If you are looking to improve your productivity quickly, take a look at the way you conduct management and team meetings.
Most meetings go on way too long: too much detailed information, too much updating on activities that are not relevant to everybody, too much time dealing with the latest crisis. The results are almost always frustrating.
To have more efficient and impactful meetings, the focus must shift from activities to performance. What Robert Dunham of the Institute of Generative Leadership calls action meetings take about a third of the time, and can generate dramatic boosts in productivity. Time and attention are spent on what results need to be achieved and what actions are needed to achieve these results. An action meeting is about what needs to happen from now on, not about what was done until now.
Action meetings are structured differently and have very different roles for participants. Three key differences:
- Attendees come solely to report on whether they can successfully fulfill their particular work commitments, what they are accountable for. They do not report on the activities they have been engaged in. Their positions must be supported by facts, not just opinions.
- Everyone's top concern is the overall objective; therefore participants are there first to examine, question and assess what each one reports and second to arrive at a common agreement of what impact, if any, problems have on the overall objective. At that time, new actions are requested, negotiated, and agreed to as necessary. Anything needing more than 5 minutes discussion is taken off line. Commitments made for new action are documented as action items.
- If any new commitments will affect the ability of the group to achieve its larger objective the team leader leads a conversation to assure understanding and alignment behind those actions.
With a little practice, meetings of 5-8 participants can be completed effectively within 30 minutes or less, with members finding themselves becoming better, more efficient and more motivated performers because they are committed to achievable, realistic goals.
Scott Brumburgh
Forecasting the Future
