meetings reflect

Why are we doing this? What is the outcome we want to achieve? If you’re clear on this, your choices are much more obvious and decisions easier.

Applying this to meetings

A practical example is meetings. At Meld Studios we recently did some work with Who Gives A Crap where lots of people struggled with meeting overload. This is not uncommon in organisations, as I’m sure you’re aware. So we started exploring ways we could reduce the number of meetings.

There are lots of ways you can have fewer meetings. Send an email instead; use asynchronous feedback tools; schedule meeting free days; ban recurring meetings; give people more power to make decisions so they can just go away and do whatever it was they were going to meet about.

That last point in particular made us think we might be headed in the wrong direction. Because in many cases, meetings aren’t taking you away from work, they ARE the work. They get a bad wrap, but done well meetings can be how we collaborate and get input and also build trust with each other.

No, our actual intent wasn’t to have less meetings, but to make meetings work better.

Intentional meetings

So then we went meta, and applied the “clear on intent” mantra to meetings. We asked people to be intentional about setting the scene for the sort of meeting they were having, and what the expectations were of everybody in that meeting.

We identified four meeting types, with the type informing the style of the meeting:

• Inform is listening. It’s largely one-way communication. Whoever’s presenting has things to say and they’ll do it as efficiently as possible.
• Input is where you’re expected to contribute. This is more like a workshop, where the meeting owner has prepared things they want participants to feedback on or help them develop further.
• Commit is about making a decision. Participants should be up to speed with the background before coming in, and the focus of the meeting is not going over old ground, but agreeing a way forward.
• Reflect is using reflective practice. It’s more collaborative and less agenda driven, with participants coming together to share reflections and experiences, with the intention to learn, improve and grow.