The work day suffers from bloat, 20 minute meetings turn into 30 minute meetings, 40 minute meetings turn into 1 hour meetings and on and on for a few simple reasons.

1. No one has an agenda, so everyone makes rough estimates for how long meetings should take. And no one under estimates of course.
2. Parkinson’s Law – Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Reinterpreted, meetings expand so as to fill the time available from its scheduling.
3. The defaults encourage it. Outlook calendar defaults to 30 minutes, which means that unless your meeting is in 30 minute or one hour increments its difficult to setup.

We have a product to tackle the agenda challenge. And the best way to guard against Parkinson’s Law is a good moderator.

The last point is also something we can easily do something about.

How to Change Your Default Meeting Length Settings in Outlook from 30 Minutes to 15 or 10 Minutes

1. Open up your Outlook calendar. If you’re using Outlook 2007 or 2010 your calendar should look something like this.

2. Right click the calendar and go to view settings.

3. Click other settings

4. Change ‘time scale’ to 15 or 10 minutes.

Note: this also changes the Zoom of your calendar, so you’ll end up with a calendar zoomed to 110-120%. You will no longer be able to view your full 8 hour day without scrolling down. I found it worth the tradeoff.

Presto! Going forward your meeting length will now default to shorter length. How about scheduling 50 minute meetings and allow people ten minute to transit from their last meeting?

Spread the wealth. Why not encourage your team to do the same?

And remember to go Allin.

Mikal

Through this journey one thing we’ve learned is that the path to better meetings starts with you. Here are a few tips to transform your office into a better place for meetings.

Pre-Meeting

Conducting:

• Always distribute an agenda before hand (might we suggest allin?). Be sure to send the agenda included and separate from the outlook invite. People search their inbox for lost information before they search their calendars.
• Ask others for topics on the agenda
• Always look to include agenda items that help your meeting participants feel like co-owners in the meeting’s success

Participating:

• Ask for an agenda in advance of the meeting
• Ask if there are any action items from the prior meeting that you should be aware of
• If you have the action items from last meeting- send them out as a reminder prior to the meeting start.

Meeting

Keeping a meeting on track when you’re in a meeting is probably the toughest task of them all. If the meeting has an agenda its usually a bit easier. The challenge is that in most of the deterants to meeting success are other people. Many of these people hold loftier titles than our own.

Conducting:

• Tell everyone how much you hate unfocused meetings, as you’re sure they all do, and communicate the steps you’re taking to make this meeting a little bit better.
• If others are running late. Get started with agenda items or productive discussion before the others get there. For example, feedback on the agenda, check in of action items from the prior meeting.
• Take notes.
• When the meeting loses steam and seems to go off track, ask if this is better discussed at another meeting. Or if you can, hop in to the discussion, and say I know we have a lot to cover so can we come back to this after the meeting? You’ll be amazed at how many important discussions become unimportant when they involve staying after the meeting.
• If a meeting really becomes in a whole, stand up and start taking notes of the discussion on the white board. This focuses attention on the meeting condoctor and gives you an opportunity to ‘classify’ the discussion for the group.

Participating:

• Always ask ‘can we get started?’ if a meeting is running late.
• Take notes.
• When a discussion hits the circular loop, join in the conversation then pivot, turning to the meeting organizer and saying “I know you have a lot to cover, I’ll let you get us back on track”
• For meetings that habitually are poorly organized, be sure to schedule a key ‘meeting or appointment’ that either overlaps or immediately follows. Let the group know that you have to leave at ‘X’ time. You’ll be amazed at how well this focuses meetings.

Post-Meeting

Conducting:

• Send out meeting notes in email (be sure to put “Meeting Notes” in the email subject)
• Highlight the words ‘action items’ in the body of your email
• Always include an action item for yourself

Participating:

• If the meeting organizer seems flustered at the lack of focus in his/her meetings, ask how you can help him or her out in the future.
• Ask the meeting organizer to send out the meetings action items.

It’s not going to change your company’s meeting culture over night, but slowly you’ll see a new paradigm start to emerge as people desire better meetings with accountability and follow through.

-Mikal

Good thing 30 days of Better Meetings is here.

To give feedback here is a tactic I’ve learned:

• State one thing you think they’ve done well
• And state one area you’d like to see them improve

So for example:

Mary, thanks for presenting during this meeting. One thing I think you did really well is present some really deep analysis based on really strong research, an area I think you could improve is the pacing of your presentation. I felt like I didn’t have time to fully digest everything, so maybe next time make fewer points but spend more time discussing each?

