meeting. Continue going around the room until everyone has had a chance to speak. Continue going around the room until there are no more comments.

3. No one is allowed to criticize anyone personally or launch personal attacks. Identify what went wrong, not who messed up. For example, say "too many conversations going on at once," rather than "Dan, you talked too much while others were speaking." This forum gets frustrations and irritations on the table without anyone personally being offended. Individuals will easily recognize themselves in the comments. The power of peer pressure to "discipline" is enormous.

4. When the same meeting repeats next month, such as the SOP meeting, start the meeting with a review of the prior meeting's Process Check. The idea is to remind everyone in a non-threatening way to modify their behavior and not repeat the mistakes of last meeting.

The process check works for executive meetings and all others. It costs nothing. Try it. What do you have to lose? You might have a lot to gain!