Meeting Management 101

I am a meeting queen. My life revolves around meetings.  As the CEO of a nonprofit organization my job is to use volunteer time efficiently to help advance the mission of our organization. This is accomplished through conducting and supporting effective committee and board meetings. I am also required to build coalitions, which I do by attending more meetings and networking.  However, I have no patience and little respect for a meeting that is not well run, has no purpose, no conclusion or action items assigned to specific people.

Here are the top three things that make a meeting successful:

• 1)     Have an agenda that is clear and concise.
• 2)     Record actionable items with assigned responsibility.
• 3)     Do not waste people’s time.

Always have an agenda and a consent agenda if you are using rules of order that allow for that practice. A consent agenda is the practice of bundling agenda items that require a vote, but are noncontroversial, into one action item and voting on them altogether. In some cases, this can save huge amounts of time getting through mundane business items with little or no discussion.

An agenda is important to keep everyone on task and moving through to the end. If you do walk into a meeting without an agenda (much of this supposes that you are in charge of the meeting and agenda) ask these two questions: What do we want to accomplish? Who is going to be responsible for what? What do we want to accomplish, can be a question you ask yourself or the group as a whole. Just walk in and say, “Ok folks what do we need to accomplish today?” That not only sounds like real leadership but also makes it sound like you purposefully didn’t put together an agenda so you could get straight to the point. I like it!

Who is responsible for what? This is where recording action items really works in a meeting. I ask someone, usually staff, to record anything that sounds like a task that needs action outside the meeting. Then I make sure the task is assigned to someone before the meeting ends. These action items are added to the top of the next agenda to keep the project moving forward and spreading the workload. Don’t let all of the action items end up on your to do list. Make sure everyone has some responsibility. I know it’s easier to do it yourself. Get over it. Learn to delegate.

I used to have regular weekly staff meetings, then I realized we were rehashing the same items. I was wasting everyone’s time by calling unnecessary meetings. All I wanted to get from the meeting was for staff to share what their departments were currently working on in order to collaborate on common projects, and share their upcoming deadlines and schedules. We changed to monthly meetings and an online calendar. This is a much more effective way of dealing with information sharing and no one seems to miss the weekly meetings.

This brings me to the final covenant for successful meetings: Do not waste people’s time.  Have you ever noticed that a meeting will last the exact time you have scheduled whether you need the time or not? People seem to feel obliged to keep others for the entire time allotted on the agenda. Quit this practice now! No one, I mean NO ONE, is ever disappointed when a meeting ends early. Get business done and get on with life. Be known for conducting efficient, effective, fun meetings.