Meeting hell

Give me hellfire and brimstone. Don't give me meetings. I mean I would rather be dead. Some meetings are good, but most suck the air out of my lungs. The big problem is that half the time, participants are never well prepared, and the meeting organizers never think of what they want the meeting to end with. Here are my suggestions for all meeting organizers all over the world.

Suggestion 1: Set an Agenda

I mean, people! Please! I might be working on 5 different things and my wife and kids may be wanting other things from me. I have not gone working out for 5 days straight. It is cold outside. I don't have enough money in my bank and I drank too much last night. You expect me to read your mind on what your meeting is about? At the very least, set bullet point agenda of what you want to talk about. What does an agenda look like you ask? Well, what is the meeting about? Is there a problem that we need to collectively solve? Then, lead with the problem statement in one sentence containing one subject, one predicate and as few conjunctions as possible. Follow that with a few bullet points describing potential solutions and who will do what part of that solution. Do we need to agree on a difficult topic? Start with the topic itself. Chase with a call to action to participants that they must formulate their thoughts and bring to the meeting. Tell them that they must reach a consensus before the end of the meeting. Sometimes, it feels like these things are obvious, but that is never true. Without a written agenda, participants will often make up their own agenda or highjack your meeting. Don't let them.

Suggestion 2: Budget time

Do you have all the time to listen to your grandma talking about her problems? What makes you think anyone wants to listen to anyone else in your meeting? Hence, feel free to budget time. If there are 6 people in a meeting and the meeting is for an hour, have a think about who gets to talk for how long. If the meeting is to discuss a person's requirements for the next 2 quarters or address their issues from the last interaction, then, budget 30 minutes for that person and 6 minutes each for the remaining 5. If the meeting is discuss highway construction plans, then, offer 10 minutes to each participant. You may think that often times, a single meeting participant "just emerges" as the important participant. Thats baloney. Having a free reign on time allows the noisiest person to self-emerge as the important participant. Don't allow that.

Suggestion 3: Ask your participants to pre-send a written response

You know that smooth talking person who can walk into a bank, impress upon the banker how rich they are and walk out with a million-dollar loan? Neither do I. Banks have gotten smarter. They use a credit score, financial statements, purpose statements, character statements and even mortgage your house to give you a loan. Why can't you expect a meeting participant to send you a brief write up or a diagram of their opinion of the topic at hand before the meeting starts? Force them to prove that their participation in the meeting is important and meaningful. Additionally, they will be forced to prepare. Preparation has two benefits. Firstly, they will bring their knowledge to the meeting. Secondly, if they are wrong, they will learn that they are wrong and will learn new stuff from the meeting. 

Suggestion 4: Cancel your meeting

If it can be done on teams chat, google chat, zoom chat, telegram chat, whatsapp chat asynchronously (meaning, with about 15 minutes to an hour between chat messages) then, do you really need to spend collective hours on a phone call? Really?

Please. Give me hell.