And thats it. I find that typically people are much more willing to accept the medicine when served with sugar.

When it comes to receiving feedback, especially critical- its even easier. You should always have this one response ready to go:

Thank you for the feedback.

You’re not obligated to agree, you’re not being defensive and hopefully you’ve truly heard and understand their points. If not you can ask a clarifying question- “was there a specific point you felt rushed on, or was it the overall presentation” and again always close with “Thank you for the feedback”

Note: this works best when everyone on the team knows how to give and receive critical feedback so managers you should try and share these insights with your team.

Ryan is a consultant for all things related to online meetings, with a keen focus on webinars. Webinars were not something that I had thought about at an especially deep level, but she quite successfully stoked my interest!

So What’s a Webinar Exactly?

But what exactly is a webinar in the first place? Here’s what wikipedia has to say:

A webinar is a neologism to describe a specific type of web conference. It is typically one-way,[1] from the speaker to the audience with limited audience interaction, such as in a webcast. A webinar can be collaborative[1] and include polling and question & answer sessions to allow full participation between the audience and the presenter. In some cases, the presenter may speak over a standard telephone line, while pointing out information being presented onscreen, and the audience can respond over their own telephones, speaker phones allowing the greatest comfort and convenience. There are web conferencing technologies on the market that have incorporated the use of VoIP audio technology, to allow for a completely web-based communication. Depending upon the provider, webinars may provide hidden or anonymous participant functionality, making participants unaware of other participants in the same meeting.

It seems that the key principle is a one to many communication format, yet there are a host of different technologies to use to tailor it to the meeting. This is where Ryan comes in, as a matter of fact.

Making Webinars Easier

“I’m not an engineer, I’m not about to try and develop any kind of webinar tool or platform,” Ryan says. “There are already 117 out there. I know which ones are good, which are my favorite. What’s not out there right now is an easy way to get into doing webinars to do them yourselves.”

Bias certainly could be a factor here, especially considering how much we value our Qworky Friends, but I think she’s onto something. The wikipedia description portrays a confusing landscape of all sorts of choices to make when deciding the best way to organize a webinar. It probably is easy, especially for the less tech-savvy amongst us, to get lost with all the options and varied set ups they necessitate.

Perhaps this is why Ryan declares that “too many webinars suck. They do. They suuuuck!”

Better Webinars in Better Meetings

As our 30 Days of Better Meetings campaign suggests, we’re trying to spread the notion that meetings don’t have to suck. Making sure webinars don’t suck within what would otherwise be a good meeting, then, seems pretty key.

For this reason, I’m especially appreciative of the work Ryan is doing, and am excited to learn more from her.

So, what do you think about webinars?

According to Wikipedia, a perfect storm is “an expression that describes an event where a rare combination of circumstances will aggravate a situation drastically”.  Then, there’s the perfect (brain)storm.  It is an event where a rare combination of ideas will develop a path or solution for an opportunity to solve for a problem or create new charters.

How exactly would you create this perfect (brain)storm, you ask?  Well, the options are endless, but here are a couple of ideas to introduce this concept in your next meeting.

Creating the Perfect (Brain)storm:

1. In-Person: Carve out 10-20 minutes for brainstorming.  Hand out a piece of paper and writing utensil for each person.  During the brainstorm session, clearly explain your goal and invite everyone to write their ideas on paper.  One rule:  There is no wrong idea.After 10 minutes, have everyone share their ideas with the group and prioritize as needed.For example, our goal for 30 Days of Meetings is to share actionable blog posts on “how to get the most out of your meetings”.  To do so, we had to brainstorm blog post ideas.  In our team meeting, we carved out 10 minutes for everyone to jot down blog post ideas on their own, in a collaborative environment (we used Google Docs).  That was our perfect (brain)storm.
2. Offline: The concept remains the same, except the participants would be invited to the brainstorm via email or other communication sources.  Assign a location for where the ideas to be submitted, along with a deadline for completion.

Integrating a brainstorm session to your next meeting agenda can help create an inclusive list of ideas for your project (or problem).  Similar to having an editor review a publication, brainstorm sessions can also serve as a second pair of eyes to ensure no idea is overlooked.

If all fails, enjoy this movie.  Happy Monday!

