A common complaint in many businesses is that we have too many meetings. That complaint typically does not disappear in agile setups and it is quite often an excuse to reduce the number or the length of meetings.
To start with, I do not believe that in general meetings by themselves are the root cause of the problem we are looking at. What actually happens is that meetings have no clear goal and agenda, or are not facilitated or moderated effectively, or participants are not actively involved. To be short: we typically are not engaged in meetings for which we do not gain any value.
And to make it worse, complex organisational structures typically lead to even more meetings and I know people who are mostly involved in meetings all day. And I see that in the last few years, when hybrid working models have become more popular, the need for organizing meetings (instead of simply see each other at each others desks or at the coffee machine) has increased.
As humans we need time to run our (individual) tasks, we need space to come up with new ideas, we need collaboration time to share and increase the value of what we are creating and we need time to socially connect to create a safe place for all of that. Specifically for the collaboration part, we need some events where we come together at a certain set time to enable a conversation about a specific topic: a meeting is born.
So let’s have a look at the need for a meeting first. In the best case, you already know what goal you want to achieve. If not, rethink about the goal first, because specifically meetings that do not serve a goal are the first to be felt useless. Second part is about rethinking about the value (expressed in the goal) again for each of the participants you are going to invite. If you are going to tell something, an email or a video message might be a better solution than blocking someone else’s agenda for one hour. It is always a good idea to reduce the number of participants.
In the next step it is a good idea to think about an agenda, so the participants know how the meeting will be executed and even more important they know how to show up prepared. Most likely, meetings where you can add (some) value, so where you can actively participate, are felt more valuable to you as well. Therefore it is important to publish the agenda upfront. Another thing that happens in a lot of meetings, is that concluding the meeting is based on time running out rather than resulting into an (intermediate) conclusion or actions to move forward. That last part is of course the outcome you are looking for and should be serving your goal.
As a last step, it is always a great idea to evaluate the effectiveness of a meeting or a range of (repetitive) meetings. This can be done in many ways, ranging from asking about a short feedback at the end of a meeting up to analysing and evaluating the outcomes (effectiveness) and the way it is delivered (efficiency). Again, given the fact that most meetings end simply because the (agreed) time is over way before the meeting is really finished or people need to rush into a next meeting, this step is quite often not executed.
And of course, I am not discussing something new here. It is well known and there are many other ways to improve the effectiveness of meetings, after checking out if they are really needed. In the agile space, each framework has its own meetings, most often called ceremonies with clear goals to be achieved. The more complex a framework is, the more meetings are added and the tendency is that those meetings merely add to maintain an internal system (not directly contributing to the value of a product). Note that in the scrum guide, nowadays we are talking about events, since if you figure out an (effective) way to do it without a meeting, that is okay too.
So next time, you hear someone complaining about meetings again, you could check many things, like the goals, the agenda, the right set of participants. And of course ask some probing questions on why it is felt that way, because the goal, agenda and selected participants might not be clear to someone else. Furthermore, executing the meeting such that you can finish with a conclusion or action is necessary, preferably with some space to evaluate. Note that valuable meetings always need preparation and some work afterwards, so filling your agenda with meetings only, might not be a good idea. Note that I did not mention the facilitator or moderator role on purpose. Of course, that person is responsible for doing anything that is needed to make a meeting more effective, though really depends on the level of contribution by all participants to make it a success. Without that, a meeting will typically not be effective at all. A meeting is a way to collaborate!
What do you do to make meetings more effective?
