Managing in reality
Lesson
Effective Meeting Management

Agenda
•Why effective meetings
•Meetings by purpose
•Good practice
•Excercise

Why effective meeting management ?
•When managers are surveyed about the time they spend, typical data shows that:
•
•managers spend from 30% to 80% of their time in meetings,
•more than 50% of managers consider many meetings to be a "waste of time" ,
•90% attribute the failure of most meetings to a "lack of planning and organization„,
•75% of those surveyed indicate they receive no formal training on how to conduct a meeting .

Meetings by purpose
Every meeting should have a purpose. The 6 common ones are:
•
•Planning meetings are usually held when multiple inputs are needed to build a plan, or to gain
"buy-in" or commitment for a plan.
•
•Information-sharing meetings are held to distribute knowledge. In fact, meetings are most often
used for this purpose. Information sharing meetings should be used to ensure common understanding
of information by providing a opportunity for questions and discussion.
•
•Decision-making meetings are used for group decision making. The key to these meetings is having a
clear process to make decisions and that, as the manager, you are willing to abide by the group's
decision.

Meetings by purpose
•
•Problem-solving meetings are called to address business problems. Effective problem-solving
meetings use a disciplined methodology that everyone knows and understands. Having a methodology
keeps the process on track and moving forward. Most problem-solving processes follow these basic
steps
–Stating the (real) problem by brainstorming possible problems and choosing the most likely one.
–Analyzing the problem (brainstorming possible root causes and choosing the most likely one.)
–Developing a solution (brainstorming possible solutions and choosing the most likely one.)
–Planning action
–Monitoring and tracking the progress
•
•Relationship-building meetings are used to celebrate successes, kick off projects, recognize
performance, or just to bring people together.

Meetings by purpose
•
•Operational meetings are usually run by all organizational units. These can combine the previous 5
types and enable transparent management and tracking of key areas, taking advantrage of regular
meeting rhytm, e.g. weekly.

Good practice
•
Before the meeting
–Have written agenda and share it upfront
–Select the right participants
–Invite for meeting with appropriate lead time
•
•During the meeting
–Lead the meeting
–Review agenda together and make sure you have common expectations of the meeting
–Listen to participants and moderate helpful discussion
–Capture decisions, agreed actions and important ideas
–Don‘t let the meeting to go off your agenda. If there are good ideas, but not related to the
meeting purpose, record them and agree to cover them separately.
–Stick to scheduled time, avoid overruning the time slot
–
•After the meeting
–Share meeting minutes
–Assure follow up tracking of agreed items

Ready for excercise?



Meeting excercise
•
•Meeting
–Type: Planning + Problem solving
–Goal: Generate recommendations for future course that could be trained by a  managerial
professional
•Key subjects
•Recommendations on format, excercises, ...
•Roles
–Meeting leader plus 1-2 assistants
–Meeting participants can „flavor“ their contribution and play role of:
•idea generator
•opinion maker
•doubter
•devil‘s advocate
•occasional contributor
•... or just a listener
•Outcome
–Meeting minutes inlcuding suggested items for future course and potentially action items to make
the suggestions happened
•