The humorist Stephen Baker, who died last month, writes in "I Hate Meetings" (Macmillan Publishing, 1983) that meetings definitely serve a purpose. Really. "Consider this: Our
national economy is based on a 35- to 45-hour workweek.," Baker writes, well before the entire idea of the "workweek" was obliterated. "Without meetings the figure would dwindle
to a few hours at the most. Our whole system, as we know it, would collapse."
In the last 20 years wide swaths of Canadian forest have been felled for far more seriously toned books that address corporate America's (misguided) fetish for meetings. No
matter.
For most companies, meetings are like oxygen. They know how counterproductive they can be, but carry on anyway.
And PR pros are no exception, particularly for senior execs who have to steer communications among many disparate elements of the company.
So how do you get the most out of meetings and make sure they don't turn into rambling, bull sessions that don't accomplish anything? PR News asked three top communications
execs for some pointers on making sure that meetings -- as management guru Jim Lukaszweski puts it -- have meaning.
Peter Debreceny, VP/Corporate Relations- Allstate; VP/member of the Board of Trustees, Arthur W. Page Society; Co-chair, Institute for Public Relations; 847.402.3111; [email protected]
For most of us, meetings are like the relationship between New Yorkers and George Steinbrenner. Everyone loves to hate them. We can't live without them. We have to accept the
fact they're there and not going away, and learn how to manage them best. Then they become the enabler to success.
Here are a few simple rules you can use to keep them under control. They're well known, but honored more in the breach than the observance.
Rule 1. Cancel 80% of your meetings. There are too many meetings in corporate life. There are so many meetings that none of us can actually get any work done. There's a
good reason for this. Many of the meetings don't need to be meetings. They have too many people in them and waste too much time. At Allstate we have a little utility we can use
to calculate the cost of the meeting at the most basic level. It goes like this: number of people in the room X average hourly cost = meeting cost. The results can be truly
scary. I believe the 80/20 rule applies - 20% of the meetings will deliver 80% of the value. So if you've called it - ask yourself - do I really need to have this meeting? Is
it in the 20% category - if so, great. If not, find another way. A phone call with three people will often solve what a meeting of 15 folks can't.
Rule 2. Have less people in the room. (Or choose a smaller room - it'll have the same effect.) The more people in a meeting the harder it is to make progress. The easier it
is to get a dumbed-down consensus decision. More talk, less progress.
Rule 3. Run the meeting well. If this is a meeting that's in the 20% category, extra care in planning and running the meeting will pay extraordinary dividends. Ask yourself
these questions. What is it for? What's the expected outcome? Are the right people there? Will they add value? Can they get to the desired outcome? Don't waste time bringing
people up to speed in the meeting. Circulate pre-reading a couple of days before so everyone has the same facts. The meeting can concentrate on discussing the right course of
action.
Rule 4. Talk about the real issues. Don't ignore the skeleton in the cupboard. Encourage full, frank, debate. There's not enough vigorous debate in corporate life - the
best ideas are those that survive the crucible of scrutiny. Just keep the debate non-personal. It's about ideas, not individuals.
Rule 5. Record the outcome, and measure results. What did we decide to do? Who's doing it? By when? Specific answers to these questions are critical. Write them down.
Follow up to make sure that it happens.
Be like George. Focus on the outcome of success. And consistently follow a few simple rules to get there. Now, about this next meeting,
Patricia Bayerlein, Consultant - Matha MacDonald LLC; 312.673.7332; [email protected]
No one, it seems, has enough time. In the spotlight today are ineffective, wasteful meetings.
In a study following 60 members of a multi-national project team during a three-month period, strategy execution and employee engagement firm Matha MacDonald identified five
principles of good information flow that improved meetings, team performance and the ability to achieve project objectives: candor, inclusion, dialogue, clarity, and relevance.
Communications professionals can use these principles to help leaders improve meetings and team effectiveness. From the research, lack of candor and dialogue were the two most
frequently mentioned barriers to effectiveness. Inclusion--inviting the right people who have information and ideas important to identifying major risks--was a close third.
Most participants on the team felt that meetings were measured by quantity - instead of quality - and focused on presenting numbers. In addition, this multi-national team
working across borders presented additional challenges in terms of language, culture and perception of time.
For this particular team, effective meetings at first meant moving from analysis to the solution in one step. There was little time for dialogue and building the cross-
cultural rapport critical to surfacing issues and identifying risks. The U.S. team members felt dialogue took too much time and led to few solutions. The other team members felt
there was little time to discuss issues - focusing only on reporting the numbers - which minimized solutions.
Corporate communications worked with the team to introduce a framework for improving information flow. The four steps - analyze, align, act and assess - were used to improve
dialogue, inclusion and candor by building in time and sensitizing the team to the need for the value of each step - analysis, dialogue, identification of solutions and action.
Models were introduced for giving and receiving feedback as well as brainstorming to help the group gain better control of their time during the open-ended segments of their
meetings and include points of view from all participants - not primarily the dominant voices.
Finally, the team created a forum to discuss cross-cultural challenges and developed guidelines to ensure key roles existing in different countries - such as government
relations - were included in the agendas.
The result: A strong focus on information flow helped the team identify more than $1 million in cost savings and additional opportunities to improve first time quality,
productivity, efficiency and delivery credibility - at the same time building trust with employees throughout the process.
Cool Hand Luke
James Lukaszweski, chairman and president of the Lukaszweski Group Inc., who provides strategic management consulting to many Fortune 500 clients, has a few lessons to
hold meetings that, mean something. Here's a partial checklist.
- Agendas: Every meeting needs one; all meetings fail without one. Include purposes, rules, times, topics, goals, and outcomes.
- Constructive Ideas: Avoid criticism and negativity. Ask for constructive suggestions, and you'll get a few really good ideas. Ask for criticism, and you'll get lots of sad,
destructive, and unusable blah, blah, blahs. - Outcome-focus: Set your goals upfront. Totally focus on achieving those goals (saves 10 % of meeting time).
- Focus on Tomorrow: Twenty-five percent of all meeting time is wasted on discussing what happened yesterday. It doesn't matter. Everybody owns yesterday from his or her own
perspective. - Check for Understanding: At the end of the meeting, ask attendees what they know now that they didn't know at the beginning. Responses indicate whether or not the meeting
was time used wisely.
Contact: 914.681.0000; [email protected]