Grab a bag of Skittles.  Pass them around and have everyone in your meeting take a few.  Then, it’s time to break the ice.

When was the last time someone kicked off a meeting with an icebreaker?  Probably back in high school or college, right?

An icebreaker is a great activity to create a positive and collaborative dynamic before meetings.  It helps participants get to know one another, which sets an inclusive environment later in the meeting and for future interactions.  Often times, icebreakers are perceived as a waste of time, because they have no connection to the agenda or topic at hand; however, icebreakers are great communication tools.

For this exercise, the amount of Skittles determine how many random facts people should share about themselves.  So, how many Skittles did you take?  I took three.  Here are three random facts about myself, and maybe one day it will help us connect if we ever get a chance to work together.

1. English is not my first language (Korean is!)
2. I grew up in Hawai’i
3. Math was my favorite subject in high school

For more icebreaker ideas, check out the Icebreaker Bible below.

Expanding the Discussion

This began after I first posted about meeting virtually online, on which Jeff Hurt of Velvet Chainsaw Consulting commented, expanding the discussion with this:

Here’s the one thing I think we forget, just because people are contained within four walls for a face-to-face meeting does not mean that they are paying attention or engaged. We’ve assumed for years that if they are their in body, their minds are controlled by the speaker and the meeting organizers. NOT!

He is completely right, but regrettably, there doesn’t seem to be any way–aside from directly involving a person in that part of the meeting–to see where their thoughts really are at. After thinking about it, I was inspired that much more to look into the benefits face to face meetings really do provide so that I could better assess their value.

Staying Grounded Despite Exciting New Tools

I wanted to ground my opinions without getting ahead of myself, as the innovative tools and practices virtual meetings entail really are exciting! Once again, though, a comment materialized in the post from Jenise Fryatt of Icon Presentations, that helped crystalize the benefits for me:

I’ve learned to NEVER underestimate the power of face to face. Yes, you can get a lot done through conference calls, Skype and virtual meetings, but they never offer the opportunities that spending real time in real life with people offers. Shared experiences, spontaneous conversations, the experience of personality nuances are much harder to come by, virtually. There’s also something about the immediacy and intimacy of the face to face moment that can’t quite be recreated.

She is very correct as well, as even though you can’t assume someone is engaged, if they really are ‘in the meeting’, a face to face encounter can help develop your business relationship by leaps and bounds.

Not Necessarily Either/Or

I realized that both Jeff and Jenise are right, despite the fact that these points are coming from opposing directions on the question of virtual vs. face to face meetings. This is because it’s not a zero sum game, as virtual relationships can lead to ones in the flesh, yet with a backdrop of all the virtual experience adding context to everything discussed in person.

Furthermore, time saved from holding a virtual meeting that would otherwise be inefficiently used in person puts a greater onus on making sure to get the most out of face time as well. After seeing how much can be done virtually, it raises the bar that much higher to make sure that face time is maximized, taking advantage of the distinctive qualities it brings.

The key is, it’s not about virtual vs. face to face; it’s about making sure people are engaged and that it’s a meeting that doesn’t suck, whether it’s face to face or not!

Plastics.

There is a great future in plastics. Will you think about it?

Of course you will. Why? Because you’ve been hooked with that timeless teaser.

Research shows there are seven types of Meetings and the purpose of many of them is to persuade- or in other words, ‘sell’ an idea or information. However, before you can sell. You need to get your audience to listen.
So how do you do that? Well, you begin by focusing on your audience’s needs.

The teaser is “I’ve got one word for you. Plastics.” It’s not “There’s one thing I care about. Plastics.”

This section is all about your favorite topic.

Let’s face it your favorite topic is you. Your needs. Your interests. So in order to get them listening to you; you need to tease them with their favorite topics.

Three Types of Teasers

Good in a Room by Stephanie Palmer (a book I recommend) lists three types of teasers:

• Startling statistics
• Purposefully nonspecific phrases
• Long-term benefits (for meetings, I typically stick with aspirational benefits)

So when introducing a meeting that announces a re-organization you might say something like:

For most of you in this room, 70% of your work is spent collaborating with groups that have almost no input in your annual review. This quarter, we’re going to change that.

Alternatively, at a team meeting:

We’re meeting today. Because for you- today is tomorrow. There are a few housekeeping items first, but later on this meeting I’ll tell you why this matters so much to you.

