At the beginning of this module, I said that I'm going to share with you some of my all-time favorite life hacks. Well, after hearing me in this video, I suspect you might add this to one of your favorites as well. I call it, how to avoid meeting malpractice? Have you ever daydream during a meeting? Imagine yourself somewhere else, maybe a beach, at a barbecue, a ski vacation. Well, of course, you have. Who hasn't? It's happened to me too, more than once to be sure. The real nightmare scenario is when you suddenly snap out of it only to realize you're seated around a table listening to people you don't really want to hear from. People who are saying things you don't really need to know. Yes, you are at a meeting at work and you can't escape. By the way, if you're doing any of the virtual meetings, whether it's on Google, or Microsoft Teams, or Zoom, or what have you, it's not all that different. You're not physically with them, but you are with them and you're wondering, can you keep doing stuff on the side that nobody's watching? Is this the cruel fate all office dwellers must endure? The answer is, perhaps surprisingly, no. So many people are subject to what I call meeting malpractice that it's a wonder that trial lawyers haven't caught onto this one yet. The good news is that somewhere out there, savvy managers refused to play along. Holding onto the quaint belief that meetings are opportunities for smart people to learn, debate, discuss, and for accountability to be assigned for actions and results. What is meeting malpractice, and what can we do about it? Well, meeting malpractice usually starts before the meeting begins. The meeting request comes in with only the barest notion of its purpose, taskforce meeting, team meeting, and the classic update. There's no agenda, no raison d'etre attached to justify this incursion into a busy workday. A meeting without an agenda is like a restaurant dinner without a menu. It's true that a great chef can create something that will surprise and delight us, but I've yet to see that same skill extended too many managers. Clear meeting agendas have multiple benefits. You know what to do in advance to prepare. The meaning convener can rely on the agenda to keep the discussion from drifting into irrelevant territory, and everyone knows when the meeting is done. Clear, concise, professional. If there are controversies that will be disruptive, concessions that need to be extracted, or favors that need to be called in, the hard work of handling these things needs to happen before the meeting. In all but brainstorming sessions, there's value and at least some choreography ahead of time. Meeting malpractitioners know none of this. They turn off their political antennas and are forced to rely on either brute force, which ensures minimal buy-in and whatever's on the table, or pleading, which ensures minimal respect to reach some semblance of agreements. So you've got to do a lot of the legwork ahead of time. As important as preparation is to avoid meeting malpractice, the greatest meeting crimes are perpetrated when all participants are assembled around the table. It starts at the beginning. The meeting is called for 9:00 AM, but people drift in for a few minutes afterwards, chatting about what they watched on television the night before. Here's a complicated solution. Wear a watch and use it. Starting a meeting late or finishing late for that matter is as good a measure of the lack of managerial discipline as any I've ever seen. It may take a few tries until people catch on, but they will. Even better, they'll value starting on time because it provides certainty and it conveys competence. How you handle the first minutes of a meeting can also be quite revealing. Consider Mary, a manager. Let's call her Mary, an expert in meeting malpractice. After waiting longer than she should to start, she launches into a lengthy discourse on something that is only somewhat related to the meeting topic. She allows herself to be interrupted by Mr. Big of the team, the person who always believes he knows more than anyone else, and she's somehow unaware of the knowing smiles and arched eyebrows that his co-workers display once Mr. Big starts in on whatever his personal agenda is that day. The reaction is muted, however, since most people around the table are probably checking their email or their smart phones at that point anyways. Effectively managing a meeting in real time is like being an ice hockey coach. The first tenant, makes sure the right people are in the room or on the ice and that the wrong people aren't. Give people short shifts by limiting their airtime and ensuring you use your whole bench. Draw on specialized expertise inside and outside of the room during key moments, like a penalty kill. To win everyone must contribute, not just the loudest person, not just the most senior person, and certainly not the person you are most comfortable with. Among the most egregious offenses of the meeting malpractitioner is letting time be taken up with presentation and after presentation, leaving no room for real debate, discussion, and decision-making. A lot of board meetings are run this way, almost as if the chief executive officer is trying to run out the clock, which sometimes they might be right. If you don't ban PowerPoint slides, at least put a time limit on their use. Even better, how about this? Why not expect people to review the slides ahead of time and any other information on material that you've got in advance so that the face time that we've got can be dedicated to work that cannot be as effectively accomplished offline or when you're on your own. Finally, the meeting ends. What happens next? Can think of anything? Exactly. There is no other investment of time an organization regularly makes for which returns are less closely managed. Meetings must end with follow-up assignments or accountabilities, whether that's a call for more analysis or for executing on a decision, and these accountability should not be delivered at a time when nobody's paying any attention, certainly not at 6:30 on a Friday afternoon. Avoiding meeting malpractice will not solve all of our problems in an era of all disruptions going on, a lot of challenges. But I bet it's a pretty good way to start, and I bet it's going to make you feel a lot better also, and it's an important life hack to get right.
