Make meetings meaningful

I freelance, or as someone recently put it: ‘work as an ingredient brand’ (I understand food analogies) and I am increasingly aware of the importance of time. Time is money? Yep, because if I’m late – you’re late. If I’m not efficient then I’ll charge you more for doing the job. Doesn’t seem fair does it?

I wasn’t aware of this when I was employed full time. I thought I was at work to do the job my boss told me to do and they took responsibility for the time management. All of it. Project delayed? Train late? Teabag in too long? Boss’ fault. Now I charge my time to my clients I know I must give value for money with no room for procrastination.

I work at home in my office and am the source of amusement to friends when they see my hours hanging on the door. Hey if I’ve ever worked these exact hours I’ll give myself the day off, the point is that I have work to do and it’s in my best interests to get it done so I can relax come ‘home time’.

When I work with other people I think – yippee – a bit of banter, a few laughs, then get down to work. It doesn’t always pan out like this. I was in a meeting yesterday in a messenger window (which is another dimension of hell entirely) wondering what was going on. No one in the meeting knew what the purpose of it was – why were we here? What must we leave this meeting knowing?

Today I gave some feedback along the lines of – great idea to have a meeting but could we be more clear on the purpose? I wasn’t sure what was going on yesterday. The reply – I kid ye not – ‘the purpose will become clear as we have more meetings’.

To save you the pain I am about to experience, I thought I’d draw up a list of points to consider when you schedule or attend your next meeting:

1. Have a purpose
   What must you leave the meeting knowing/having?
2. Write down points to be discussed
   If you know what you need to know, follow the logical steps to get there
3. Know what you’ll say
   Prepare your thoughts and take some notes if you need. And speak clearly!
4. Don’t ‘dress up’ the issues
   Get to the point, assume people know the background. If they don’t – they’ll ask
5. Time yourselves
   Start promptly, divide the number of points by the minutes you have and finish on time.

Next time you have a brisk and efficient meeting, do think of me languishing in my phone conference/messenger window.

2 Responses to “Make meetings meaningful”

1. Duckorange says:

   March 11, 2010 at 12:11 pm

   My bugbear is being invited to meetings to which I have no interest.

   “We want to keep you in the loop”

   That’s what minutes are for…
2. Christine says:

   March 13, 2010 at 3:56 pm

   Another bugbear is when issues are brought up that have already been discussed. Hello? We heard it already.

   Still they’re probably bringing it up because nothing’s been done.

   I might need to do a follow-on post to say – make sure you action the points discussed at the meeting!