High-Performance Meetings
Planning meetings sucks. But poorly planned meetings suck way more! With intentionality, good structure, and consistent discipline, you can have High Performance Meetings.
If you hate meetings, you need to read this!
If anyone in your company has ever said, “We can’t get any actual work done because of all the meetings,” you need to read this!
If your meetings are full of talking but short on decisions, you need to read this!
Planning a meeting may feel like busy work or a luxury rather than a need. Busy leaders often put it off until the last minute. This results in an incredible lost opportunity and an exponential waste of time.
The solution to “death by meetings” (Patrick Lencioni anyone?) is High Performance Meetings (HPMs). This is a tactical discipline to implement a strategy of efficient and productive meetings where information is shared quickly and decisions are made deliberately. With HPMs, you’ll have less meetings, and the meetings you have will be incredibly productive. Every team, especially every executive team, should adapt this framework to their own context.
Core Principles
HPMs are built on these core principles.
Any meeting involving the leaders of the organization is a significant investment of time, energy, and money. Therefore, all of these meetings should be very productive.
Ad hoc discussion derails productivity. Therefore, advance planning is critical.
We read faster than we speak or listen. Therefore, written updates are preferable to oral updates.
Writing is a form of thinking, and clearly outlining the core components of an issue brings clarity to the discussion. Therefore, short written documents should outline the critical components of any pending decision.
Group meetings are generally poor settings for discovery. Therefore, issues should be thoroughly researched with input from all relevant parties before bringing them to a meeting for discussion.
It starts at the top. If our leaders don’t do it, nobody else will either. Therefore, the leadership team must model HPMs for everyone.
Rules of for an Effective Meeting
Every HPM follows these basic rules.
Every meeting of more than 10 minutes has a host (or meeting owner) who is responsible for the agenda and the timing of the meeting.
Every meeting has an agenda created ahead of time by the host (or delegate) and shared with the invitees (at least 12, but preferably 24 hours in advance).
The agenda is a shared document that is available for comments and edits by others. However, non-owners should only make edits in common spaces or for their own updates or requested input areas.
Everyone is asked to add their written updates, which is any content that they believe is relevant for others to know before the meeting can begin. If someone cannot attend the meeting, they can and should still fill out reports before the meeting. Written updates eliminate the inefficiency of orally reporting. We like to use drop-down toggles for individual updates or issues. This allows the whole agenda to be viewed at a glance, while still enabling deeper dives into individual reports or issues. (A similar result can be achieved through linking docs through Google or Teams.)
The agenda outline shows what will take place in the meeting. Most agendas include the following sections:
Time for reading reports, updates, or issue explanations.
Follow-up Tasks and Updates. This is partially a common space. The meeting owner (or their delegate) will start this list with the follow-up tasks from the previous meeting. Owners of those tasks should add their updates in writing (as a drop-down toggle if longer than one sentence). This is also a space for reporting key metrics, dashboards, or project reports.
Discussion Items. This is a common space open for all meeting attendees to add potential items for discussion in this meeting. All members are strongly encouraged to add any potential discussion topics to the agenda well before the meeting begins (which of course requires sending out the agenda as early as possible). Add as much information as you can, but use a drop-down toggle if it’s more than one sentence.
Parking Lot. This is a common space open for attendees to add potential items for discussion in future meetings. This is sometimes an effective space for individuals to note requests for updates or clarifications on particular issues or projects.
Decisions & Follow-up Tasks. This will be blank at the beginning of the meeting. The host (or delegated recorder) should complete this as the event is in progress, noting any decisions, any follow-up tasks, and the owners (or Directly Responsible Individuals) for those follow-up tasks. =
The meeting owner, who is guiding the meeting, will prioritize the items of discussion on the agenda by importance, so the most important pieces are addressed. Sometimes, the group may vote or have an open discussion to order the issues. Other times, it may be expedient for the meeting owner to declare priorities.
Stay on track. Don’t let squirrels derail the meeting. Talk about one topic at a time. If you think of something else, add it to the parking lot or the discussion list. Hosts need to maintain discipline about this, and we all need to graciously accept reminders from each other to stick to the main topic. We’ll all be happier and get more done this way.
Every follow-up step has a Directly Responsible Individual (DRI). If the DRI is unclear, talk it over until the most appropriate DRI is named.
About five minutes before the meeting ends, review and confirm the next steps and DRI’s.
End on time. Be polite. Don’t steal your team’s breaks or disrupt their next meetings.
As soon as a meeting finishes, the host and/or recorder should utilize a template and begin the next agenda for the next meeting, carrying forward follow-up items and DRI’s as well as relevant parking lot or unaddressed discussion items.
These rules are a guideline and are not fixed. This should be the expected behavior for most meetings. For some meetings, every component listed above may not be necessary or most efficient. However, the core principles remain steadfast: plan ahead, write it down, prioritize, stay on topic, and list follow-up steps.
The Costs:
The host will spend more time and energy planning meetings. This will feel painful at first, but it will prove to be a valuable investment.
The host will need to carve out time to think further ahead. One way to do this is to schedule time with your Executive Assistant or Chief of Staff to collaborate on agenda setting. (Honestly, this is the only way I - Josh - can consistently give good planning for our weekly staff meetings.)
Meeting participants need to learn to give attention to the meeting before the meeting begins. They will add reports, elaborate on issues, add discussion items, and make comments/replies within the meeting agenda (and supporting docs).
The Benefits:
The overall quantity of time spent in meetings will usually decrease. This is an exponential gain for your company. Every meeting costs your company the average hourly wage of each attendee times the number of people in the meeting. Some meetings will be canceled because all issues have been managed asynchronously via the shared agenda document.
If someone cannot attend a meeting, they can review the meeting’s agenda ahead of time and add comments, updates, and topics for discussion. Also, they can follow up afterward if necessary.
Many decisions can be traced back to meetings. If the context behind decisions made is available through a log of old meeting agendas, this can help answer questions in the future.
You will get higher-quality input from more people. Loud extroverts will be less likely to dominate meetings with off-the-cuff responses and back of napkin analysis. Introverts can add their thoughts in writing at their own pace.
Meetings will become more productive as there is more preparation by participants. It is easier to keep meetings on track and ensure they meet the intended purpose. You will make progress faster because your team’s thinking, dialog, and decisions will improve.
Implementing the discipline of High-Performance Meetings is often slow and inconsistent. People (including you) will resist both actively and passively. Even after you “know better,” there is a constant gravitational pull toward poor meeting hygiene. Push through. Keep improving little by little. Get back on the horse. Keep leaning toward best practices. The benefits asymmetrically outweigh the costs.
The path forward is developing a culture of disciplined High-Performance Meetings. Not only will your meetings stop sucking the life out of you, but you’ll have less of them and get more done when you meet.