Blog posts on meetings

Posts selected fromManagement Blog - Engineering Blog - Investing Blog and other blogs

• Better Meetings for Your Organization

  This is similar to Deming’s ideas on management, I don’t believe their is a recipe to follow. There are principles that are universal. But what specific form they take depends greatly on the specific circumstances and systems in place.

  Here are principles I believe will help:

  • Have a written objective
  • Document decisions and actions to be taken
  • Prepare people in advance (and don’t expect people to come if there isn’t a good reason for them to be there)
  • Talk to those involved in the meetings to learn what is working well, what needs to be improved and if the meetings are worth the effort (should there be fewer meetings or should less time be taken with them)

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• Most Meetings are Muda

  Have the PM email the list of resolved and new action items to all the participants.

  This is an important step missed far too often. Doing so helps make sure that everyone leaving the meeting has the same understanding of what has been decided: in addition to reviewing new assignments I would suggest review all significant decisions made. Far too often, people have very different ideas on what happened in previous meetings.

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• Write it Down

  It is very easy for people to think everyone agrees to some somewhat clear statements made in the meeting. Only later it becomes obvious several people have different understandings of what was agreed to...

  Writing down decisions greatly reduces the chance of miscommunication. In a meeting clearly writing down decisions (action items etc.) for everyone to see (on a flip chart for example) is a vey useful tactic to improve communication.

  ...

  Russell Ackoff also has some great stuff on the importance of documenting decisions – both to serve as guide posts to future action and to serve as documentation that can be examined over time to find historic weaknesses and strengths with decision making in the organization.

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