How to...

[Geoff Hart]

Kevin McLauchlan reports: <<I just spent yet-another 15 minutes in a  
conference room, trying to participate in a "monthly" half-hour-ish  
meeting. Between a couple of key empty seats at the table, and  
several no-shows on the conference call-in, we couldn't get a useful  
quorum... again. Fourth time in two weeks (or was it fifth??) that  
this meeting failed to get under way.>>

The cure for this is twofold: First, to get the relevant managers to  
make it clear that participation in the meeting is not optional. If  
they don't believe this to be the case, forget about trying to force  
anyone else to attend. You can still do it, but you'll need to be  
substantially more persuasive. Sometimes you even have to do little  
powerplays, such as: "Dear program manager: Your engineer informed us  
today that he found no problems with the documentation and thus, felt  
it unnecessary to attend the meeting. Please thank him for his  
diligent review of the documentation, and see that he gets his  
appropriate reward come appraisal time."*

*OK, you want to be just a bit less nasty about this. Your goal is to  
make it clear that the person was invited to participate, couldn't or  
wouldn't do it, and instead provided an opinion outside the meeting.  
If they did a good job, they should be rewarded for this. If they  
didn't... they should also be <ahem> rewarded.

Second, if you know you need to arrange a meeting, send out an  
announcement 1 month in advance offering a range of dates for the  
meeting, and ask people to confirm their availability*. Pick a date  
when the majority (or the most important people for a given meeting)  
will be available. Then, 2 weeks before the meeting, send out a  
reminder and an agenda. Ask anyone whose plans have changed (often  
through no fault of their own) to provide their inputs in writing or  
in person (catch them at lunch, for instance). Send out another  
reminder a few days before the meeting.

* Most office software, including Outlook, offers this as a built-in  
feature.

No guarantees, but letting people choose times when they know they're  
going to be available, and giving them alternative ways to  
participate if they can't attend, greatly increases participation in  
my experience.

Also note that if your only agenda item is "status update", nobody in  
their right mind will voluntarily attend--and why should they? Simply  
ask them to send out an e-mail containing their contribution to the  
status update. Sometimes the correct agenda for a meeting is not to  
hold a meeting--just a quick e-mail exchange to ensure that  
everyone's on track.

<<Does anybody have a nice, concise guide to herding cats?>>

The other thing to keep in mind is the famous saying that meetings  
are "places where minutes are saved and hours wasted". Create an  
agenda, stick to it rigorously* unless something truly special comes  
up, and make sure everyone has a chance to think about the agenda for  
several days before the meeting so that they come prepared. (Provide  
necessary incentives to ensure that they actually do this.) If  
something must be added to the agenda at the last possible instant,  
think hard about whether you can productively discuss this or really  
need a day or a few hours to think about it and a separate meeting to  
discuss it.

* I've chaired a great many meetings over the years, with up to  
around 20 people attending. A couple times, I've told a Very  
Important Person "that's all very well, but we don't have time to  
discuss it now -- how about a new meeting tomorrow?" You have to use  
this approach carefully, but I've made it stick with VIPs up to  
Executive Director level. They usually aren't accustomed to being  
interrupted in this way, but if handled diplomatically, even bigwigs  
will settle down and stick to the agenda. Don't even think of trying  
this if you don't know the VIP well and have enough credibility to  
get away with it. But if you do, it's awfully satisfying to "pull  
rank". <g>

<<Oh.... no, it's not my meeting. I rarely call meetings. It's one to  
which I get called... and called... and called... and    I'd like to  
help the poor woman have a fighting chance>>

If the meeting is important to you, why not offer to chair it for  
her, and take over the arrangements? I've done that too. Few people  
like chairing meetings, and those oddballs like me who do are always  
appreciated when we relieve someone of an unwanted responsibility.


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-- Geoff Hart
ghart at videotron.ca / geoffhart at mac.com
www.geoff-hart.com
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