When You’ve Got A Meeting, Get A Head-Start

When you’ve got a manic day full of meetings, try starting the meeting 10 minutes before you get there…

I don’t mean have the meeting without the other person there, just THINK about the meeting before you arrive.

Whilst I’m a great fan of thinking on your feet, when you’re gear-shifting from one meeting to another, from one completely different project or discipline to another, it can get mentally taxing getting in gear, in time. I still see people at meetings get put on the spot being asked what they think and they’re still worrying about the actions from the last one or what they’re having for dinner, they’re not there yet.

How can you better cope with that challenge? Think about what the meeting is about, what you have to contribute and what you need to get out of it before you arrive (that may seem a bit bloody obvious but when we’re busy, we forget what’s obvious). For most of us, arriving at one meeting from the last, all we’ve done is check our emails in the back of a cab with no time to mentally prepare for what’s next.

If you take just ten minutes to get mentally engrossed before you arrive, living and breathing the project/team/client, you’ll arrive hitting the ground running.

If not, it can take a while to get going. So use your commute across the office, in the lift, on the tube or in the coffee shop before to scribble – literally or mentally – your bullet points for the next meeting.

Try it, it works.

Don't Have A Meeting Just Because It's A Monday

Scott Belsky ran a great session at SXSW, 'Tips For Making Ideas Happen'. Along with his insight into how people and organisations manage ideas, he talked about meetings; if there are no action points that arise from a meeting, then what was the point of having it? I think this is a great benchmark for whether to have a meeting or not. If no party wrote anything down or said they would respond with x or y, then what was the point of all that?

I've worked in organisational cultures and with clients at both ends of the spectrum. Companies locked into a constant meeting-culture. Routine meetings every week with line-managers, regular team meetings, management meetings, group meetings, project meetings. Too many meetings. You spend so long in meetings, you lack the right time to spend on delivering actions. And then there are those companies who have no framework for regular meetings so that communication gets overlooked, no-one knows what is going on and people rely on email or word of mouth to share information. And that doesn’t work either.

When I last worked in an organisation, Mondays were full of meetings. I’d start the day with a routine meeting with my boss, then I would have a meeting with my team, and then it would be lunchtime and I would be stressed that I hadn’t actually done everything. I agree with Scott Belsky that we should challenge this whole notion of just having a meeting because it’s a Monday.

So make sure you are having meetings for the right reason. Never call a meeting when you don't have anything to say, don't attend a meeting without thinking what you are contributing and don't just have a meeting because it's a Monday.