Knowing that you’re all hanging on my every word, I have been busy posting, but not here.

I wrote a tribute to Judge Lee Creighton for the Olympia Historical Society newsletter (I’m the editor) who was Olympia’s first Municipal Court Judge.

Also, I’ve been relatively busy posting on my local long term planning blog—Notes on the State of Olympia. I’m also a commissioner on the Olympia Planning Commission.

As you’ve probably noticed in my two proceeding posts (introduction and purposes) on meetings, I don’t particularly enjoy them. During those times of my life that I have worked for companies large and small, I usually felt that meetings were something like the sands of productivity relentlessly falling through the hourglass, except that I couldn’t reverse the flow by turning over the apparatus.  For me it was simple: the combined portion of the salaries of all the individuals present expended on the meeting needed to make up for the time spent by becoming greater than the sum of its parts, solving a critical issue, or some other means which would make that investment in time worthwhile. Meetings are very expensive and I generally felt and still feel that they aren’t usually worth it. You should always keep this in mind when you read anything I write about meetings. I maintain a presumption against them, but that presumption certainly can be rebutted.

When it is necessary to meet; when you do have a clear purpose of the meeting that has been clearly communicated; when you have successfully encouraged meaningful participation and preparation; how do you conduct a successful meeting? There are loads of blog posts, treatises, articles, upon heaps of information out there as to how to do this, but perhaps unsurprisingly, most of it can be boiled down to several basic and relatively intuitive guidelines. 

If you do any looking at all, you’ll find the same general set of guidelines for effective meetings:

1. Maintain agendas with time limits

2. Follow the agendas, including the time limits (e.g. use a timekeeper).

3. Ensure adequate preparation for the meeting

4. Respect all opinions presented during the meetings

5. Keep a record (minutes), including action items

6. Ensure follow through, including action items (See #3)

Keeping time is the easiest thing to do that no one does. A list without time limits is not an agenda—it’s a list. If you don’t include time limits, there is no way you’ll be able to properly determine the worth of the time spent on each particular agenda item. If you don’t keep time, there is simply no reason to write an agenda. If the group doesn’t have a concept of how much time is available for an agenda item, it will probably take more than it should. (If it doesn’t, it’s simply luck.) Humans generally don’t hold something in high regard when they don’t need to give anything up to acquire it.  Stated otherwise, if we don’t pay for it, we don’t value it. Thus it is with time: if someone isn’t pointing it out its passage, we probably won’t notice it. (That doesn’t mean you can’t suspend the time if necessary, but you should always make that a conscious decision.) All of these issues are critically interrelated and on full display in every single meeting across the land—from the suburban office park to the skyscraper. In days of paper thin margins, why not get the maximum return for your meetings?

An effective meeting doesn’t happen because people took a few steps or followed a few rules, but if the expectation is there from not only the leader, but all meeting participants, you’ll likely be able to encourage the recalcitrant members to using meeting time effectively. For me, this is basic respect among all members of the team. There are always excuses for lack of preparation and I’ll leave it to you individuals in your particular organizations to determine whether that lack of preparation is symptomatic of other, more serious issues.

The above are some basic ground rules and tips that any group can follow but there is a larger question of the incremental improvement that develops over time. Unless these guidelines are internalized instantaneously which is unlikely, you’re probably not going to notice a huge change after the first try. (These guidelines will probably be a turnoff for those who aren’t accustomed to them.) As your group embarks on the learning curve, meetings will probably be more painful, but meetings are very expensive allocations of your company’s assets and you should properly value them before and during those allocations. The suggested improvements I am advocating develop over time, and just as people in a meeting subsume themselves into another organism that I liken to a sluggish amoeba, that amoeba needs time to orient and direct itself. With time and sufficient dedication, your group amoeba evolves into something less repulsive and perhaps even pleasant. On the latter, I have my doubts; but that doesn’t mean the meetings can’t be effective even if they remain repulsive.

In the process of analyzing the success or efficacy of a meeting, it’s important to draw a general distinction between what I consider to be the two basic purposes of meetings: 1.) advisory; and 2.) deliberative. It’s arguable that there is a third type: order taking or information exchanging. Since there is no real collaboration going on in those situations, I don’t know why people would bother meeting in the first place. Send an email or put it on the announcement board. The time spent setting up the meeting and waiting for others to arrive probably offsets any benefit gained by hearing that the VP is going to be in Tampa next week anyway.

I consider an advisory meeting a group of people set together to advise a single individual in that individual’s decision making process. For example, you often hear of the President of the United States getting his (someday her) cabinet to obtain advice from the best and the brightest. Once the President hears all of the advice, he or she usually makes a decision.

The purpose of a deliberative meeting is to make a group decision. Continuing our previous example, the President could turn that advisory meeting into a deliberative one by setting the matter to a vote instead of deciding the matter on his own after taking the group’s advice. This is probably closer to what most of us have experienced in our professional meeting modes. I’ll save the methods of deliberation for several subsequent posts, but I want to draw a bright line here between these two purposes of meeting.

