Kazira

Once you get your first job, MEETINGS becomes an integral part of your working life. I personally have been in working environment where meetings pretty much took 25% of my working time. Many a folks have to deal with more, they travel 25% of their working time and then attend more meetings to update the team on their travel. No matter how much – meetings are important and can be effective when conducted effetively. Now there are several types of meetings –

• Stand up meeting

• Weekly Status meeting

• Monthly Status Meeting

• Quarterly ‘State of the company’ meeting

• Technical Meetings

• Program Status Meeting

• Proposal Related (Red, blue, orange Team) Meeting

• Other smaller Team Meeting

• Brainstorming Session

• Working Meeting

• ‘Just two guys shooting the breeze’ Meeting

• And so on .. and so on ….

And just like real life, where your popularity is based on your personality and your personal traits – getting an invitation to attend a meeting signifies your social and work stature. There are some meeting that you would like to attend and won’t get invitation and there are some where you’ll be invited to one – and you would rather be in a ‘Tin Chewing Contest’ than to attend those meetings. It’s a fine art of balancing your network to be a part of just the meetings that you would like to attend.

The intent of a meeting is to gather the whole team or a part of the team to either –

a) Keeping your team upto speed on the program/project

b) Setting weekly/monthly priority

c) Update everyone on the progress

d) Check on the status

e) Get some critical activity addressed immediately

f) Show who is in charge

Just to outline one worst case scenario – I have been to some meetings where the meeting was the only place where that particular work got done – When we left the meeting no one followed through their actions and then we were called for another meeting just to force us to finish the task. And then there were other meetings where some of the key members of the team – who were not on the talking terms (Yes this is real not fiction) – and a team meeting was the only place to get them to communicate with each other and the team (Talk about team dysfunction).

On the positive side, I have been to meetings where some of the critical issues were resolved only because right folks were present to discuss and provide their expertise (But these were few and far between).

Here are a few signs of a meeting which may be worth attending –

a) Has a lead identified

b) Has a clear goal/objective

c) Posts a clear agenda

d) Agenda is posted well in advance

e) Post time frame (in chunks) for agenda item discussions

f) Clearly identifies ‘must attendees’

g) Identifies the key discussion points (Meeting minutes) and action item list from previous meeting

            a. If a first meeting – then provides all relevant information

h) Span of less than 2 hour – If more then has plenty of breaks.

Also some of the key ingredients that makes a good meeting –

a) No one is restricted from speaking their mind

b) Someone takes the meeting minutes and action items and follows them though

c) Circulate an attendees list that identifies who were in attendance

d) At the end of the meeting, go through the action items so every one has a clear understanding of them

e) Clearly identify the next date/venue and tentative agenda for the next meeting (if it is a recurring meeting).

I have heard of cases where; to limit time wasted in meetings – the chairs posted notional $/min of the companies money spent at that meeting (based on the attendees of the meeting). This kept folks motivated to finish the meeting on time.

I’m personally in favor of a weekly team meeting to gather information from all and to provide priority for the week to all. In addition to this, a quarterly ‘Company Wide’ meeting to provide status of the company is a useful one. Besides those, most of the other working meeting must be kept at a smaller level and should include only those who need to be involved.

I must make a point here to the new comers, you may have to impose yourself onto some of these meetings – This is perhaps the only way to get invited to some ‘important’ meetings’. There is a good chance that you may be asked to perform minutia during it – But, some of the meetings are great learning experience on company’s character and the dynamics of the folks within the company.