For a client meeting:

So, today we’re going to share our strategy for getting you your next promotion.

What teasers can you come up with?

A couple of key notes (get it? keynotes?):

• Generate many teasers before deciding the right one.
• Say it out loud. Practice delivering it, if you can’t say it out loud casually- and comfortably. Don’t attempt in a meeting.
• After teasing, stop talking. Generate their interest- then stop. Allow your audience to react; if done right the next sound you hear is an audience that’s ready to buy your idea.

Beginning

Questions at the beginning of the meeting is best if you’re a skilled presenter and speaking on a subject you’re deeply knowledgeable about. Allowing meeting participants to ask questions before your presentation gives you an opportunity to get a pulse of the hot topics on everyone’s mind- and an opportunity to adjust your presentation accordingly. This works well when you have the questions written down and reference each as you go through your presentation.

During

Questions during the presentation are best for small groups. When fielding questions during your presentation its important you keep track of the time allocated, at a certain point you may want to delay questions until the end.

After

Most of the time people answer questions at the end of their presentation. Participants can ask informed questions and your presentation may have answered (or should ahve answered the most common questions).

Post-meeting

No matter when you take questions the most important time for questions are often post-meeting. Post meeting there are two things to center on. In a client meeting, ensure you’ve honed in on your client’s root concerns. I typically would dedicate extra time, to be sure I understand the root motivators or concerns driving my client’s questions. Second, ensure you document the questions you don’t have an opportunity to answer or don’t have the answer to. Your follow through will always be appreciated.

No we’re not talking about Nintendo Wii. Even though, those were pretty hard to find a few Christmas’ ago.

Finding the ‘We’ is all about finding identifying the shared goals between yourself and your meeting participants and finding a ‘participant’ focused way of orienting the meeting to those goals. How much better would your meeting calendar be- if every singly meeting was tailored to your own interests?

To accomplish this, there are two questions you might want to think about:

1. “To what community do I and my meeting participants both belong?” Are we stakeholders in the same company? Do we work on the same project or are we members of the same department or function within an organization?
2. And “Within this community, how are my fellow meeting participants and I alike and different?”

For this post, the community that we all belong to- is the community or people that meet in order to accomplish goals.

We’re a like in that we both see opportunities to improve meetings; we’re different in that I work for a company that makes software for better meetings, All In. But for you meetings are most likely a tool to accomplish a goal- not the end objective.

Why ‘We’ Matters

“There can be no communication if it is conceived as going from ‘I’ to the ‘Thou.’ Communication works only from one member of ‘us’ to another.” – Peter Drucker

If we make the mistake of focusing on I – what we as individuals want to accomplish- we lose sight that meeting participants are too utilizing this meeting to accomplish their goals (and sometimes their goal is to impede our own goals J) and, unless you speak to your meeting participants’ concerns, objectives, goals- your goals don’t stand a chance.

Imagine the business leader at the front of the room:

“I want everyone’s attention on this, this is my top priority.” vs. “from this day forward, our top priority is _____. Everything else is secondary”

Which is more likely to motivate you to action?

Action Steps

For agendas:

Write meeting goals considering:

• What is the action I hope to accomplish?
• What are my meeting participants’ current state/perspective
• What are our shared interests?

In practice your meeting goals would look more like this:

• Sign up for projects for the upcoming quarter
• Learn about company performance and its impact on our functional priorities
• Celebrate last quarter’s success over chips and dip

As opposed to:

• Plan goals and objectives for the upcoming quarter
• Company performance updates
• Review last quarter’s success

For meeting discussions:

When the meeting is losing direction, or doesn’t feel particularly progressive consider:

• Identifying a meeting participant and relating the current agenda topic to their function. “Jonah, can you give us some ‘accounting’ perspective. If we are able to brainstorm ways to deliver this product a month faster, would that align with your organizations top priorities?”

You might also bring the meeting back to points of agreement.

• So we all agree that we need to improve ___ in order to adapt to the current changes. Can each of us write down the three ‘causes’ that bring us here today- and one thing the team can do differently to improve your effectiveness by 10%?

And lastly know when to end a meeting early, if your meeting participants are currently dealing with fires that have them distracted, and we’ve all been there. Sometimes it’s a good idea to summarize your points and agree on a follow up in contrast to continuing the meeting.

Hopefully you find this information actionable. How do you find the ‘we’ in your meetings? Has this practice brought you success?