It’s important to distinguish further here the purposes (advisory or deliberative) of a meeting from an advisory or deliberative function that is necessary to further the purpose of a meeting. For example, an advisory meeting can deliberate and a meeting set to deliberate can advise other groups or individuals. A prominent example for me is the Olympia Planning Commission. Its purpose is entirely advisory: we don’t actually make any final decisions, but in order to advise the city council we often undertake deliberative functions. The city council for example is not an advisory body. It’s a deliberative council that makes decisions. Similarly, the state legislature is a deliberative body, but its committees often take on advisory functions. The board of directors of a corporation is a deliberative body—it makes the decisions. The CEO’s staff, on the other hand could be either, but I imagine most of them are advisory with the CEO making the final decision.

Why is this distinction important? One of the great failures of any meeting mode is the inability to determine the meeting’s basic purpose. This is difficult for a conscientious leader to undertake because she often desires to avoid the appearance of tyranny by casting the meeting as a deliberative one (i.e. one which all participants have a vote) when in fact she would prefer it to be advisory. Likewise, leaders often subtly use the guise of either purpose to persuade the meeting participants of a certain course of action that she believes most appropriate. (A particular morale-killer is revisiting the decision after the meeting because the leader realizes she didn’t care for the result.)  In either case the meeting is advisory, but to buttress collective morale the leader is wont to admit it. She mistakenly believes that conformity with her ideas can be best achieved by persuading others to the righteousness of her cause through a rigged vote or quasi-consensus. This inhibits the presentation of alternative points of view, foments groupthink, and in the worst instances turns productive employees into pandering lackeys. 

I suggest that leaders widely proclaim the meeting’s purpose at the onset: if the meeting is advisory, let everyone know and expect their support once a decision is made. Should the meeting’s purpose be deliberative, formulate a fair process and encourage preparation and participation. We’ll discuss much more of how to do both later.

If you change nothing else about your meetings, you’ll still see dramatic improvement by implementing a clear distinction between the purposes of your meetings. And if you can’t decide for which purpose your meeting is, try getting some work done instead of holding one.

Only a select few have been lucky enough to avoid a bad meeting. You listen, fade, fidget, shift in your chair, look at your watch, out the window, you click off all the other things that you could be doing. You listen, fidget, shift in your chair…. The meeting became and remains the tool for that collaboration whether occurring over the phone, via Skype, teleconference, or in the same room. 

The meeting as a social phenomenon and trend occurs more often than ever. Furthermore, whether your employer or your company is an economic behemoth, a sole proprietorship, a nonprofit, or a government agency, you still need collaborate with people around you. And you probably do this by meeting with other people.

Once you enter the meeting space with another person, you cede a certain portion of your independence to the larger group in an interesting social contract. For this consideration, your organization should accumulate greater benefits for the time spent together than it would were any of the meeting participants spend the time alone. (That is the justification at least, though I wonder how often a meeting is viewed this way.)

In effect as a meeting participant, you and your fellow participants jointly become an entirely new and separate social entity. This is different from what happens with a friend or a spouse in only one respect: different motivations underlie your necessity to effectively collaborate. With a spouse, it is hopefully love and fulfillment; with friends, hopefully pleasure, leisure, or some form of enlightenment or social gratification. With co-workers, it is usually economic survival, coercion, or another form of compulsion. (One should consider whether he or she attends meetings by choice—I always need a better reason than desire.) Thus is formed the meeting-self (thanks JJR); born of necessity and the motivations which underlie its behavior depart from the more enjoyable forms of individual self-cession to a social end.

It’s fascinating that means of communication have increased dramatically but we remain with traditional and perhaps even archaic modes of personal interaction and collaboration. (For example, whether we conduct a meeting with an iPad or a PowerPoint presentation, we are still doing the same basic things that participants in a medieval guild meeting would have done (less perhaps the sudden strike by the hilt of your sword to the Hansea-Viking on your left). Usually that function is some form of advisory or deliberative process that requires the input of at least a few individuals. Our means of meeting (the tools at our disposal to conduct them) have advanced exponentially but our modes of meeting (the basic manner of conducting meetings and their results) have remained tragically static.

I have seen leaders of all stripes and sectors spend nearly every waking moment keeping current on all the new “business” books. However, they are missing the forest for the trees: without optimal meetings and actionable results of those meetings, the organizations that these leaders command and the individuals therein will only reach their potential by luck or chance. Without effective modes of meeting, visions cannot be communicated; strategic plans cannot be formulated; tasks cannot be allocated; and follow through cannot be ensured.

How do we effectively operate in our meeting mode? How do we communicate so that we all understand each other? How do we make decisions collectively? What tools do we use? And my favorite: why do we meet in the first place?

These are some of the questions that I’ll explore in the subsequent posts. I hope you’ll join the conversation.

Just like any other decision you make that has financial implications, you should decide what you need and prioritize those needs within your options.  You’ll likely not get everything you want, but if you know what you can and cannot accept, you’ll probably make a good decision. I wouldn’t start looking at office space at all until your list and their priorities is complete. Why get your heart set on something that is manifestly impractical?

Here’s some reading:

Negotiating the Best Office Lease for Your Business

Leasing Office Space

Leasing an Office Space That Works for You

“Leasing An Office Space That Works For You”

It’s also a good idea to have a lawyer look over your lease before you sign it.