Better Meetings
advice and lessons on better meetings for good work.
published on 6.11.24
I suddenly wanted to compile the best advice and lessons I've collected on having better meetings. This will probably be boring, but hopefully it is also useful. Boring but useful, a post could do worse...
- Do the reading (prep): if you are the organizer / running the meeting, you must share the agenda and relevant context well before the meeting happens. If you are a participant, you must "do the reading", prepare, and gather context before the meeting happens.
- Ideas: if the meeting involves brainstorming or idea generation, have people independently develop and share their ideas prior to the meeting and use the meeting to discuss the critical decision paths and disagreements. This prevents false consensus, a bias to extroverts, a lack of preparation, a bias to one person, etc.
- "Any Questions?": do not save 2 minutes at the end of a 28 minute presentation for the banal and unapproachable "any questions?" section. Come up with a better method for feedback, disagreement, or questions. Save more time at the end, develop better prompts, take questions asynchronously, etc.
- Memory extension: record every meeting if possible.
- Takeaways: every meeting should have both a clear purpose and a clear takeaway. Make sure the person or people responsible for next steps acknowledge that fact and everyone is aware of the timeline relevant to them.
- Move: when possible (no screens needed), have meetings while walking or in new environments to shake things loose. I've also heard it can be helpful to use the same place to reliably produce the same good results (like one "new products room") where the team routinely has innovative ideas.
- Yum: always have a fresh coffee or tea for the meeting.
Note to self: expand this as I encounter new ideas about having successful meetings.
Collected reading on this topic